SETA PUBLIC LECTURE By  Irene Khan  Secretary General, Amnesty International Date: August 3, 2009 Monday  Time: 18.00 – 19.30 Venue: SETA Foundation, Ankara The SETA Foundation is pleased to host a a public lecture by Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, entitled "The World We Live in: The Role of Turkey.” The event will be held at the SETA Foundation on Monday, August 3, 2009. What are the threats and opportunities for human rights in the global world? What is the situation of human rights in Turkey? What do the protection of rights and freedoms in Turkey mean to the world? How Turkey can contribute to the developments of human rights in the region?

SETA PUBLIC LECTURE By  Ali T. Akarca  Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago Chair Talip Küçükcan SETA Date: June 23, 2009 Tuesday  Time: 16.00 – 18.00 Venue: SETA Foundation, Ankara

"A momentous day." This is how Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described the decision by the Russian parliament to recognize the independence claims of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The recent Russia-Georgia conflict was long in the making. The reason was not the problems between Moscow and Tbilisi, but the new round of a cold war between Russia and the Western bloc.

Who talks about religion in Turkey? And how do they talk about it? We took up these two questions on the state-owned TRT 1 station last week.

Freedom of religion and worship is a fundamental human right that everyone should enjoy regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality or religious preference. The right to follow a particular religion and practice its rituals is recognized as legitimate by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

A debate over the headscarf is revealing new dimensions of political discourse in Turkey. While conservatives and liberals use the universal language of basic rights and liberties, laicists use a heavily religious language to prove that the headscarf is not a religious obligation.

The debate over the headscarf issue is increasingly becoming a debate about who defines modernity in Turkey. The traditional vanguards of modernity are claiming to own modernity in a way that leaves practically no space for those they define as the "other," which in the language of militant Turkish secularism turns into "enemies of the republic," "backward-looking dogma obsessed people," "religious fanatics," "ethnic nationalists," etc.

Turkish President Abdullah Gül’s visit to the White House, his first such visit to the US as president and the first visit by a Turkish president in 11 years, comes at a time when US-Turkish relations have taken a new turn.

Everybody from Ankara to Brussels is asking the question “With the Justice and Devlopment Party (AK Party) strengthening its position in government and Abdullah Gül as the new president, will Turkey renew its efforts to join the EU as a full member?” No matter how the AK Party and the Turkish people answer the question, much still depends on what happens next in Europe.

The expectation from the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) when it came to power in 2002 was that political discussions would be shaped by internal agenda issues.

Opposition is one of the major elements in a democracy’s becoming institutionalized, putting down roots and developing in a healthy manner. 

An important meeting was held in İstanbul last week. The conference, called “Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Youth Work,” was co-organized by the Council of Europe and the Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYF-DC), which was started by member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). As part of the “All Different, All Equal” campaign program, the conference brought together about 200 participants, all young people, from Muslim and European countries.

The picture was clear and symbolic: on the EU’s 50th birthday German Chancellor Angela Merkel presented as a gift to French President Jacques Chirac a cup with a depiction of Napoleon’s invasion of Alexandria in 1798. Never mind that Turkey, as a candidate country, has not been invited to the party. Never mind either the fact that the current EU president, Merkel, has nothing to hide in her opposition to EU’s membership.

We’re only five weeks away from April 16, when the candidates for the new president of Turkey will be announced. According to the rules, the new president has to be elected within 10 days of April 16. While the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) continues to keep silent on its name(s), the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is moving ahead under the assumption that Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have himself elected president.