Identifying the Dec. 17 operation as an attack against the AK Party government by the Gülen Movement, conservative voters are likely to rally behind the Turkish prime minister in upcoming local elections. Consequently, the controversy might increase the ruling party's popularity among its core constituencies
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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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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.
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.
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.
The classical democracy paradigm has been shaken by the position of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the government and the opposition have exchanged their roles in terms of political reflexes.
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A far-right party, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), owes its post-1980 existence to a great extent to the Kurdish issue and the terrorist acts of the PKK.
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As the parties take a political-stress-test in the solution process, all of the actors who fail to play a founding-role will have to suffer structural fractures, independently of the survival or success of the process.
The dynamics of the current political climate in Turkey, which make impossible to create a new Constitution based on consensus among political parties, can be discussed under three headings.
It seems that with the PKKs disarmament these political positions will have to disarm politically.
As Turkey suffers century-old political issues, the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) spends its political energy over inner-party conflicts.
The re-initiation of the İmralı talks is putting the political parties of the new Turkey through a very realistic test, albeit unintentionally.
Despite the challenging period ahead, the CHP must continue its campaign for a peaceful resolution to the issue as well as for democratic reforms.
The statements of government circles, new initiatives taken by the CHP (Republican Peoples Party) and the interview with Leyla Zana among others boosted hopes once again.
Turkey’s foreign policy and the Arab Spring turned out to be as important in determining the political agenda for 2011 as the June 12 elections. Turkey’s role in the spreading political movements from North Africa to the Middle East surpassed its previous involvement in the area.
Turkeys long-standing Kurdish issue was also mentioned in the commentaries as a major issue that awaited a comprehensive solution.
SETA PANEL DISCUSSION Chair: Taha Özhan, SETA Panelists: Ali Çarkoğlu, Sabancı Univ. Cengiz Çandar, Radikal Yavuz Baydar, Sabah Date: June 15, 2011 Wednesday Time: 14.00-16.00 Venue: SETA, Ankara
Turkey, after a long time, is undertaking elections to build a new future instead of overcoming a crisis situation.
SETA PANEL DISCUSSION Chair: Talip Küçükcan, SETA Panelists: Taha Özhan, SETA İhsan Dağı, METU Mustafa Akyol, Star Newspaper Tarih: May 26, 2011 Thursday Saat: 15.00-17.00 Yer: SETA, Ankara
The world’s economics in 2010 were still struggling to overcome the financial crisis, which began in 2008 in the United States and became global in 2009.