News Scan for Turkey – Dec 14th, 2013

EP says Erdoğan’s ‘treason’ accusation ‘totally unacceptable’

Two of the most senior politicians of the European Parliament (EP) have strongly criticized Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “treason” remarks against the Taraf daily and its reporter Mehmet Baransu, calling the prime minister’s comments unacceptable.

Hannes Swoboda, the leader of the second-largest group in the EP, said he was “gravely concerned” by Erdoğan’s remarks and the subsequent cases filed against the daily and its reporter Baransu.

Swoboda, the leader of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP, said the tactic of accusing journalists and newspapers of treason is often used by state authorities when they read something they don’t like. “This is another way of intimidating journalists and newspapers. It is totally unacceptable. The authorities should not intervene in press freedom,” he said.

TODAYS ZAMAN

While hailing reforms, EU ‘seriously concerned’ about media freedom

The European Union will praise the government’s reforms made in the last year but will also state its grave concerns about negative developments in the area of media freedom.

The EU Summit to be held on Dec. 18-19 in Brussels will also assess the state of accession negotiations with Turkey. According to a draft of the summit’s findings obtained by Today’s Zaman, the 28 EU leaders will confirm that Turkey is a key country for the EU and state that accession talks should continue. For the first time, the EU will openly declare that Turkey contributes to the prosperity of the European continent.

Conservative and far-right parties have often claimed that Turkey is the poorest candidate country and will empty the EU coffers if it becomes a member. The new EU position is a strong rebuttal of these claims. “The [European] Council reaffirms the importance it attaches to EU relations with Turkey. Turkey is a candidate country and a key partner for the EU, with a dynamic economy that provides a valuable contribution to the prosperity of the whole European continent,” says the draft document.

However, as in previous years, EU leaders will raise concerns over the state of media freedom in Turkey. “The restrictions in practice on the freedom of the media, including the large number of legal cases launched against writers, journalists, academics and human rights defenders, frequent and disproportionate website bans, as well as broad application of the legislation on terrorism and organized crime, have also raised serious concerns,” says the draft.

TODAYS ZAMAN

“Car mania” spreads like wildfire in big Turkish cities lacking infrastructure

Heavy traffic is a fact in big cities, especially in Istanbul, where some 2 million cars are on the roads every day. The more car ownership rises in the country’s roads, the more roads are developed for them. The transportation policies are mainly based on the development of roads and highways for cars in Turkey. This is one of the biggest reasons why we’re suffering from heavy traffic actually. The more car ownership rises, the more roads are developed for them. The solution should be sought somewhere else.

The 4th article of the 1992 European Urban Charter said the following: “Cars kill a city gradually. We’ll choose either our city or our cars in the 2000s as these two cannot live together.”

One quarter of 13.5 million trips are, however, made by privately-owned cars in Istanbul in a day. When other road vehicles are added, this percentage increases to 87 percent, making Istanbul a city which becomes more and more unbearable to live in day by day. Some 2 million cars are on the roads in Istanbul every day, to which some 100,000 other road vehicles should be added. While some 24 percent of all trips are made by 99 percent of vehicles, 76 percent of them are by 1 percent of vehicles in Istanbul. The share of rail systems is not more than 10.5 percent and of sea vehicles is just 2.5 percent in the daily transportation of Istanbul.

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

Syria should not fall off our agenda: Turkish Development Min.

Turkish Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz said on Saturday that Syria should not fall off the agenda.

Attending the Conference of Non-governmental Organizations in the Islamic World of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Yilmaz said the political crisis in Syria should be overcame as soon as possible and Syria should regain its stability.

Stressing also the importance of Palestine and Gaza, Yilmaz said the fundamental human rights are disregarded and basic human needs are not provided.

We should overcome the issues in Syria and Palestine, while putting the world to take action within the scope of international laws, said Minister Yilmaz.

“These issues are not only for Muslims but also for all humanity,” said Yilmaz.

AA

Decision time for the Gulen movement

If the Gulen movement wants to serve society, they should restrict themselves to nongovernmental activities rather than using their bureaucratic influence to engage in politics.

The official documents disclosed last week in order to force the government to change their decision to transform the prep schools, took the Gulen movement affair to a whole new level. With the Gulen movement in mind, we should instead discuss social movements and politics during the era under some sort of tutelage and the way social movements need to interact with politics and the state during  the formation of the new Turkey in the post-tutelage era.

In our recent history, ties between the public and politics faced two important breaking points. Firstly, following the war of independence, the Kemalist administration, with their understanding of national will based on the principles of Rousseau, took upon itself the monopoly of government in the name of the people. The second breaking point occurred with the removal of free elections and the multi-party system. The national will provided by the 1961 Constitution was given to the control of the appointed bureaucrats. Both these periods, when the nation didn’t have the right to influence the political process through democratic elections, can be defined through tutelage.

SABAH

KRG: Kurdish oil to be transported to Turkey at beginning of 2014

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) spokesman, Safeen Dizayee, announced on Friday that Turkey and the KRG agreed on an oil deal 20 days ago and Kurdish oil will be transported to Turkey from the beginning of the new year.
According to a report released on the website of the Anadolu news agency, Dizayee said the KRG has been preparing to transport oil to Turkey for one-and-a-half years, but oil exports to Turkey were delayed because of technical problems.

He said the pipeline to transfer the oil from the KRG to Turkey is almost finalized.

“The agreement on transferring oil to Turkey was signed between Turkey and Kurdistan [KRG] and is binding for both sides. The problem is not that the agreement is inked or not. It is all about the time and technical issues, which are still being discussed,” the news agency reported Dizayee as saying.

He refuted allegations that the oil transfer will be conducted after KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s visit to Baghdad, where he is expected to convince Iraq’s central government officials, who are concerned about the deal.

“The visit of the prime minister aims to show the transparency [of the deal] and the benefit of it to all Iraqis,” he said.

TODAYS ZAMAN

14.12.2013
compiled by Editor BTT,

This is a news-scan from major Turkish papers and internet sites. However, we do not verify above stories neither do we vouch for their accuracy.