How to Respond to Western Criticism

Criticizing Turkey has been a popular sport in Western capitals. It would appear that they will continue talking for some time. In April, their main focus will be charges of Armenian genocide, to which Turkey must respond with rational policies able to cut through the noise.

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How to Respond to Western Criticism
Downfall of Pro-West Intelligentsia in Turkey

Downfall of Pro-West Intelligentsia in Turkey

Since Erdoğan ended the old habit of the pro-West intelligentsia in Turkey, he has been portrayed as a sultan, and Turkey as an authoritarian state

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The West has a new approach toward Turkey. On issues like terrorism and the refugee crisis, in which Western nations have a vested interest, they engage in constructive dialogue with the government. Just in case negotiations don't go as planned, they threaten to complain about Turkey's purported slide into authoritarianism and the decline in press freedom.

The anti-DAESH campaign conducted by the global community is far from well-coordination and only serves the terror organization's interests

The scandal was not just a failure of European intelligence services either, as it relates to a broader lack of coherent counterterrorism policy across the continent, which needs to be addressed by taking European-wide security cooperation to the next level.

European double standards that discriminate between terrorist organizations and provide safe homes to some so long as they do not conduct violent activities in Europe should change immediately

The Unfairness of Placing the Burden of the Syrian War on Turkey

Western actors especially should consider revising their positions on Syria and the refugee crisis before exerting pressure on Ankara, which has already taken in 2.7 million refugees and spent $9 billion for their care.

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The Unfairness of Placing the Burden of the Syrian War

According to Bayraklı, the respond to the attack must be more cooperation between Turkey and the international community.

What Putin and the Kremlin elite have to clearly understand is that Turkey is not at all helpless against Russian bullying, on the contrary, it could employ numerous alternative options to fill the vacuum that will be created by the Russian absence in its diplomatic and economic network.

Conventional European pragmatism to conceptualize Turkey as a buffer zone to keep the troubles of the Middle East away from civilized Europe are bound to fail, as shown by the dramatic unveiling of the Paris attacks.

The G20 has to focus on finding solutions for the current financial problems, on increasing income equality and youth unemployment in the world.

EU countries have now realized the threat of the Syrian refugee crisis reaching their borders, which Turkey has been warning them about since the beginning, and thus have come to solve the problem through working with Ankara.

There is a lively debate centered on whether Turkey is undergoing an axis shift, meaning Turkey is drifting away from the Transatlantic system and heading towards the Middle East in the most acclaimed dailies and journals of the Western world.

Universities that have not been active in debates concerning long-standing higher education problems are preparing to discuss these issues, and two ambitious academicians, Professor Talip Küçükcan and Associate Professor Bekir S. Gür, are leading efforts to start debates at universities.

Recent years have made it clear that NATO is going through a transformation process; Turkey will be one of the allies most affected by this process. Both the future of NATO and Turkey’s perception of NATO membership will be at stake unless the allies can reach consensus on the core strategic issues of the transformation agenda. Analysts urgently need to come up with convincing answers to the following questions: In which ways has NATO’s transformation been going through? Why does Turkey feel uneasy with some aspects of the process? What steps should Turkey take in order to ensure that the transformation of the Alliance is viewed positively at home?

A new Pew report has brought alarming news: Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes are on the rise in Europe. While the negative view of Muslims is higher than that of Jews, there is an interesting correlation between the two.

This is the question everybody is seeking an answer for. The Bush administration thinks it knows what the power is for and Mr. Bush believes he is putting it to good use in Iraq, Afghanistan, potentially in Iran and elsewhere. But the hard realities of war and what is happening in the real world belie this false sense of confidence.

Current developments and recent social and cultural transformations under the forces of globalization indicate that the prophecy of traditional secularization thesis seems to have failed to capture the ongoing influence of religion. Proponents of secularization thesis established an unavoidable and casual connection between the beginning of modernity and the decline of traditional forms of religious life. Generally speaking theorists of secularization process argued that religion would lose its influence on social and political life once the society absorbs the values and institutions of modernization. For B. Wilson for example “secularization relates to the diminution in the social significance of religion”. L. Shiner on the other hand, argued that the culmination of secularization would be religionless society.

There is a growing Muslim population in the very heart of Europe, where states are largely secular. Secularized European social life, political culture and the public sphere are all facing an enormous challenge of accommodating a relatively religious Muslim citizens coming from different Muslim countries. Despite settling in Europe and getting socialized here, many Muslims attach great importance to their sacred and religious values, trying to express their demands and identities in the public sphere.

Turks in Germany are no longer transitory gastarbeiter (guest worker) people but de facto settlers in Germany, despite the dominant official political discourse that constantly reiterates that Germany is not a country of immigration. The parameters of this political discourse are based on an ethnocentric interpretation of citizenship and nationhood in Germany, which emphasizes volknation, a cultural nation, and leads to the political exclusion of ethnic minorities.