www.turkishpolicy.com

27.05.2011

In this issue, TPQ takes up three interrelated themes, Turkey?s EU accession process,home grown democratization, and potential synergies created in the foreign policy realm. Just as progress in each of these policy arenas reinforces the other, problems in one front has the potential to strain or impair the others.

In an open society, the media are diverse and represent a wide variety of opinions and convictions. In a successful democracy, government and politicians not only learn to live with criticism, but are ready to face it with arguments, not with a ban. These freedoms are among the cornerstones on which European democracies are built.

The article deals mainly with the importance of EU involvement in the wider Black Sea region, the main European policies and initiatives related to this region (the Black Sea Synergy, the European Neighborhood Policy, the Eastern Partnership, the EU Strategy for the Danube region), as well as regional initiatives and priorities in the fields of energy and security

The ?zero problems with neighbors? doctrine is primarily interest driven, and based on the goal of stability in the region. The Arab street's call for freedom and human dignity call for a new orientation focused on values and prompt questions about the respect for fundamental rights in Turkey itself. Both Turkey's foreign and domestic policies should be rooted in fundamental rights of citizens. With the upcoming elections as a decisive moment for Turkey's future, it is time to define an explicit point on the horizon.

As the Turkish Cypriot people of the island of Cyprus, we believe that the decades-old negotiations have covered every aspect of the Cyprus problem with hair splitting detail. Extending the negotiations procedure at this point would serve no useful purpose and would only feed into Greek Cypriot aspirations to create problems for Turkey in its path towards EU membership.

In Turkey, women are the ones who suffer most from the growing trend towards a new type of ultra conservatism which does not consider women and men equal in the words of the Prime Minister. In order to address this problem, and in the wake of the upcoming elections, as the Republican People's Party (CHP) we attribute great importance to pro-women policies.

The goals of ?Europeanization? and ?democratization? are no longer fully intertwined and the ruling elite seems to be focused on power consolidation just as much as on democratic consolidation. The ongoing discussion around the adoption of a new civilian Constitution provides a key test for Turkish political parties to prove their democratic credentials while offering the EU an opportunity to revamp its relationship with Turkey after the loss of credibility and influence suffered in recent years.

This article tries to reveal the recent debates revolving around the issue of migration in Europe, and claims that migration has recently become securitized and stigmatized in a way that prompts the autochthonous societies to generate a set of migrant-phobic attitudes .

These days it is fashionable among Westerners to brand Turkey as a model country for the Middle East. This practice not only favors the ruling AKP but also disregards an important reality of Turkey?s political evolution: without secularism, AKP would not have ever existed. So the Islamists in the Arab world would need to first adopt a secular democracy, and then take AKP as a model. A question left lingering is, are they interested in doing this?

The author argues that the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials have been marred by severe violations of due process and the use of highly problematic evidence against defendants. Pro-government media have manipulated the debate in the country and prosecutors have acted in ways that are sharply at variance with European legal norms. These cases will, he argues, discredit the Turkish judiciary and set back the democratization of Turkish politics.

The purpose of this paper is to advance tobacco control within a powerful rights and development framework in Turkey. The integration of a human rights based approach to the control of tobacco is a powerful tool in the protection of the rights of women and children.

The 12 editorial cartoons of the Danishnewspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in 2005 should not be considered an insult to the Muslim world. Therefore, appeasement to extreme reactions by the Muslim community, such as the apology of the Politiken newspaper in 2010, does nothing more than magnify the problem of admitting and imposing self-censorship.

Under the AKP, Turkey has conducted a pragmatic foreign policy aimed exclusively at defending and satisfying the strategic interests of the Turkish state. This article focuses upon aspects of Turkey?s foreign policy as they relate to the current developments in the South Caucasus, particularly through the prism of Turkey?s relations with the EU and Russia.

The EU may be a regional power that is influential over Eurasia, yet in order to speak of the EU as a superpower, one has to qualify whether the EU displays an enormous economic-financial-industrial might, influential political leadership, and a military in possession of insurmountable technological capabilities.