The Embassy of Portugal in Ankara is pleased to announce that, starting from 15th March 2011, the Consulate General of Hungary in Istanbul will also be competent to accept the visa applications from Turkish citizens that wish to travel to Portugal, under an agreement recently concluded between the Embassies of Portugal and Hungary in Ankara. This agreement is aimed at assisting those applicants who live in Istanbul and the surrounding areas.
The documents necessary to be enclosed to the visa application will remain the same as those listed on the website of the Portuguese Embassy in Ankara. These should be translated in one of the working language (s) used by the Hungarian Consulate General in Istanbul (e.g. English or Turkish). Costs of translation have to be supported by the applicants.
For nationalities for which consultation is required, the consultation will be executed by the representing state (Hungary).
The visa fee will be charged by the Hungarian authorities
The Consular Section of the Portuguese Embassy in Ankara continues to accept visa applications in the normal way.
The Embassy of Portugal in Ankara is pleased to announce that, with effect from 30th March 2011, holders of Turkish Special ( green ) and Service ( grey ) Passports will no longer require visas for entry to Portugal, under the Agreement between the Portuguese Republic and the Republic of Turkey on the Suppression of Visas for Holders of Service and Special Passports, signed on 14 July 2010.
ISTANBUL – Hurriyet Daily News’State of Affairs’ has opened at Istanbul’s Cezayir Restaurant Gallery. Some 91 photographs were chosen for the exhibition from hundreds taken by the Portuguese collective, [kameraphoto], in various places around the world during one week in July 2009. Curator Pauliana Pimentel Valente, meanwhile, says good photography flows from ‘seeing’ a picture well.
The future site of a Christian chapel, designed by architect Zakarya Midanoğlu in Istanbul's Kuyumcukent, a huge complex for Istanbul's jewelers, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
The secret to good photography is not to just look, but to see, according to Pauliana Pimentel Valente, a Portuguese photographer and artist currently curating the “State of Affairs” exhibition at Cezayir Restaurant Gallery in Istanbul.
“For a photographer there is really a difference between looking and seeing. When you are beginning to be a photographer, you can only look. I think a good photographer, what makes a good photographer, is that one starts to see,” Valente told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review last week.
“A photographer, when he starts, is looking in a window but when he looks at a mirror, he looks at himself, it’s very difficult. I am still discovering what I am, what I want to see, what I want to show that’s inside me. This is what I am searching for, what I really seek,” she said.
Ninety-one photographs were chosen for “State of Affairs” from among the hundreds taken by members of the Portuguese collective [kameraphoto] in various places around the world during one week in July 2009. Valente and two others of the 13 photographers involved in the project, Nelson d’Aires and Valter Vinagre, came to Istanbul for the installation and the exhibition’s Nov. 18 opening.
“For me and the other photographers we must be aware of what is happening around and capture the moment of what we see… A photographer is someone who likes to discover new ways of dealing with different kinds of people. The photographer must not just look, but see. In a photographer you can have both, or only one. This is my philosophy and maybe it would not be for another,” Valente said.
“When you see, you look at yourself. You look into a mirror. I want to find my own language and this makes the difference between a great photographer and a normal photographer. A normal photographer just looks. You look. But you see people’s faces. I was advised to look for myself in my pictures and in doing so to discover my own language, my own feelings,” she said.
While Valente said every photo did not have to tell a story, she noted that there were a number of examples from her own work in which the photos have told a story.
“I travel a lot and I like to know different countries and go deep inside. For instance, if I go to a new country for me, I can use Istanbul, for this was a new country for me. Shall I take a picture of the seaside or shall I go by boat to the other side? I take a picture of the sea and the mosque and, yes, just that. It tells a story but if you don’t know the story, you can just see the picture as a depiction of a mosque,” Valente said.
“My kinds of pictures are with people because for me photography is with people. I like to tell stories about people. But I’m also trying to find my own story,” she said.
No initial plans to become photographer
Valente said she did not initially plan to become a professional photographer but only wanted to travel and learn about different cultures. As a result, she said she went to Tibet when she was 18 and began taking photographs before gradually heading out on other trips.
“For four or five years I did this and then I met a famous photographer, a Magnum photographer who came to Lisbon to visit. So I decided to do a workshop with him and I showed him the pictures that I’d shown to nobody. I showed the pictures from India, Nepal, Tibet, all my trips and he was very impressed with my pictures. And also, on my trips I wanted to write notes,” Valente said.
“‘You should show these to a magazine, write the story, because you are really good’” she recalled the photographer saying.
“So I got up the courage and as at the time I was coming from Iran, I had pictures and wrote the story. It was immediately published,” Valente said.
She said her family took her decision to become a photographer badly, given that photography is a far more unstable profession compared to geology, her subject in school. “I had to decide because you can’t do both in a good way.”
Shortly after taking a photo workshop at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon she was invited to work at a contemporary art gallery. At about the same time [kameraphoto] called her to join them.
Photographing in a collective helps work
“I like being in a collective because being a photographer is too lonely. And I need to be with people to share knowledge, to know other photographers’ work and to be stronger because when you are in a community you are much stronger. Nowadays it is so difficult to be a photographer, and you can share your knowledge, your ideas,” she said.
“Normally we have one important meeting per year when we meet and go to a countryside home and we spend three days discussing ideas, problems because in a collective you do face problems. It is much bigger. We shout, we cry, we discuss, not stopping from day until night. And in the end we agree,” Valente said.
Being in the collective has not stopped Valente from accepting other assignments. Last year, she spent five weeks retracing a trip taken by 22-year-old Armenian businessman and entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian through Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia in 1891.
Her photos from Gulbenkian’s trip will be used in a book soon to be published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
New horizons
Following her time in Istanbul, Valente said she was planning a book on transsexual prostitutes in Portugal.
After learning that people in the transsexual community were wary of a journalist doing work on them, she said she secured the help of a transsexual friend who introduced her to others as a photographer and serious artist who wanted to do an art book on them.
“So I found five men who were receptive and since them I’ve gone to their houses with my camera. They are great. I am enjoying it so much. They are very special persons. They suffer but they are strong and eloquent and very sweet and rich,” she said.
This year the photographers at [kameraphoto] are engaged in a project called the “Republic Diary” because of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Portuguese republic. They take whatever pictures they want every month, meet to discuss them and then put them online for people to vote on.
“In the end we will make a book and an exhibition about Portugal. So it’s very good because there aren’t very many good, interesting pictures about Portugal. It’s an old country and not many photographers want to do that. You have to be special to do that. So every month we are doing this and I think in the end it will be a great work,” she said.
“A State of Affairs” will continue at the Cezayir Restaurant Gallery through Dec. 24.
Turkey and Portugal have — pending ratification on both sides — agreed a partial deal on visa-free travel for their citizens travelling between the countries. The deal, which was reached during an official visit to Lisbon by Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoğlu, only covers citizens with special passports and only allows 90 days travel in every six month period.
Despite granting visa free travel to Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro, calls from the Turkish government, calls from business leaders and even a ruling by the European Court of Justice stating that Turkish business people operating in the EU should be able to travel visa free to Europe under the Ankara Agreement additional protocol signed in 1973, the EU has refused to budge on a visa-free deal with Turkey.
The most likely reason for this is the fact that Turkey is still technically at war with two EU members. But there is also the possibility that religion is coming into it; despite being firmly secular and democratic, Turkey is still a Muslim country, it could be that the EU fears they would be making it easier for terrorists to enter the EU.
Visa free travel with the EU would be very beneficial to Turkish businesses hoping to expand EU exports/imports. It would also likely boost tourism and the property market. However, until Turkey and Cyprus can find some common ground (some say the latter are being more firm with Turkey because they think Turkey will eventually bow in order to get in with the EU) there is little hope of visa free deal, and especially little hope of EU accession.
Source: Ezinemark
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Intelligence sources indicate that the biggest arms suppliers of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are allies of Turkey that are also members of NATO.Recently drafted General Staff reports say that many mines planted by the PKK were obtained from Italy and Spain.
Turkey is ready to start a new round of diplomatic initiatives to stop countries that supply the PKK with arms. Turkey has undertaken similar initiatives in previous years.
Over the past few months, the PKK has relied on arms from Mediterranean countries, intelligence reports indicate. The roadside bomb that exploded in Halkalı on Tuesday was of Portuguese origin, intelligence sources said, adding this country to the list of countries that supply arms to the terrorist organization. That attack was carried out by the PKK’s urban offshoot, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK).
The most crucial question is how the PKK is able to bring these arms supplies it obtains from Mediterranean countries to northern Iraq. US journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in 2007 that this was done via Israel.
The General Staff has seized PKK arms and ammunition originating from 31 different countries. However, NATO-member countries have been the biggest suppliers. Most of the arms and ammunition seized are of Russian, Italian, Spanish, German and Chinese origin.
In 2007 Turkey questioned the countries where the arms used by the PKK — particularly the heavy artillery the terrorist group uses — are mostly manufactured on how the PKK could have obtained these weapons. These diplomatic attempts must have produced some sort of a result, as all PKK weaponry seized in the past three years have had their serial numbers erased. The military has noticed that the PKK now generally erases serial numbers, especially on explosives. However, most of the time the origins of the ammunition can still be traced. Turkey is concentrating on finding the sources of not the lighter arms but of heavy artillery such as heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, mines and hand grenades.
According to data from the General Staff, the Kalashnikovs used by PKK terrorists are from Russia and China. The rocket launchers, mines, hand grenades and heavy machine guns so far seized from the organization appear to have been manufactured in Italy, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic and Hungary.
The organization uses a third country to bring the weapons to northern Iraq and then into Turkey. What disturbs Turkey most is that the mines that have killed more than 100 Turks recently were all obtained from Italy.
Another issue is that the PKK, which had been rather sloppy in using remote-controlled mines until 2008, has become more of an expert at such attacks. Terrorism experts say the PKK has been given special training, with many suspecting Mossad agents. In 2009, Interior Minister Beşir Atalay claimed that some Mossad agents had gone to northern Iraq and given training on remote-controlled explosives.
According to documents from the General Staff, 72 percent of the Kalashnikovs used by the PKK are from Russia, 15 percent from China and the rest from Hungary and Bulgaria.
In 2007, it was reported that more than 170,000 weapons donated by the US to the Iraqi army had ended up in the PKK’s hands. The US Defense Department started an investigation after Turkey’s discovery of this fact.
Turkey is making a point to not publicly announce how it suspects these weapons are being brought into northern Iraq.Pulitzer-winning journalist Hersh, in an interview with the Takvim daily earlier this month, said Israel helped the PKK base in the Kandil Mountains bring in arms and supplies on helicopters.
He said that Israel gives extensive support to the PKK and the related Iranian organization Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), especially in terms of arms supplies. He also said that Mossad operatives are active in the area, noting that Jewish Kurds who left northern Iraq 50 years ago returned to the region after the 2003 US occupation. He argued that most of these people are cooperating with the PKK and the purpose of these developments will become clear to all in the near future.
Although this interview has attracted the attention of Turkish security units, there is a visible effort to avoid making any official statements at this point. Turkey recently made a decision to start diplomatically lobbying countries that supply arms to the PKK. If these countries fail to cut the support they provide for the PKK, then they will be warned openly in the international arena.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden talks to the press in Warsaw.
October 21, 2009
By Brian Whitmore
(RFE/RL) — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says Warsaw is ready to take part in a new, reconfigured U.S. missile-defense system in Europe.
Tusk made his comments after meeting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is in Warsaw as he kicks off a tour of Eastern European capitals, part of an effort to reassure allies in the region that Washington’s “reset” in relations with Russia won’t come at their expense.
“Poland sees this concept, this project, this new configuration of missile defense, as very interesting and necessary. And we are ready to take part in it to the extent that is needed,” Tusk said at a joint press conference with Biden.
Officials in many former communist Eastern European countries are concerned their security interests will be sacrificed as U.S. President Barack Obama seeks to improve relations with Russia, which sank to a post-Cold War low under the George W. Bush administration.
Polish and Czech officials are especially nervous about Obama’s decision in September to reconfigure U.S. missile-defense plans in Europe.
Obama scrapped a Bush administration plan to place interceptor missiles in Poland and an advanced radar in the Czech Republic in favor of a more mobile system that will initially rely on sea-based interceptors. Moscow fiercely opposed the earlier plan.
U.S. officials say the new plan is designed to counter a current threat from short- and intermediate-range Iranian missiles. The White House and Pentagon say Obama’s proposal is superior to the Bush plan, which was designed to defend against a long-range missile threat from Iran that does not yet exist.
“Simply put, our missile plan is better security for NATO and is better security for Poland,” Biden said.
Obama’s missile shield plan would initially deploy sea-based SM-3 interceptor missiles in 2011. An updated version would later be positioned at sea and land — possibly in Poland and the Czech Republic — in 2015.
The White House says a more advanced system would be built in 2018 and 2020, with the capability to intercept long-range Iranian missiles, should that need arise.
No ‘Reset’ For U.S. Allies
But for many Eastern Europeans, the missile-defense plan was less about Iran and more about their own fears of Moscow.
Czech and Polish officials in particular believed hosting components of a missile-defense system provided symbolic security against a threat from Russia, and saw Obama’s move as a dangerous capitulation to Moscow.
Frantisek Sulc, a reporter for the Czech weekly “Tyden” and the co-author of a book on missile defense, says despite being NATO members and beneficiaries of the alliance’s Article 5 collective security guarantee, many Poles and Czechs still fear Moscow.
“It is psychological. The Poles and the Czechs want to have bigger assurances because of the past — because of the history with the Soviet Union, because of the invasions, because of the sphere of influence. There is still a fear of Russia,” Sulc says.
Sulc says that those in favor of deploying the radar in the Czech Republic country “usually mentioned that if the United States troops would be stationed here then we would be more secure. The physical presence, for a portion of the population of the Czech Republic, is really important.”
In an interview before his trip with the Polish daily “Rzeczpospolita,” Biden said the United States would not sign any agreements with Moscow that harm the security of its allies in Central and Eastern Europe. The United States will decide “nothing about you without you,” Biden said.
Biden also defended the Russia reset in general, saying, “improving the mood between the United States and Russia will contribute to improving security in Europe and will bring benefits to our allies.”
Biden is expected to propose that Poland host SM-3 interceptors to target short- and intermediate-range Iranian missiles. Obama’s plan calls for initially deploying sea-based interceptors before later adding the land-based SM-3 missiles.
Warsaw also wants Washington to deploy a Patriot interceptor missile battery to Poland to help upgrade the country’s air defenses. Under the Bush plan, Warsaw had secured a commitment for the temporary deployment of Patriot missiles several times a year.
Biden’s trip marks the second time in recent months the White House has dispatched the vice president to calm jittery U.S. allies over Washington’s policy of improving ties with Moscow. Biden visited Georgia and Ukraine in July.
Italy has praised Turkey’s presence in the European Gendarmerie Force (EUROGENDFOR/EGF), an initiative comprising six European Union member states: France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain, while applauding Turkey’s role in strengthening European security.
In a written statement released on Tuesday, the Italian Embassy in Ankara expressed pleasure over the fact that Turkey would for the first time participate in an executive committee meeting of the EGF which was scheduled to be held in Paris yesterday.
“On the occasion of the previously mentioned meeting, Turkey’s entrance into the EGF with the title of observer will be registered. Italy has always pointed out the importance of having Turkey included in the EGF. The aforementioned development is once more proving the importance of the role played by Turkey in strengthening the European security system,” the statement said.
Last month, France, which had thus far resisted Turkey’s participation in the EGF, finally gave up its objection, with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner recently sending a letter to his then-Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan, about the issue.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden talks to the press in Warsaw.