TURKEY has banned 138 words from Internet domain names. The Telecommunications Directorate has created problems for many sites. For example, sanaldestekunitesi.com (virtualsupportunit.com) contains the world “anal”, which is forbidden.
Also, for reasons unclear, the number 31 is a slang term for masturbation. So, any domain with 31 in it is banned.
Other banned English words: beat, escort, homemade, hot, nubile, free and teen. Some others in English have different meanings: “pic,” short for picture, is banned because it means “bastard” in Turkish.
Also banned:
“Gay” and its Turkish pronunciation “gey,” “çıplak” (naked), “itiraf” (confession), “liseli” (high school student), “nefes” (breath) and [ironically] “yasak” (forbidden) are some of the other banned words.
Turkey has a history of blocking and censoring websites, including YouTube, MySpace and Google.
The behaviour of the Turkish elite, who decide what the people can and cannot see, serves to remind us that free speech is hard won and easily lost. Publish and be damned.
Spotter: Karen
via Anorak News » Turkey Bans 138 Words From The Internet: Teen Forbidden.
US-Dutch solar energy firm GiraSolar in talks with Turkish partners over plant expected to provide 100 megawatts of energy.
Photo by: Bloomberg
An American-Dutch solar energy firm, GiraSolar, is in talks with anonymous Turkish partners to build Europe’s biggest – and Turkey’s first – solar energy plant and mass produce solar panels there, the company announced recently.
The venture has subsequently elicited conflicting opinions from Israeli solar experts.
The proposed plant intends to provide an estimated 100 megawatts of energy through a group of “sub-plants” on a 2,000-square meter plot of land, at a location that GiraSolar would not disclose.
Although the company has installed solar panel systems on various individual buildings in Turkey since 2004, this will be its first venture there of such a huge capacity, according to Wieland Koornstra, CEO of GiraSolar.
Thus far, the largest working European solar plant is a 71- megawatt facility in Rovigo, Italy, according to Bloomberg. For GiraSolar, Koornstra explained, Turkey was the perfect spot to erect a huge plant, not merely because of its consistently strong sunshine.
“Everywhere in Europe there are restrictions on the size – like in Italy, anything over one megawatt will be very difficult in the future – and that’s really happening everywhere,” Koornstra told The Jerusalem Post. He noted, however, that there are fewer restrictions in Germany – but far less sun than in Mediterranean coastal nations.
“Countries for larger projects will be in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece,” he continued. “Turkey is a country that is virgin land – this hasn’t been done yet there. It will be the largest scale power project for the grid. Turkey is a country where if you have the right spot for your plant, it will be feasible without any incentive.”
Meanwhile, Koornstra also sees Turkey as his company’s way of branching out into the Middle East, adding that “Israel is interesting” to him, as well as Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Though perhaps not a game-changer in terms of large-scale nationwide energy needs, such a project will certainly benefit Turkey – a country that between 1999 and 2008 was increasing the rate of electricity requirements by a rate of 9.5 billion kilowatt hours per year.
According to Dr. David Faiman, chairman of the department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University’s Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sede Boqer, director of Israel’s National Solar Energy Center and chief scientist at ZenithSolar, Turkey will probably generate around 220 billion kilowatt hours in 2011.
“On this scale, a single 100 MW PV project – even though it would be the largest in Europe – would offset only two percent of the annual rise in Turkey’s electricity production,” Faiman said. “That is to say, Turkey would need to install about 50 such photovoltaic plants each year in order to enable her to cease the ever-increasing construction of conventional power plants.
By establishing a local photovoltaic industry, Faiman explained that the government would then be able to undertake further projects, and add more photovoltaic plants each year.
“We are in the preparation stages – it’s our absolute aim to realize this project,” Koornstra said. “It’s also an absolute must that the manufacturing takes place in Turkey, because the feed-in tariff is linked to manufacturing.”
Like Israel, Turkey has a government issued feed-in tariff – money that the country’s electric corporation gives back to those who contribute solar energy to the grid. But Koornstra said that the payback system isn’t quite as attractive as it could be.
He explained that investors will make a profit on their investments only after about eight to nine years. Yet by using solar panels and other equipment produced in Turkey – rather than importing supplies – the company will get a bit extra out of its investment, he added.
“When you produce the panels in Turkey, you get an extra bonus on your feed-in tariff,” Koornstra said. “Basically they have the smartest law in Europe when it comes to feedin tariffs.”
However, a second Israeli solar expert, Rafi Kirshenboim, of Chinese-owned ET-Solar, said he does not see the merits of initiating such a project in Turkey.
“I believe that in order to build such a big photovoltaic plant, the natural partner will be a big [company] with experience and financial capabilities, and not GiraSolar,” said Kirshenboim, manager of his company’s Israel branch. He said he favors installing solar panels in smaller quantities, rather than in one large field.
“The real issues with big fields are that they use a lot of land space, they need a long, new transportation line of electricity that generates another strong electromagnetic wave and electricity losses,” Kirshenboim said. “The ‘good’ things about the big plants are that they are cheaper to build – so that the cost of electricity produced is cheaper – but if we go for this argument, the cheapest thing to do is build an atomic plant, like in Japan.
“You should not replace one mistake with another mistake – we need to go for a green-energy solution that does not ruin nature, and we need to look at what will be the benefits to the next generation – not just the damage to our wallet.”
Yet Koornstra believes in Turkey’s ability not only to erect such a large plant, but also to produce a sufficient amount of the panels to both export to Europe and compete with an overwhelmingly Chinese dominated market.
“Manufacturing of solar panels is largely automated,” Koornstra said. “The advantage that China has is that manual work is very cheap there. Electricity is also relatively cheap, and land is too, but it’s the same thing in Turkey. But there is one major advantage of Turkey – it is one week away in terms of transports [to Europe], and China is six weeks away.”
Faiman expressed hope that Koorsntra’s strategy of producing and exporting panels would work out.
“This would be a refreshing economic development on the world stage, because it is not healthy for one country to have a world monopoly,” Faiman said. “True competition may have the effect of reducing prices sufficiently to enable PV to compete with the more polluting ways of generating electric power.”
Still, Koornstra acknowledged some disadvantages to Turkish produced panels. “The bigger problem that Turkey has is that there are virtually no technical products that say ‘Made in Turkey.’ A solar panel that says ‘Made in Turkey’ will have a hard time getting a foothold in Europe,” he added.
Kirshenboim disagreed with producing panels in Turkey, explaining that such a factory can only work there if the government gave special incentives for the local manufacturers – and would stand very little chance of survival in the European market.
“In a country without many photovoltaic installations, without local raw materials industry and resources – I find it hard to believe that a local manufacturer that works alone will be able to be successful,” Kirshenboim said, citing cost and investment risk as deterrents.
While Koornstra could not predict the exact cost of the total 100-megawatt project, he said that a 3-megawatt project currently costs about 250 million euros. One megawatt alone can provide enough energy to power about 300 households, he said, and Faiman agreed with this estimate.
GiraSolar is in negotiations with two different Turkish parties already heavily involved in the country’s energy sector, and is in the process of developing a financing plan, according to Koornstra – who predicts that the first spade will hit the ground in about two years. From there, each of the small “sub-plants” within the larger block will go up consecutively, so that the plant as a whole can produce more and more energy gradually.
“We are talking with partners that want to realize this, that are well-equipped to get the licenses done. The land is available, the technology is available, the financial negotiations are ongoing,” Koornstra said. “We are at full speed to realize this, and if there are no negative changes taking place in the Turkish renewable energy program, then it’s a go.”
Despite Faiman’s enthusiasm over the potential plant in Turkey, he did not advocate a similar project in Israel – particularly with respect to internally produced solar panels. Instead, Faiman said he supports Concentrator Photovoltaics – a method used by his company ZenithSolar – as a more efficient, and potentially exportable system, than regular photovoltaic panels.
“Today it is purely a question of the availability of cheap labor,” he said of the panels, stressing that neither the US or Israel could succeed in this arena – but perhaps India could stand a chance. “We certainly could not compete with Chinese prices by manufacturing photovoltaic panels at home.”
As the entire world is now struggling to decide if states’ efforts to develop nuclear energy should continue after what recently happened in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the March 11 twin earthquake and tsunami disasters, there is also an ongoing public debate in Turkey: People wonder if the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government is doing the right thing as it seems determined to go ahead with its ambitious nuclear energy program.
According to Rosatom officials, the planned nuclear power plant in Akkuyu and the one in Kalinin are very similar in terms of electricity production technology and safety systems.
According to Rosatom officials, the planned nuclear power plant in Akkuyu and the one in Kalinin are very similar in terms of electricity production technology and safety systems.
Russia’s Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation is concerned with the outcome of the ongoing nuclear energy debate in Turkey because it was awarded a $20 billion deal last year to construct a nuclear power plant in the southern province of Mersin’s Akkuyu district
Russia’s Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation is equally concerned with the outcome of this debate because it was awarded a $20 billion deal last year to construct a nuclear power plant in the southern Turkish province of Mersin’s Akkuyu district. A recent invitation extended to Turkish reporters to visit the Kalinin nuclear power plant that Rosatom officials say utilizes the same technology planned for the Akkuyu power plant is an effort to tame the growing distrust towards nuclear energy in Turkey.
Safest of all
Addressing reporters during that visit, Mihail Kanishev – the chief engineer at Kalinin – said the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be the safest of its kind, the Cihan news agency reported on Sunday. What he proposed for the planned nuclear power plant in southern Turkey is “a four-layer Matryoshka doll safety system” used in Kalinin. “In case of an accident, heat absorption, natural circulation and cooling automatically start. These safety systems do not require human intervention to start working,” he was quoted as saying by the agency. For him, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will pose a risk neither to the surrounding inhabitants nor the environment even in case of a magnitude 9 earthquake as happened in northeast Japan last month or even if a plane crashes into the yet-to-be constructed power plant. “The innermost doll is the reactor itself. What constitutes the second doll is the reinforced concrete surface of the reactor. The third doll is the safely cooling system. The water that circulates inside the reactor does not have any contact with the outside world, and neither does the water in the second cooling layer. Only the third cooling circuit uses water supplied externally. In that way, any possible radiation from an accident can only leak from the third layer. The outermost and fourth doll is a safety measure against any possibility of having the reactor badly damaged. Even if the nuclear fuel remains waterless and starts to melt down, the grid we placed at the bottom of the reactor catches this fuel. And because this grid is cooled down with a separate system, we make sure that no blast happens,” he explained.
Rosatom started building the Kalinin nuclear power plant, which is about 200 kilometers northwest of Moscow, in 1974. Its third reactors became operational in 2004, and a fourth reactor is currently under construction. According to Rosatom officials, the planned nuclear power plant in Akkuyu and the one in Kalinin are very similar in terms of electricity production technology and safety systems. The only major difference according to Kanishev, is that Kalinin has 1,000 MW reactors, but the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will have 1,200 MW ones.
Rosatom plans to start construction in Akkuyu in 2013 and have its four planned reactors operational by 2021. Once completed, it is expected to employ 20,000 people. Turkey is presently heavily dependent on foreign energy supplies but aspiring to become self-dependent by 2023, the centennial of the Republic of Turkey. To that end, the AK Party government is planning to have three nuclear plants operational by the 100th anniversary of the republic, while also intensifying oil and natural gas exploration efforts across the country. The growing environmentalist sentiment seems not to have impacted the stance of the government, which says it will never approve any project environmentally hazardous while pursuing the country’s macro interests. According to government officials, people’s environmentalist feelings are used by certain groups who are not happy with the country’s centennial aspirations.
No to Chernobyl, Yes to Akkuyu
As the latest sign of Turkey’s commitment to its nuclear energy program, which the government says is also environment-friendly, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız said on Monday that he supports protests organized against old-fashioned nuclear power plants that continue producing energy around the world; however, the planned nuclear power plant in Akkuyu should be supported because it poses no risk to the environment at all.
Noting that Greenpeace members often carrying banners reading “No to Chernobyl” during their demonstrations [in Turkey], Yıldız said the same banner should read “No to Chernobyl, Yes to Akkuyu.” “First generation nuclear power plants that are over 40-years old should be closed. But third generation power plants such as the one we plan to build in Akkuyu are necessary. I think Greenpeace will agree,” he said, speaking at a signing ceremony between the state-owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) and the Swiss energy company EGL Group on the transportation and marketing of oil and natural gas.
Public Parking in the most luxurious district of Istanbul with WÖHR Parksafe 580. With the New Years Eve Festival a new public parking garage in Nisantasi has been opened for the wealthy living and jet-set figures of Turkish residents.
Nisantasi is a place where you can easily see famous people walking on the street any time during a day. You can have a cup of coffee at the Armani Café or go shopping at the nearby Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hermes, Chanel or any other famous boutiques within walking distance.
During the last decade Istanbuls premier shopping street, the Abdi Ipeksi Street, developed into a place hosting luxury retail shopping venues. With a monthly lease price of about 3.500 US$ / m it is currently the most expensive street for retail stores in Turkey.
Hence it meant a lot to the city mayor to sustain this prestigious neighborhood and provide high class habitat to the residents and visitors.
To keep the streets free of cars and provide more space to live, the city municipality searched for an innovative and sophisticated solution, suitable to the attractive Nisantasi district.
With Wöhr Automatic Parking System Parksafe 580, only 450 m of the precious ground was required to host 276 car parking places on 15 levels above ground.
At the garage entrance the visitor gets his parking ticket, above the parking barrier the number of the transfer area is displayed and the visitor is directed towards to leave his car.
Entering the transfer area light barriers controlling the height, length and width of the car and whether living beings are still in the car. If each position is confirmed automatically the shuttle is lifting up the platform and stores the car in the next free rack.
The car is safely stored while the owner can enjoy a cup of coffee or shop at Nisantasi..
After the car owner activates the parking out requirement and pays the parking fee, he can rest at the VIP lounge and watch on a display how his car is moving towards the exit.
Of course valet is offered at Park Point, skilled and competent service is available at the entrance of the parking garage and park the cars in and out if required.
via High Teck Parking in an Art Nouveau building in Istanbul.
ANKARA – Turkey’s top procurement body has once again delayed a much expected multibillion-dollar decision planned for April 12 to select between U.S. and Italian companies to lead production of Turkey’s next-generation military utility helicopters.
The key reason is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ongoing visit to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. The members of the Defense Industry Executive Committee, the top procurement body, are Erdogan, Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul, Chief of the General Staff Gen. Isik Kosaner and procurement chief Murad Bayar.
One procurement official said the decision now is expected to be announced toward the end of next week.
The competition pits the U.S. Sikorsky Aircraft, offering its T-70, the Turkish version of its S-70 Black Hawk International, against Italy’s AgustaWestland, which is competing with its TUHP 149, the Turkish version of its newly developed A-149.
The contract is expected to be worth about $4 billion initially. This first batch will be for 109 utility helicopters, but with follow-on orders, more than 300 platforms are expected to be built, with a price tag of more than $10 billion, according to defense analysts.
The decision originally was expected at committee meetings on Dec. 15 and March 22.
via Turkey’s Copter Decision Delayed Again – Defense News.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – EBay Inc will buy most of the stake it does not already own in a Turkish auction website, in its latest move to strengthen its main marketplaces business.
EBay took a minority stake in Istanbul-based GittiGidiyor in 2007 and said on Tuesday that it would buy more shares to raise its ownership to 93 percent. The companies did not disclose the terms.
The move comes two weeks after eBay said it would buy e-commerce service provider GSI Commerce for $2 billion, a deal seen as an attempt to take on No. 1 Web retailer Amazon.com Inc.
“EBay definitely has the acquisition machine cranked up again — and it’s focused toward marketplaces,” said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.
While its PayPal payment system has been driving eBay’s growth for years, the company is also trying to lift its more familiar marketplaces unit. The unit, a high-margin but mature business that connects online buyers and sellers, accounted for 62.5 percent of eBay’s sales last year.
The president of the marketplaces unit left the company in September, but that has not prevented Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe from making deals while he looks for her replacement, Gillis said.
“He needs to get the marketplaces turned around in order to be seen as a successful CEO,” Gillis said.
EBay said that it did not expect the transaction to affect the 2011 profit outlook it gave last month and anticipated the deal would close in the second quarter, subject to regulatory approval.
The company, which generated about 54 percent of its 2010 revenue of $9.16 billion outside the United States, has made other overseas deals. In December, it bought Germany’s brands4friends for $200 million.
GittiGidiyor has 6.4 million registered users in Turkey and employs 150 people. At the end of 2010, eBay had 94.5 million registered users.
Shares of eBay were down 1.6 percent at $30.69 in morning Nasdaq trading.
(Reporting by Phil Wahba, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)
via EBay raises stake in Turkish site in latest deal | Reuters.
TURKEY has banned 138 words from Internet domain names. The Telecommunications Directorate has created problems for many sites. For example, sanaldestekunitesi.com (virtualsupportunit.com) contains the world “anal”, which is forbidden.
