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Turkish Press Review, 06-01-02
From: Turkish Directorate General of Press and Information <http://www.byegm.gov.tr>
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Summary of the political and economic
news in the Turkish press this morning
02.01.2006
PRESIDENT URGES END TO 2005
IDENTITY DEBATES
ERDOGAN: “THE NATION ELECTED
OUR GOVERNMENT FOR FIVE YEARS”
AFGHAN, JAPANESE LEADERS DUE TO
VISIT ANKARA
CELIKKOL APPOINTED SPECIAL
ENVOY TO IRAQ
AUSTRIA TAKES UP EU’S TERM
PRESIDENCY
GREEK GOVERNMENT SAYS PM
KARAMANLIS TO VISIT TURKEY
IMF PRAISES TURKISH ECONOMY
FROM THE COLUMNS…FROM THE
COLUMNS…FROM THE COLUMNS
WE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT THE EU
IS
BY SEMIH IDIZ (MILLIYET)
CONTENTS
[01] PRESIDENT URGES END TO 2005
IDENTITY DEBATES
[02] ERDOGAN: “THE NATION ELECTED OUR
GOVERNMENT FOR FIVE YEARS”
[03] AFGHAN, JAPANESE LEADERS DUE TO
VISIT ANKARA
[04] CELIKKOL APPOINTED SPECIAL ENVOY TO
IRAQ
[05] AUSTRIA TAKES UP EU’S TERM
PRESIDENCY
[06] GREEK GOVERNMENT SAYS PM KARAMANLIS
TO VISIT TURKEY
[07] IMF PRAISES TURKISH ECONOMY
[08] FROM THE COLUMNS…FROM THE
COLUMNS…FROM THE COLUMNS
[09] WE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT THE EU IS
[01] PRESIDENT URGES END TO 2005
IDENTITY DEBATES
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer
delivered serious messages on political
developments and debates on Saturday in a
statement he released marking the new year.
Sezer warned that there are efforts to harm the
unity and peace of the Turkish nation and the
unitary structure of the Turkish state, but that
these efforts will come to no avail. Stating
that every politician, political party and
person in Turkey should transcend their
ideological differences and unite behind the
nation’s European Union bid, Sezer warned that
fruitless debates over the basic characteristics
of the republic should be avoided. “The Turkish
Republic is a crucial country by virtue of its
geographical situation and people, with a
unitary state structure under the Constitution.
The unitary state structure cannot be retained
without ensuring the consciousness of a national
identity. Unity is ensured through the national
state in multinational societies, and ‘a single
nation’ principle is the most important factor
that reinforces this unity. Uniting all the
citizens within society as a single nation is
the most effective method for living together
with our differences,” he said. /The New
Anatolian/
[02] ERDOGAN: “THE NATION ELECTED OUR
GOVERNMENT FOR FIVE YEARS”
Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed
yesterday that the next general elections would
be held in November 2007, as scheduled. Speaking
at a meeting of the Justice and Development
Party (AKP) in Mugla, the premier touted his
government’s record over the last three years.
Stressing that the government was opposed to
ethnic, religious and regional nationalism,
Erdogan defended people’s freedom to live in
line with their beliefs. In addition, the
premier visited a childcare center in the city
before returning to Ankara late in the
afternoon. /Turkiye/
[03] AFGHAN, JAPANESE LEADERS DUE TO
VISIT ANKARA
Ankara will see busy diplomatic
traffic in the coming days. Immediately after
the New Year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai will
be Ankara’s first guest. During Karzai’s two-day
visit starting on Thursday he will meet with
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. He will also
attend a meeting of the Turkish-Afghan Business
Council in Istanbul on Friday. The second
important visit will come from Japan's Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi starting next
Tuesday. Koizumi will be the first Japanese
premier to visit Turkey. Also US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Turkey is a
certainty, through the timing is not yet clear.
/Star/
[04] CELIKKOL APPOINTED SPECIAL ENVOY TO
IRAQ
Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol
has been appointed Turkey’s special envoy to
Iraq. The appointment decision was published in
the Official Gazette, which said, “Celikkol is
hereby appointed as Turkey’s special envoy to
Iraq in order to develop relations with Iraq and
to coordinate Turkey’s contribution to Iraq’s
reconstruction, and to execute contacts by both
foreign states and international institutions.”
/Cumhuriyet/
[05] AUSTRIA TAKES UP EU’S TERM
PRESIDENCY
Austria yesterday officially
took over the European Union’s Term Presidency
from Britain for six months. “We will show a
special interest in our close neighbors and
Western Balkan countries,” said Austrian Foreign
Minister Ursula Plassnik. “Europe has to be a
strong and a reliable partner in the world.
Austria’s presidency will focus on everyday
concerns such as jobs and economic growth while
boosting citizens’ confidence in the European
project.” /Cumhuriyet/
[06] GREEK GOVERNMENT SAYS PM KARAMANLIS
TO VISIT TURKEY
Greek Deputy Foreign Minister
Yannis Valinakis said over the weekend that
Ankara and Athens would agree on a date for an
official visit by Greek Prime Minister Costas
Karamanlis to Turkey in 2006. In a statement to
Greek daily To Vima, Valinakis said there was
already a decision for Karamanlis to visit to
Ankara. In comments on Turkey’s relations with
the EU, Valinakis said he believed Ankara would
exert efforts to fulfill its commitments to the
Union “more seriously” during Austria’s term at
the helm of the EU rotating presidency, which
started on Sunday. /Turkish Daily News/
[07] IMF PRAISES TURKISH ECONOMY
The International Monetary Fund
said that Turkey has the potential to reach a
growth rate similar to that of Far Eastern
countries provided it maintains its
macroeconomic political discipline and speeds up
structural reforms. An article on Turkey
published recently in the IMF’s Research
Bulletin stated that in the wake of five years
of economic crises, Turkey had begun to turn
itself around. Stressing that inflation had
fallen to single digits and interest rates and
the state debt coefficient had also gone down,
the article noted that Turkey’s performance
exceeded the world’s average. /Sabah/
[08] FROM THE COLUMNS…FROM THE
COLUMNS…FROM THE COLUMNS
[09] WE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT THE EU IS
BY SEMIH IDIZ (MILLIYET)
Columnist Semih Idiz comments on Turkish-EU
relations in 2006. A summary of his column is as
follows:
“On
the one hand the European Union promises higher
standards of living, and on the other, it opened
certain paradigms of the republic up for debate.
Over the last year we’ve suffered from problems
deriving from this dilemma. It’s not hard to
predict that these problems will grow in 2006
and cause us to experience periodic crises with
the EU. For example, the EU voiced approval for
the new Turkish Penal Code (TCK) without knowing
its true nature, then saw what happened after
the implementation of Article 301, and now is
seeking its annulment. People in Turkey opposed
to the EU say that they want to make it free to
insult Turkishness. Actually, they’re right,
because they say that people in the EU can
insult Turkishness as much as they can insult
being British or German as part of freedom of
thought. This is hard for Turkey to swallow.
Therefore, the meaning of EU membership will be
understood better and maybe certain dreams will
be given up in 2006. Actually, Ankara was
getting angry when others mentioned the ‘special
relationship’ formula but we ourselves might
bring it up in 2006. This is embedded in the
stance of ‘the EU should take our special
conditions into consideration,’ which is
expressed by circles calling themselves
nationalists. In turn, the EU says that it
doesn’t have to consider a country’s special
conditions vis-a-vis basic principles and that
those who want to take part in the bloc must
comply with its conditions.
We
saw our confusion on this issue when former
Chief of General Staff Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu
told my colleague Fikret Bila that the
conditions stipulated by the EU on Turkey
weren’t stipulated on other countries and that
it seems the EU is giving orders and we’re
obeying them. In fact the EU has stipulated
different conditions for each candidate country.
For example, it told Hungary to solve the
problem of minorities, and asked Romania and
Bulgaria to overcome the problem of chronic
corruption. In addition, the EU intervened in
Austria’s domestic affairs and prevented extreme
rightist Joerg Haider from coming to power, even
though it’s an EU member. In short, the EU has
never applied a standard template to a candidate
or member country. What is applied isn’t a
double standard, but a multiple-standard.
However, we also see that there’s a general
parity on basic political principles which lead
the EU and which it seeks for everybody to abide
by. The basic issue is whether the order in
Turkey is sufficient to suit this parity. We’ll
see this better in the year to come.”
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