Defense Minister Abiyev of Azerbaijan met with Turkish Chief of General Staff Basbug in Ankara.
Defense Minister Col. Gen. Safar Abiyev of Azerbaijan met with Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug in Ankara on Friday.
Abiyev, who is currently paying an official visit to Ankara, will be received by Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later in the day.
AA
Source: www.worldbulletin.net, 24 April 2009
Azerbaijan, Baku, April 23 Trend Capital
The Turkish petrochemical holding Petkim whose 51 percent of stakes belong to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) in alliance with Turcas will build a petrochemical plant in Iran which will produce methanol and polyethylene. Turcas Board of Directors Chairman Erdal Aksoy said, Petkim’s official Web site reported.
The Turkish Petkim company and the National Petrochemical Company of Iran signed a contract to construct the plant. A joint enterprise with 50/50 stakes will be formed with this purpose.
Capacity of methanol producing plant is 1.6 million tons per year and polyethylene – 300,000 tons.
Aksoy said the holding is interested in implementing projects in other countries. The negotiations are being held with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Forming the enterprise in Iran is explained with low cost of raw material (gas) in the Persian gukf countries and low cost of power.
Earlier, SOCAR in alliance with Turcas Petrol and Injaz Projects possesses 51 percent participation share in Petkim. Turkey currently imports 70-75% of the necessary chemical products, but developing Petkim, the investment alliance SOCAR/Turcas/Injaz will provide an opportunity to increase the import up to 30%.
Petkim Petrokimya Holding is specialized in the production of plastic packages, fabric, detergents and is the only producer of these goods in Turkey exporting the fourth part of the output.
SOCAR intends to by 2015 increase the volume of the incomes of this enterprise to $4 billion from $1.9 billion today. Now the production capacity of this holding is 3.2 million tons. By 2015 this index will grow to 6.3 million tons. Today the needs of Turkey for the petrochemical production equal $6.1 billion, and this demand will annually grow 11-12 percent. Today the production of Petkim covers nearly 25 percent of the market of Turkey.
As a result of the measures planned to be taken, the production of Petkim will cover 40 percent of the Turkish market. SOCAR invested approximately $2 billion in the development of petrochemical complex.
Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at capital@trend.az
Source: capital-en.trend.az, April 23 2009
Hugh Pope
After the morale-raising 6-7 April trip to Turkey by U.S. President Barack Obama, Turkey is back to facing the reality of its tough neighbourhood: last-minute stresses in its hopeful recent talks on normalisation with Armenia (see our 14 April 2009 report), isolation for Turkey at the 4-5 April NATO summit as it resisted the eventual choice of a new secretary general and now new challenges for the ongoing talks on a Cyprus settlement, a dispute which, left unsolved, remains Turkey’s biggest obstacle on the road to the EU.
In parliamentary elections on 19 April, Turkish Cypriots gave victory to the right-wing nationalist National Unity Party (UBP – Ulusal Birlik Partisi), handing it 44 per cent of the vote and 26 of the 50 seats. They voted out the ruling left-wing Republican Turkish Party (CTP – Cumhuriyetçi Türk Partisi), giving it 29 per cent of the vote and 15 parliamentary seats. After years in which Turkish media has all but ignored Cyprus, victory for the Turkish Cypriot opposition suddenly put the issue centre stage for commentators and politicians – some of whom used it to argue that it showed how the ruling AK Party’s “defeatist” policy of compromise with Greek Cypriots and the EU had failed.
In fact, the Turkish Cypriot results did not reflect new disapproval of the modest achievements of inter-communal talks in progress since September (see our 23 June 2008 report), but rather represented frustrations over domestic governance and the steep local economic downturn. UBP’s policy options are limited, too. It will have to trim its sails to the winds from Turkey, which finances much of the Turkish Cypriot administration, runs Turkish Cypriot security and has been supporting a compromise Cyprus settlement since 2004.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately warned the new Turkish Cypriot government not to upset the inter-communal peace talks. Turkish President Abdullah Gül repeated Ankara’s strong support for the firmly pro-settlement President Mehmet Ali Talat, who is responsible for negotiating on behalf of the Turkish Cypriots. The UBP has quickly promised to support the talks, has toned down its anti-European Union rhetoric and has softened its old policy of a two-state solution to one that has confederal elements.
Still, there remains a risk that UBP returns to its long-time role as the party of hardline nationalists including the retired former President Rauf Denktas, and that it voices demands for extreme self-determination that are anathema to the Greek Cypriot side. Such ideas are already being encouraged by the Turkish opposition, whose nationalists are urging Turkish Cypriots to forget the “false paradise” of compromise.
New pressure is clearly on Talat and his Greek Cypriot counterpart Demetris Christofias to show results sooner rather than later. Talat, the former leader of the CTP, faces re-election in April 2010. Christofias won a strong mandate for a settlement when he was elected to a five-year term in February 2008, but nationalist hardliners in his main coalition partner, DIKO, dominated elections for senior party posts in March. The new Turkish political interest in Cypriot events is partly the result of Turkish local elections on 29 March, in which Prime Minister Erdogan and his ruling AK Party saw their grip on power slip slightly.
Here again the main reason appears to be frustration with economic woes, as well as Erdogan’s legendary displays of impatience with his opponents and the government’s attempts to minimize the impact of the global crisis. Even if Turkey’s banks appear to have weathered the worst of the financial storms, the Turkish economy contracted sharply in the first quarter of 2009 for the first time after six years of uninterrupted economic growth. Exports fell by one third and unemployment surged to a record high. More than one quarter of Turkey’s youth is now out of work.
In the election, AK Party won 39 per cent of votes for provincial councils, versus 47 per cent in the parliamentary elections of 2007 and 42 per cent in the last local elections. In Turkey’s fractured political system, 39 per cent remains a high figure and rules out bringing the next parliamentary elections forward from 2012. But this is Erdogan’s first electoral setback of any kind. On election night, he admitted he was unsatisfied and would be drawing the necessary lessons.
Notably, AK Party lost strength in Western and coastal districts, progressive parts of Turkey that usually point to where Turkey’s future lies. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) scored 36 per cent in the country’s cultural and financial capital, Istanbul, and captured Antalya and other major tourism centers along the Turkish riviera. Some commentators believed that this was a reaction to a perceived threat to contemporary lifestyles by the conservative AK Party’s pro-Islamic tendencies. Overall, CHP came second with 23 per cent of the vote. The right-wing National Action Party (MHP) also experienced a surge in its vote to 16 per cent, scoring high among unemployed youth. The ultra-conservative Felicity Party scored 5.2 per cent with its specifically religious messages.
The Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society Party (DTP) won just 5.6 per cent of the national vote, but it displaced AK Party as the top vote puller in the mainly Kurdish southeast and dramatically beat AK Party in a high-profile battle for the main southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where it won 65 per cent of the vote, up from 43 per cent.
Turkey’s EU negotiator and AK Party minister Egemen Bagis said that the result was “just great” considering the financial crisis and the wear and tear of AK Party’s seven years in power, noting with some justification that the distribution of results proved that his party dominated the political centre and was the only one able to attract votes all over the country. He said that upcoming three years with no elections meant that “now is the time to do reforms.” He said this would have to be in consultation with the opposition CHP, and listed as priorities reform of the political parties law, the election law, and urgent legal preparations to allow two chapters of the EU negotiations to open in June. AK Party leaders suggest they will first work to make it harder to close down political parties, an area where Turkish democracy is particularly vulnerable.
Olli Rehn, EU commissioner for englargement, did not mince his words in a 31 March speech to the joint EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. “The main ‘fuel’ of the process remains reforms in Turkey,” he said. Citing threats to freedom of expression, he specifically criticized the government for its $500 million tax charge in February on the Dogan media group. He sought more respect for women’s rights and Christian religious institutions. He warned was that “it is now time that Turkey takes the necessary steps, including changes in the Constitution, to align Turkey’s legislation with the guidelines of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and European best practices. This is essential to respect the Copenhagen criteria.” Finally, he called for Turkey to put all its weight and support to the UN-led process on Cyprus, since a settlement there had the most direct impact on clearing obstacles on Turkey’s path to the EU.
Speaking to the Turkish parliament, President Barack Obama said his views on the Armenian killings “are on the record and I have not changed my views.”
(RFE/RL) — The U.S. president is confronted with a tough choice.
Does he choose the first April 24 of his term in office to fulfill his campaign promise to recognize the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide?
Or does he put off his promised recognition for fear of angering Turkey and jeopardizing the improving relations between Yerevan and Baku?
The White House has given no hint of how it will act. But act it must. U.S. presidents for years have marked April 24 with a statement issued to the press and Obama must observe that tradition.
So far, no U.S. president has marked April 24 by declaring he recognizes the slaughter of Armenians as genocide. U.S. presidents have used the occasion of their annual message to Armenians to describe the events as mass killings, a calamity, or a tragedy — but not genocide.
Only Ronald Reagan came very close to recognition. He included Armenians in his statement on April 22, 1981, observing “Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust.”
“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it — and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples — the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,” Reagan said.
Mounting Pressure
The pressure on Obama to still more clearly single out the Armenians as victims of genocide are high.
The president’s home state, Hawaii, on April 6 declared April 24th as a “Day of Remembrance in Recognition of and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” making it the 42nd of the 50 U.S. states to take such a step.
And on March 17, a group of U.S. congressmen sponsored a resolution for Washington to officially declare the killings as genocide, as Canada and France have done.
But if pressure is high, it does not only come from one direction.
People lay flowers at the genocide memorial in Yerevan.
Turkey has long made it clear that it views what happened to Armenians in the World War I era as not the business of third parties.
Ankara sent a strong reminder of its position this week, saying on April 22 it had recalled its ambassador to Canada after Ottawa reaffirmed its position that Armenians were victims of genocide.
Obama is well aware he walks a tightrope.
His administration is trying to give impetus to the still delicate rapprochement drive between Armenia and Turkey. And Ankara has made it clear that any genocide statements in Washington would set back that process.
Sensitive Talks
Washington hopes Turkey will reestablish diplomatic relations with Yerevan that Ankara broke off in 1993 following Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States also wants Turkey — a NATO partner — to reopen its border with Armenia, something that would restore Armenia’s shortest land trade route to Europe.
Those steps are seen as helpful for stabilizing the South Caucasus, an area which has become a major worry for Washington following Russia’s August war with Georgia. U.S. officials see Moscow as trying to reassert its influence in the volatile but energy-important region at the West’s expense.
U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood underlined Washington’s hopes for the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as he welcomed on April 23 an announcement by Turkey and Armenia that they intend to normalize relations.
“What’s important here is the fact that Turkey and Armenia have basically decided to normalize their relationship. To us, that is a huge step,” Wood said.
“They’re basically saying that we’ve got to move on from the past; we need to reconcile. While there are still going to be differences of opinion, it’s clear that these two governments have taken the very difficult step to move that relationship forward.”
Ankara and Yerevan announced jointly on April 22 that they “have agreed on a comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations in a mutually satisfactory manner.” They did not provide details.
Moving Forward
In his visit to Turkey earlier this month, Obama appeared to signal that he might not see this anniversary as the time for a genocide statement if Turkey and Ankara were making progress toward rapprochement.
Speaking to the Turkish parliament on April 6, he said his views “are on the record and I have not changed my views.”
Urging Ankara and Yerevan to work together, he said, “what I want to do is not focus on my views right now but focus on the views of the Turkish and the Armenian people.”
He added, “If they can move forward and deal with a difficult and tragic history, then I think the entire world should encourage them.”
Turkey and Armenia remain far apart on the question of what happened to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, despite the fact April 24 now commemorates events that began almost a century ago.
Armenia, and genocide scholars, say 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks from 1915-23 in a campaign aimed at eliminating the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.
Armenians have made April 24 “Genocide Remembrance Day” in recognition of the same date in 1915 when Armenian leaders were arrested and later executed.
Ankara says that up to 600,000 Armenians died during World War I and during deportations out of eastern Anatolia. But it says the deaths were in the context of an Armenian uprising as Armenians sided with invading Russian troops at the time.
https://www.rferl.org/a/Will_Obama_Recognize_Armenian_Genocide/1615459.html
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 5:51PM BST 21 Apr 2009
According to the Post Office, which changes £1 in every £3 that holidaymakers take overseas, the demand for Turkish Lira increased by 21 per cent last year and is on course to grow again this year.
Last year it overtook the Canadian Dollar to become the fourth most popular currency and if its current popularity continues it could overtake the Australian dollar to reach the third spot by the end of this year.
The popularity of the currency is the latest evidence to suggest destinations in the Eurozone, such as Spain and Italy, have fallen out of favour with holidaymakers because of the collapse in the value of the pound.
A year ago £1 would have bought €1.27. Though it has improved greatly over the last month from a low of €1.03, it only buys €1.13 this week.
In contrast the Lira has remained stable at about £1 to 2.40 Turkish Lira over the course of the last 12 months.
OAG, a research company which monitors passenger numbers around the world, indicated that the number of passengers leaving the UK in the first three months of this year fell by 10.5 per cent, with 5.28 million fewer seats filled than a year ago.
Most of this slump has been driven by a sharp fall in trips to Europe. The Civil Aviation Authority said traffic between Heathrow and the Eurozone had fallen by 8.7 per cent, while traffic to other destinations was up by 1.8 per cent.
Turkey has emerged as one of the winners, offering holidaymakers a range of cheap hotel rooms, combined with the promise of low priced meals, drink and trips.
Sarah Munro, head of travel at the Post Office, said: “We have seen unprecedented demand for lira over the past year. Turkey is still cheaper than anywhere in the eurozone.
“The strength of the euro compared with the weakness of the Turkish lira against sterling is obviously having an impact and 2009 sales to date suggest another growth year for Turkey. That is why we are extending our over the counter service for Turkish lira from 1,400 to 4,000 Post Office branches.”
Previously customers needed to order Lira in advance if they wanted to change money at the great majority of Post Offices.
The Lira was the fourth most popular currency last year, behind the euro, dollar and Australian dollar.
So far this year, demand has increased by 9 per cent, compared with last year. The Lira is expected to overtake the Australian dollar to become the third most popular currency.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, England, 21 Apr 2009
[2]
THE Post Office has more than doubled the number of branches where Turkish lira can be bought over the counter.
The move comes as or holiday bookings to this summer’s most popular foreign destination continues to grow.
After seeing double-digit growth in demand for lira over the past two months compared with a year ago, 12 Post Office branches in Lanarkshire are part of 4000 Post Office bureau de change branches in the UK offering instant currency on the spot.
Until mid-May, customers buying Turkish lira will benefit from a special deal offering an exclusive exchange rate daily without imposing any minimum spend conditions.
The move comes after the Post Office reported a 21% increase in sales of Turkish lira in 2008.
The Post Office warns people planning travel to Turkey to watch the exchange rate movements carefully as the lira has proved more volatile than most currencies.
Source: Glasgow Evening Times, Scotland, 24/04/09
Mardan Palace Hotel: Russian billionaire Telman Ismailov is thumbing his nose at the very idea of a recession happening anywhere in the world. He’s so confident in the oodles of money that must be floating around somewhere, he’s pushing forward with the opening of his hotel, located on the Turkish Riviera. This $1.4 billion property (built with TI’s own money, natch) will have the honor of being the most expensive hotel in Europe (take that Hotel Martinez!). The Mardan Palace was inspired by the Ottoman empire and modeled after the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul.
Though the hotel has 560 rooms, only 2 are considered “royal suites.” To be worthy of such royalty, which includes your own private golden (!) swimming pool, and a 24-hour butler, it’ll cost you a cool $18,000 a night. If you’d rather buy a car or house instead of staying a week or so in the royal suites, the regular rooms only run about $300 a night. Beyond the rooms, there’s a two-acre spa, a “vitamin bar,” and a Champagne bar (now we’re talking). In addition, there’s a large botanical garden, several huge aquariums, two dozen restaurants/lounges, and a 900-person outdoor amphitheatre. There’s also a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course for those who want to play a few rounds. The hotel is planning to open in June.
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