Yavuz Baydar
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Monthly Archives: March 2013
Multi-frontal race: EU and the Kurds
The Kurdish peace process is a huge socio-political challenge and a race against time for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, and its relations with the trouble-stricken EU are marked by frustration. Turkey’s staunchly reformist justice minister, Sadullah … Continue reading
Israeli apology and Turkey: At last, back to regional logic
It is not just a relief for President Barack Obama and good news for the US Congress, but a major development that means an open path back to basics, which will be a major game-changer for the region. This … Continue reading
Turkey’s Kurdish spring: historic day full of hope, doubts
On Thursday, as the spring festival Nevruz was celebrated in Diyarbakır, its historic significance was far beyond the typical joy of jumping over fires. For the Kurds of Turkey, it promises to go down in history as a … Continue reading
Milliyet daily a lame duck, as Turkey’s media crisis deepens
The crisis that enveloped the Milliyet daily, an old flagship among the center newspapers in Turkey, took a very sharp turn on Monday — an event that implicates even more suffocation of the already badly constrained media. It reached … Continue reading
My Guardian piece: Mass-hypnosis of Turkey is over
Since the start of this year, the Justice and Development party (AKP) has emerged from what looked like an impasse over Turkey’s three-decade-long Kurdish conflict. The pace of change has been intense. But slow-motion progress in the background has often been … Continue reading
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Uludere: Cover-up
Whichever vantage point one looks from, the draft report on Uludere incident borders on a fiasco. After a work that lasted what feels like forever (almost a year and a half) voting process, public presentation and all conclusions by the … Continue reading
U.S. Middle East non-policy: Nonsensical stay-away
It is not for nothing that President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel and Jordan is described with concern from Beirut to London as nothing more than political tourism. “Even those well-disposed towards Obama say he’ll be … Continue reading
Between the island, mountains and the capital
The release of eight Turkish public officials who had been held hostage for 19 months by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) came not only as a relief for their families but also is the most concrete step so far in … Continue reading
Mind-reading and realism
How to navigate between wishful thinking and over-the-top pessimism when observing the peace process? This is a tough challenge for all of those who, given the lack of sufficient transparency and convincing modalities, will have to make sense of a … Continue reading
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If Iraq is being pulled in …
While the US and the rest of the West remain in a frustrated search mode for a solution on how to deal with the Syrian nightmare, the conflict has now revealed one of its more worrisome aspects. In a well-coordinated … Continue reading
