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.


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Decision Time For the Gulen Movement
Post-Kemalist Turkey and the Gülen Movement

Post-Kemalist Turkey and the Gülen Movement

The Gülen Movement was known for the cool-headed decisions it took at the risk of severe criticism during Turkey’s most difficult times. Today, it would be expected that the same movement will display a similar rationality in a changing Turkey.


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Cem Duran Uzun: It seems difficult to reach a consensus required for a constitution draft in a political environment of struggle and tension caused by the election process.

The AK Party was struggling to find a mid-way amid the red lines drawn by the three opposition parties. If getting rid of the Jacobean articles of the junta Constitution was not possible, then at least considerable effort was going to be exerted to subdue the emphasis on ethnicity in those articles.

Barzani, particularly for the last month, made his stance against PYD known. Not to mention, Barzani has been seizing on to a deep strategic alliance with Turkey in the recent years.

The Qandil engaging in an implicit contest with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s Newroz message, now, at the end of 2013, embarks on an undeclared succession struggle against Öcalan.

Turkey's First Post - Tutelary Reform Package

The fact that four female MPs could enter the parliament with their headscarves on 31 October, without a major crisis, illustrated the practical significance of this package.


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Turkey's First Post - Tutelary Reform Package
Politics Not Arms is the Way Forward for the Kurdish

Politics, Not Arms, is the Way Forward for the Kurdish Issue

The Turkish-Kurdish peace process is facing challenges which can be ironed out only through politics not violence.


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The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) may become more isolated in doing politic as well. As it continues to carry the burden of progressive democratization all by itself, there is no reason for the AK Party not to maintain its political hegemony.

Unless the PKK perceives disarmament, not as leverage, but as the key to its own bargaining chip, it will not be able to achieve any founding political vision.

The biggest obstacle that stands before Turkey’s democratization efforts today is nothing but the 1980 constitution, which was drafted based on the founding ideology after the coup.

Today, quite common verbal attacks against Turkey through the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan are directly related to the security architecture and the preferences thereof, the change in problem solving methods and the efforts to remain independent in foreign policy.