OECD

Özgecan Aslan was a 20-year-old university student. She was killed in a private bus after an attempted rape in Tarsus, between Mersin and Adana on the southern coast of Turkey. The perpetrators of the monstrous crime disfigured and burned her body. They have all been arrested. Yet the slogan ?Have you heard Özgecan?s cry?? is still echoing across massive protests all over the country.

The chances of a compromise solution for Athens are slim at the Eurogroup meeting on Monday.

Non-toxic points of compromise

1. Taxation

In 2012, the infant mortality rate in Turkey (for children under 1 year of age) was 0.12 percent. Between 2002 and 2012, child labor accounted for 2.6 percent of the labor force (UNICEF). In 2012, there were 893,000 children aged 6 to 17 in the labor force, and 16.6 percent of all children aged between 15 and 17 were employed.

The Finance Ministry is working on a draft to allow Twitter to open an ?electronic office? in Turkey, which will allow the microblogging giant to pay taxes in Turkey and ease tensions with Ankara.

The Greek stock exchange closed down 4.02 percent on Wednesday ahead of an emergency meeting of eurozone finance ministers during which the country will unveil controversial proposals to overhaul its bailout.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Feb. 11 announced plans to work with the OECD to draft a programme of reforms to boost growth in the debt-laden country, which is hoping to renegotiate its bailout commitments.
      

Greece and the OECD agreed on Wednesday to work together on reforms to the Greek economy, but Athens insisted it would not let outsiders decide what policies it should adopt.

“The new government has committed to implement reforms needed by Greece” stated Alexis Tsipras during his joint speech with Angel Gurria of the OECD. “Anything that previous governments did not dare to do, we can, because we have made commitments and we have no strings attached.

In the PISA test, which is research on education conducted in 65 countries comparing their achievements, Turkey was at the 44th place recently on secondary education quality. 

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.