European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic has thanked Turkey for being “a friend of Croatia during the country’s hardest times.” Milanovic made his remarks during a meeting with Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek in Zagreb on Tuesday. He added that Croatia would support Turkey’s EU bid after the country became the EU’s newest member on July 1.
via Milanovic promises support to Turkey – General News – Croatian Times Online News – English Newspaper.
Moscow and Cyprus are still negotiating terms of a potential bailout.
Most will hail the crisis’s receding if a deal is reached.
But for Turkey, seeing Cyprus and Russia growing even closer together could revive age-old hostilities between Moscow and Istanbul.
Depending on how far back you want to go, the love between the two was first lost upon Mehmed II’s sacking of Constantinople — capital of Christian Orthodoxy — in 1453.
Then came the Crimean war in the 1850s, which pitted Russia against the Ottoman Empire (as well as France and Britain) over the rights of Christians in the Middle East.
And during the Cold War, Turkey became a staunch ally of the U.S.
Relations have improved more recently, especially under President Medvedev.
Google MapsBut the conflict that engulfed Cyprus in the ’70s — which saw Turkey invade the island to prevent it from coming under Orthodox Greece’s influence — has never actually ended.
To this day, a small enclave calls itself “The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” and is recognized by Turkey (though they’re the only ones who do so). As recently as 2001, Turkey was threatening to annex the north if Cyprus joined the EU.
We already know Russians do a lot of business on the island, so any more intimate relations between the two countries — like a naval base — shouldn’t really come as a surprise.
But that kind of move will not likely sit well in Istabul.
via Cyprus Crisis And Russia Turkey Tensions – Business Insider.
By Christina Flora on March 19, 2013 In Culture, Education, News, Turkey
Seventy two fifth-graders from the Mandoulides elementary school, Thessaloniki will travel to Turkey, where along with 17 students from the Zografeion Lyceum will take part in the musical-theatrical performance, A Magical City, based on a fairy-tale by Helen Priovolos
The performance will be held in the Zografeio Lyceum in Istanbul on March 21. It is a love story set in a beautiful port of Pontus, named Farmakea, where a young man, Kourkoumas, falls in love with a beautiful girl named Kanella.
The Zografeion Lyceum is one of the remaining open Greek schools in Istanbul, in the Beyoğlu district and very close to Taksim Square, which is considered to be the heart of the city. The school, like all minority schools in Turkey, is a secular school. In the years that followed its opening, it developed into a particularly active school and has always had more than 250 pupils.
via Greek Students’ Magical City Tour in Istanbul | Greek Reporter Europe.
It was in April 1987that Turkey knocked on the EU’s door and asked to be let in. Twenty-five years later, Turkey is still lingering on the threshold.
One key factor barring the way to Turkey’s full membership occurred many years before it applied.
The population of Cyprus has historically consisted of about 75 per cent Greek and 25 per cent Turkish origin. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Greek Cypriots began to press for Enosis − union with Greece. Matters came to a head in 1974 when the military junta then controlling Greece staged a coup in Cyprus and deposed the president. Five days later, Turkey invaded and seized the northern portion of the island. The Turkish invasion ended in the partition of Cyprus along a UN-monitored Green Line. In 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared independence. Turkey is the only country in the world which recognises it.
Greece itself was admitted to the EU as far back as 1981; Cyprus (the portion, that is, not occupied by Turkey) became a full member in 2004. So one major stumbling block to Turkey’s accession is the fact that the country is at daggers drawn with two established EU members.
But that is only one stumbling block among several. Also to be considered is the direction that Turkey has been taking on the international scene since its current government came to power.
From the time Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister in 2003, Turkey’s old secularist, pro-Western stance began to change, and support for Iran and the Islamist terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah began to dominate Turkey’s approach to foreign affairs.
Erdogan, a charismatic politician, acquired his pro-Islamist sympathies while still at university. In 1998, when mayor of Istanbul, they earned him a conviction for inciting religious hatred, and he went to jail for several months. All the same, in 2002 his Islamist AKP party won a landslide victory in the elections, and Erdogan became prime minister.
Rooted as he is in hard-line Islamism, Erdogan’s unqualified condemnation of Israel’s incursion into Gaza in November 2008 came as no great surprise. Nor did his refusal to accept the 2011 UN report into the Mavi Marmara affair, which concluded that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip was legal, and raised “serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH” – a Turkish Islamist organisation supported by the government.
A report on Israel-Turkey relations prepared by the Centre for Political Research concluded that: “for Erdogan, Israel-bashing is a way of bolstering his status with Islamic and Middle Eastern states, which Turkey would like to lead.”
An Islamist axis led by Turkey? Only a few years ago the idea would scarcely have been feasible. Today the mere possibility represents one further obstacle on Turkey’s path towards full membership of the EU. For there is rooted opposition among a tranche of EU members to the very idea of clutching an Islamist viper to their Judeo-Christian bosom.
Chief among them is Germany. “Accepting Turkey to the EU is out of the question,” said Angela Merkel in 2009, and there is no reason to believe that she has changed her mind. Her chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, said on his website: “I ask myself how a country that discriminates against Christian churches could be a member of the EU.” The most that German opinion-leaders would like to offer Turkey is “privileged partnership” in the EU.
France under President Nicolas Sakozy was equally rooted in its opposition to Turkey’s accession. With the change of president to socialist François Hollande, Turkey hoped, in the words of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, that “a new course in Turkish-EU relations will gain momentum”. But Hollande, during his presidential election campaign, said that while France has long accepted the principle of Turkish accession to the EU, major conditions have not been met and may not happen for several years.
Austria – perhaps recalling that Muslim forces of the Ottoman empire twice stood at the very gates of Vienna, beseiging the city − have proved strong opponents to Turkey’s entry to the EU. The USA and the UK, on the other hand, with shorter memories, apparently discount the threat that Islamism poses to the West and remain strong supporters of Turkey’s bid.
But is Turkey as committed to joining the EU as it once was? After all, Turkey’s economy is booming, while the EU is in dire financial straits. Moreover, Kristina Karasu, writing in Der Speigel, points out that following the AKP’s overwhelming re-election in June 2011, Turkish desire for reforms has stalled.
“Even as Prime Minister Erdogan likes to position his country in the Arab world as a role model for Muslim democracy,” she writes, “thousands of Kurds, students and more than 100 journalists are sitting in jail in Turkey based on what are sometimes absurd charges.”
For the Turkish bid to be successful, EU member states must unanimously agree. In December 2011, a poll carried out across Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK, revealed that 71 percent of those surveyed were opposed to the EU admitting Turkey as a full member.
A hesitant bridegroom and a bashful bride. The prospect of an early marriage is not bright.
Unemployed pilots in Greece have begun seeking jobs in Turkey due to the ongoing financial crisis, according to Turkish mass media.
Many Greek citizens choose Antalya to work in various fields, especially in tourism. More than 10 pilots have asked for jobs in Antalya. The number of applications from EU countries for work permits at the Foreign Division of the Antalya Police Department has increased, including 35 from Greece applying for jobs in tourism and aviation.
Many Turkish newspapers, such as Milliyet’s front page, Hurriyet, Cumhuriyet and Aksam have been covering the subject.
A few weeks ago, a retired rear admiral tried to cause problems to the relatively few Greek pilots who have started working for Turkey’s national air carrier, Turkish Airlines (THY), accusing them of being agents. The rear admiral in question is Turker Erturk, who resigned in 2011 in protest of the High Military Council’s decision not to promote him. His name was on the list of suspects for the Sledgehammer case.
As the daily Today’s Zaman reports, THY officials rejected Erturk’s claims, noting that there are currently 2,378 pilots working for THY, 48 percent of whom have a military background. They also stated that there are 295 foreign pilots working for the company, 31 of whom are from Greece.
via Jobless Greek Pilots Head for Turkey | Greece.GreekReporter.com Latest News from Greece.
The Netherlands hit back at Turkey Friday over a bid to return a boy adopted by Dutch lesbians to his Turkish mother, with the row threatening to overshadow a visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan next week.
“I find it presumptuous of a foreign power, whoever it might be, to have such a viewpoint, based on the views or religion of the adoptive parents,” Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher told journalists after a cabinet meeting.
Dutch media reported Friday that the lesbian parents of the nine-year-old boy known as “Yunus” have gone into hiding after attempts by Turkey to have him reunited with his biological mother.
Turkey has embarked on a campaign to retrieve children of Turkish immigrant families living in Europe who are fostered by foreigners, and instead place them in homes where their cultural identity can be preserved.
Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government fears that children placed in Christian homes will forget their roots, and also disapproves of placements with gay couples.
Yunus, who is a Dutch citizen, was adopted by the Hague-based couple when he was a baby, but his biological mother told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that she wanted him back.
“I’m sad because my child is now with a family that has a totally different culture that does not relate to ours,” the unidentified mother said.
“How would you feel if your child lived with lesbians?” she said.
Ayhan Ustun, who chairs the Turkish parliament’s Human Rights Research Commission, confirmed to the NOS it had taken up the case. He added that Turkey had every justification to get involved in adoption cases in Western countries.
“The people we are talking about are our citizens and our race. It would be wrong of a country not to speak about its citizens,” he said.
Asscher said Dutch authorities adhered to strict adoption criteria, saying the child’s best interests were always being taken into account.
“Selection is not done based on race or religion. It doesn’t fit the Netherlands and the values we have,” he said.
“It is absolutely improper to allege that the youngster was being mistreated,” he added.
He said Dutch Premier Mark Rutte would discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart Erdogan, due in the Netherlands on Thursday for a one-day official visit.
“I am convinced the Turkish authorities will be completely put at ease after the talks have ended,” he said.
Diplomatic ties between the Netherlands and Turkey stretch back more than 400 years, and there are around 393,000 Dutch citizens of Turkish descent in the Netherlands.
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