News archive of February 2015

Minority rights in Serbia key to EU integration

The advancement of the position of national minorities is one of the key points in Serbia's European integration process.

A Roma family celebrates the patron saint Archangel in one of Belgrade's unauthorised settlements for the minority group. [Nikola Barbutov/SETimes]

Turkey has taken a new step in its struggle against the flow of foreign fighters heading to Syria via its soil, establishing ?risk desks? at airports, border gates and ports in order to prevent potential foreign fighters from passing into conflict-driven Syria.

After 2003, while the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won successive elections, raising its voter share from 30 percent to the brink of 50 percent, it was considered by many that the number of voters lining-up behind the AKP was associated with various support programs and the coal and food aid it was distributing to the poor.
 

Could it be said milder by anyone? Skillfully, Hürriyet Daily News Editor-in-Chief Murat Yetkin put it in his weekend editorial: Ahmet Davuto?lu, the last prime minister of the first Turkish Republic?

From 2010 to July 2014, there were 149 publication and broadcast bans in Turkey. As of January 2015, this number exceeded 155. In four years, there have been 155 bans. 

Turkey is now the hell of media bans. 

Not the full 155, but several selected examples will come to mind. 

Draconian new security laws that will grant law enforcement officers the discretion to detain citizens without court orders are taking Turkey backward in terms of freedoms, according to Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (T?HV) President ?ebnem Korur Fincanc?.

Governor Erdem Ba?ç? did indeed save the best for last during his briefing on the Central Bank?s first Inflation Report of the year on Jan. 28. At the Q&A session, he said the monetary policy committee (MPC) would cut interest rates at an emergency meeting on Feb. 4 if annual inflation fell more than one percentage point in January.

It has been a week since last Sunday's electoral victory of the leftist Syriza in Greece. Yet the international media, including Turkey, are still trying to assess and analyze the policies and strategies of the new government. Greece's economic problems are naturally at the center of everybody's concern. 

Please accept my apologies because of the over-simplification in the title; I should have written the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples? Democratic Party (HDP) instead of ?Kurds,? but it would be too long.

Because not all Kurds in Turkey are voting for the HDP and not only Kurds are voting for it either.

Ottoman heroism is a regular fixture in Turkish cinema, rising from its ashes every couple of decades or so. And what better time to come back to life than when Turkey?s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is unabashedly advocating neo-Ottomanism for a ?new Turkey?? The recent release ?Fatih?in Fedaisi Kara Murat?