Despite EU-inspired reforms, corruption continues in Turkey. Why is this so, and what can be done about it?
Click here for article. Excerpts:
Mustafa Özyürek, a former field auditor and the general accountant and Istanbul deputy for the CHP, thinks that unless the auditing system is reformed, corruption cannot be prevented…. [A]udits in Turkey are performed by […]
It has been alleged that the beating of a shopkeeper in Keciören, a suburb of Ankara, for selling alcohol after 11 pm has another side: AKP discrimination against Alevis. The shopkeeper is an Alevi living in an AKP-run neighborhood where Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan also resides. Other Alevis have complained about discrimination and threats from […]
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Istanbul’s Fatih municipality has announced that it will cut electricity to the Sulukule neighborhood for the next eight days while parts of the neighborhood are demolished. Sulukule is Istanbul’s Roma (gypsy) quarter dating back to Byzantine times. The municipality’s attempts to raze the neighborhood and displace its residents to an area far […]
Gen. Ilker Basbug took over as chief of general staff from Gen. Yasar Büyükanit in a handover ceremony at the General Staff headquarters in Ankara. In his speech he warned about the threats Turkey faces due to its strategic geographical location. (click for article)
Basbug also stated that the military has the right to have its […]
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Ramadan, the month of dawn to dusk fasting, begins on September 1. Mustafa Cinar, 91, is competing with more than 50 others in a drumming competition held by the Kayseri Municipality. The winner will drum through the streets to wake up fasters in time for suhoor (pre-dawn meal) during Ramadan.
Cinar said that […]
The Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) sparked an outcry earlier this week by recommending to civil servants’ unions that TurkStat’s food poverty line of YTL 255 ($214) a month be adopted instead of the higher figure proposed by the unions during their negotiations on salary hikes and benefits…
TurkStat declared the food poverty line — the minimum […]
Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin has said nearly 5,000 people submitted complaints to judicial bodies over maltreatment or torture at the hands of police and members of the gendarmerie from 2006-7….
He said 4,719 individuals in Turkey — 471 of them children — filed complaints with judicial bodies saying that they suffered “torture,” “heavy torture” and […]
The Turkish Patent Institute (TPE) has not approved applications for beverage brand name “Cola Kurda” because it found resemblances to the emblem of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the product’s name and colors. The most recent patent application was made by Ramazan Aslan, who named the beverage “Cola Kurda” and used […]
Documents seized in a police raid on the house of an executive of a TV station as part of the ongoing Ergenekon operation have revealed that a secret and illicit military intelligence unit known as JITEM was engaged in several illegal acts, including drug and human smuggling and arms trade with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ […]
Excerpts from an article by Ihsan Dagi (click here for full text):
The war in the Caucasus is the number-one challenge. The conflict involves two indispensable partners for Turkey. Georgia is the only land corridor linking Turkey with the Caspian region and Central Asia, the center of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Maintaining cooperation with Georgia is […]