Although PoliGazette frequently criticizes Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we have to give credit where credit is due when it comes to Erdogan’s attempt to bring Arab countries and Israel together. Erdogan is now meeting with Syria’s President Bashir Assad. (more…)

Not long after Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the AK Parti should not be closed down, despite its anti-secular agenda, I published a post arguing that Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his fellow AKP leaders should be careful in the coming months and years; the AKP will be closed down, I wrote, if they make more ‘mistakes’ / act too often in breach with the constitution.

Thus, I thought, the AKP would be wise to follow a different course.

It now seems that the AKP understands the above on the one hand, but is emboldened enough to carry on (potentially) controversial reforms nonetheless. (more…)

Kemal wrote about the result of the closure case against Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) yesterday. As he pointed out, Turkey’s highest court ruled that, although some laws pushed through by the AK Parti were in breach with the secularism as established in the country’s constitution, there was not reason enough to close the party down now. (more…)

According to Turkish government sources, Ergenekon is a conspiracy formed, among others, various disparate journalists, retired military officials and opposition party leaders. To date over 80 have been detained and brought in for questioning.

It’s a rather strange conspiracy in which those ideologically attached to the left of center, such as Labor Party leader Doğu Perinçek and leading secular liberal journalists, have attached themselves to those that are normally considered to be right of center, such as the military and capitalist businessmen— specifically, retired military officers and the head of Ankara’s Chamber of Commerce. Not only is it being alleged that this motley collection of individuals with presumably differing ideologies attached themselves to each other, but that they have found something so intoxicatingly in common so as to inextricably unite and form a criminal terrorist enterprise whose aim is to promote large scale violence to justify a military coup. (more…)

The Turkish newspaper Sabah reports that “the constitutional law amendment lifting the ban on headscarves has once again been brought to the agenda of the constitutional court. CHP and DSP deputies, as well as independent deputy Kamer Genç requested that the constitutional law amendments be annulled.” (more…)