This week:
Foreign Affairs
- The United States needs to tell Turkey to change course
- Turkey’s Wrong Turn
- ‘Washington has no interest in using Gülen against AKP,’ head of American-Turkish Council says
- France seeks to put Turkish ties back on track
- Turkish foreign visitor arrivals up 9.84 percent in 2013
Domestic Politics
- Turkish PM Erdoğan slams top business group head for probe warnings
- TÜSİAD warns gov’t pressure on firms using tax fines will scare investors
- Turkish government moves to freeze disputed judicial bill
Energy/Economy
- Turkey Stems Emerging-Markets Slide
- Eurasia: Turkey ‘Now Not an Emerging Market’
- Clash or compromise near on Iraqi-Kurdish-Turkish oil dispute
Foreign Affairs
The United States needs to tell Turkey to change course
Whatever his achievements over the past decade, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is destroying his country’s parlous democracy. That is a profound problem for Turks and Turkey’s Western allies. Staying silent, out of fear that speaking out would harm some short-term interests, risks Turkey’s longer-term stability.
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Washington Post, 23 January 2014, The United States needs to tell Turkey to change course
Turkey’s Wrong Turn
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was in Brussels last week seeking to repair relations with Europe, but the first place to look for a solution is within himself for the political disaster he has created at home. Once hailed as the leader of a model Muslim democracy, he is transforming it into an authoritarian state that poses dangers not just for Turkey but for its allies in NATO.
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The New York Times, 27 January 2014, Turkey’s Wrong Turn
‘Washington has no interest in using Gülen against AKP,’ head of American-Turkish Council says
The United States has no desire to use Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Muslim scholar who lives in self-imposed exile in America, as a tool against Ankara, said James Holmes,who is currently the president of the American-Turkish Council.
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Hurriyet Daily News, 27 January 2014, ‘Washington has no interest in using Gülen against AKP,’ head of American-Turkish Council says
France seeks to put Turkish ties back on track
French President François Hollande is set to embark on a landmark visit to Turkey, becoming the first Gallic head of state to make a formal trip to the country in 22 years for a visit designed to repair the nations’ frayed ties.
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Hurriyet Daily News, 25 January 2014, France seeks to put Turkish ties back on track
Turkish foreign visitor arrivals up 9.84 percent in 2013
The number of foreign visitors to Turkey rose 9.84 percent from a year earlier to 34.91 million in 2013, Tourism Minister Omer Celik said on 24 January.
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Reuters, 24 January 2014, Turkish foreign visitor arrivals up 9.84 percent in 2013
Domestic Politics
Turkish PM Erdoğan slams top business group head for probe warnings
Turkey’s top business group is the latest entity to be declared a “traitor” for its warnings on judicial interference by an increasingly irate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is sparing no effort to hit out at his perceived enemies at home and abroad.
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Hurriyet Daily News, 24 January 2014, Turkish PM Erdoğan slams top business group head for probe warnings
TÜSİAD warns gov’t pressure on firms using tax fines will scare investors
In the strongest warning yet to the government from a business group, the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD) president has said that foreign investment will not be made in a country where there is no respect for the rule of law, where legal codes conflict with European Union rules, public procurement laws have been amended dozens of times and companies are pressured through tax fines.
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Cihan News Agency, 24 January 2014, TÜSİAD warns gov’t pressure on firms using tax fines will scare investors
Turkish government moves to freeze disputed judicial bill
The government will freeze some articles in a controversial bill reshaping the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Jan. 24, shortly after a government official mulled that the draft could be “suspended.”
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Hurriyet Daily News, 24 January 2014, Turkish government moves to freeze disputed judicial bill
Economy/Energy
Turkey Stems Emerging-Markets Slide
Turkey’s central bank said it would hold an extraordinary interest rate-setting meeting late Tuesday, jolting the lira sharply higher after yet another record-breaking slide and bringing a pause to selloffs in other struggling markets.
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Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2014, Turkey Stems Emerging-Markets Slide
Eurasia: Turkey ‘Now Not an Emerging Market’
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr. Bremmer says in this video that the country has now become an uncertain environment for investors, and that the country’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, needs to go.
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Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2014, Eurasia: Turkey ‘Now Not an Emerging Market’
Clash or compromise near on Iraqi-Kurdish-Turkish oil dispute
A headlong collision across Middle East fault lines is drawing close as Turkey, Iraq and ethnic Kurds who run their own region in between wrangle over oil exports.
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Reuters, 24 January 2014. Clash or compromise near on Iraqi-Kurdish-Turkish oil dispute
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