Article Scan – Erdoğan’s rhetoric and reality

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Erdoğan’s rhetoric and reality / by ABDULLAH BOZKURT (Todays Zaman)

One of the main problems that Turkish and foreign interlocutors of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan complain of is that he employs fiery rhetoric, with a special emphasis on drama, to score points with his home base of political Islamists, a narrow minority within his popular ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
The Islamists perhaps represent 5 percent of the electorate, at most, in Turkey.

The pattern of Erdoğan’s harsh rhetoric and bashing others often raises the question of whether the bitter words he uses in fact translate into policy decisions and as such represent a significant shift in Turkish government policy on any given issue. If the gaffe that accompanies Erdoğan’s rhetoric involves a foreign policy matter, we see Turkish diplomats scrambling to soothe tension in a bid to assure Turkey’s partners that there has been no change in the actual thinking of the Turkish government.

more: http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/abdullah-bozkurt_333981_erdogans-rhetoric-and-reality.html

There are judges in Ankara / Mustafa Akyol (Hürriyet Daily news)

Mustafa Balbay, a journalist who works for daily Cumhuriyet, was released from jail on Monday after spending almost five years in prison. This was good news not only for his family and friends, but also Turkish democracy. It has shown that, despite all the partisanship within Turkey’s controversial judiciary, there are still fair judges who are willing to uphold the universal norms of justice and democracy.

First, let’s recall who Balbay is. Until he was taken into custody in March 2009, he used to write a column for Cumhuriyet, a hard-core secularist paper with sympathies for the then-powerful military. The prosecutors claimed that Balbay had secret meetings with some coup-craving generals and agreed to help their illegal efforts with his writings. Balbay, in return, argued that he was only doing his job as a journalist.

more: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/there-are-judges-in-ankara.aspx?pageID=449&nID=59545&NewsCatID=411

Turkey, Saudi ties less than meet the eye / Semih Idiz (Al Monitor)

An overly ambitious Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu boasted during a speech to the Turkish parliament less than two years ago in April 2012 that Turkey was the principal pacesetter in the region.

Despite a shared interest in supporting opposition groups against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Riyadh and Ankara are unlikely to become allies.

“As Turkey, we will continue to guide the winds of change in the Middle East and be its leader,” a self-assured Davutoglu said. He added that from the streets of Cairo, Tripoli and Beirut, all the way to Jerusalem and Tunisia, Turkey was admired as a country that had the capacity to determine the region’s future order based on peace and brotherhood. “No matter what anyone says, the leader and the spokesman for this new peaceful order will be Turkey,” Davutoglu said back then.

That’s all history now. Today, it is also much easier to understand — with the advantage of hindsight — how such remarks must have grated on nerves in Riyadh, Cairo and Tehran, which are clearly pushing for their own regional aspirations that are not necessarily in tune with those of Turkey.

BTT NOTE: On these pages, we publish excerpts from selected interesting and informative articles written by various opinion leaders about global issues, hoping to enable our visitors gain more insight into events in the world’s agenda. 14.12.2013