The Diyarbakır Grafting in Politics
The political performance presented in the Diyarbakır visit of Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdish Regional Administration in Northern Iraq, and of Erdoğan will create an effect of clearing the early reservations of the Kurdish Movement about the political ground and political strength of Erdoğan.
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The Constitution Shackle and Democratization
It is impossible for the old tutelary foundation that is cemented by the Constitution to carry the emerging new edifice of Turkey.
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Taha Özhan: Hosting Massoud Barzani in Diyarbakır is a significant turning point which has a consistent decade-old background history, and we may regard it as an ultimate-point for the state.
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 Turkish-Kurdish peace process is facing challenges which can be ironed out only through politics not violence.
Politics and the AK Party Becoming Isolated
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.
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Erdoğan's Visit to Kosovo with a Focus on Local and Regional Politics
What matters is to establish relations between countries and societies on the grounds of a common future rather than experiences, enmities and prejudices of the past.
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The biggest obstacle that stands before Turkeys democratization efforts today is nothing but the 1980 constitution, which was drafted based on the founding ideology after the coup.
Turkey will suffer from normalization pains just a while longer. Issues stemming from Kemalism will continue to plague our daily lives until the articles that regulate state-religion, military-civilian and state-citizen relations in the Constitution are amended.
After a year has passed since the adoption of the elective courses, PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled the democratization package on September 30, 2013. With this package, we will be discussing education in different languages in private schools from now on.
Both what the future democratization efforts entail and how expedient they will be depend, not on Erdoğan administration, but on the opposition. Unless the opposition makes a move soon, democratization in Turkey will have to come gradually in mini democratization packages.
Trying to sweep this incident under the rug and calling it an isolated incident will contribute to the aggravation of the problems. The society, as a result, will begin to perceive hate crimes as normal.
If Putin has his Assad, the United States has its Sisi. Russia dubbed the massacres in Syria fight against terror while the U.S. labeled the coup in Egypt democratization.
