Renewed talks w PKK after end of hunger strike

As good an ending to the recent hunger strike by hundreds of Kurdish prisoners in Turkey as one could have hoped for. Renewed talks.

"International academic live talk show"?

Check out Crosstalks - a spanking new live and interactive "academic talk show". It is a joint project between Stockholm University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH):

Crosstalks is a high quality and new form of international academic live talk show. Two of Sweden’s leading universities – KTH and Stockholm University – are working together to highlight cutting-edge content from the academic, business and cultural life. The website allows people from all over the world to comment and interact with each other based on content and program participants. It is always possible to start an interesting discussion online and the content is always available.

The premiere tomorrow features three topics: "How to save capitalism", "The battle for entrepreneurs", and "How to save the world." (I got the answer to all three but tune in to find out for yourselves.)

This has nothing to do with Turkey but you could change that. At the website you can suggest new topics and speakers. Go ahead!

Erdoğan proposes a Lira-zone

From the Atlantic Sentinel:

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged the European Union on Tuesday to grant his nation membership by 2023 and suggested that it could set up a currency union of its own instead of joining the euro.

The talk of a currency union is surely more of a dig against an economically weakened EU than a serious proposal. Talking tough to the Union plays well in Turkey now, and a deadline is probably popular in a country that has been waiting for membership since 1959.

I suspect that this is domestic politics more than anything else. With local and Presidential elections coming up in 2014, expect more of it.

Pamuk on Europe

Lovely short piece in the Guardian by Orhan Pamuk, reflecting on Turkey and Europe.

In it, he reminisces nostalgically about the time when people in Turkey and elsewhere were interested in the Turkish EU bid. Nowadays however, he concludes,

as Europe struggles with the euro crisis, and EU expansion has slowed down, very few of us still bother to think and talk about these issues. And unfortunately, the positive interest surrounding Turkey's possible future membership has also waned. This is partly because freedom of thought remains regrettably underdeveloped in Turkey. But the biggest reason is undoubtedly the large influx of Muslim migrants from north Africa and Asia into Europe that, in the eyes of many Europeans, has cast a dark shadow of doubt and fear over the idea of a predominantly Muslim country joining the union. 

It is clear that this fear is leading Europe to put up walls at its borders, and to gradually turn away from the world. As the slogan of liberté, égalité, fraternité is slowly forgotten, Europe will sadly turn into an increasingly conservative place dominated by religious and ethnic identities.

Is a Syrian-Turkish war likely?

So we have cross-border shelling on the Turkey-Syrian border, and now (just in) a second round of retaliatory shelling by Turkish forces. Among other things, the incident shows the inherent risks of a Syrian civil war in terms of the potential for a spreading of the conflict.

We could conceivably see a "hotter" Turkey-Syrian conflict erupting, but also the regionalization of such a conflict, with Iran backing the Syrian regime and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar ganging up against Assad. And with the Iranian regime under severe internal stress over deflation, a foreign policy distraction might come in handy. Turkey, in turn, is of course a Nato member and Russia and China have come down in support of Assad against outside interference.

But I hope and think that the Director of (the liberal Turkish think tank) TESEV's Foreign Policy Programme, Sabiha Gündogar, is right:

No matter what people are saying in the press, Turkey has not arrived at the point of discussing military action against Syria and officials are working to avoid us from ever getting to that point. (Quoted in Europe Online Magazine.)

And the Syrian regime is throwing water on the fire. The BBC:

Syria said it was looking into the origin of the cross-border shelling that hit Akcakale. 

Information Minister Omran Zoabi added: "Syria offers its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and to our friends the Turkish people."

In other words, my hunch is that the current incident is not likely to escalate further. However, history - the Syrian downing aircraft and attack on a refugee camp on Turkish soil - shows that these tensions are lasting. And the continued Turkish support for the Free Syrian Army and likely Syrian support for the PKK, along with the continued stream of refugees from Syria into Turkey (many of whom one must assume return to Syria to fight the regime that forced them to flee) suggests that there will be plenty more opportunities to test the restraints of the leadership of the two regimes in the weeks and months to come.

Heading for the Pan-European Conference on EU Politics

I'm currently at Arlanda Airport on my way to Tampere, a small city in central/southern Finland. I will be attending the Sixth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics organized by the European Consortium of Political Research.

I will be chairing a panel on Turkey-EU relations with papers that look at whatever happened to "normative power Europe" - or the normative influence that an attractive and dynamic EU used to have on applicant states such as Turkey. Helene Sjursen will be our discussant.

My own paper for the panel builds on the the research that I did for my book, and goes on to pontificate about the possible effects of the current Eurozone crisis for Turkey's membership bid. The panel will be the first research output from the Swedish Turkey Network that I am currently coordinating, since all the panelists are members of the network and the project got started thanks to it.

Turks to European Union: No, Thanks | WSJ blog

The German/Turkish think tank Tavak (the Turkish European Foundation for Education and Scientific Studies) on Tuesday published the results of a poll on attitudes in Turkey toward EU membership. The poll was conducted in June. I knew that the numbers would be low, but I was surprised by how low.

According to the poll, 17% of Turks now support membership in the EU! That is down from 34% last year, which was already extremely low. And it is down from some 70% back before the negotiations begun.

Turks to European Union: No, Thanks - Emerging Europe Real Time - WSJ

English language 'originated in Turkey' | BBC News

OK, so it's not the Sun Language Theory but still!

Here's the abstract from Science:

There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.

BBC News - English language 'originated in Turkey'

Turkish leaders appeal for unity after deadly car bomb | Reuters

It's been a busy summer with little time to post. I am currently on a brief trip to Istanbul and just came back from an interesting meeting at TESEV, the prominent Turkish think tank. Impressed by the range and urgency of the issues they cover.

Had a lovely lunch at a rooftop restaurant in Karaköy that we stumbled upon more or less by accident: Karaköyum. Definitely recommended, great view & good food.

And, just to give you more than gossip, here's a news update: Reuters reports on a car bomb in the Southern/Southeastern city of Gaziantep.

ISTANBUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Turkey's leaders called for unity on Wednesday following a car bomb attack which heightened fears that Kurdish militants are exploiting chaos in neighbouring Syria and stepping up their decades-old insurgency.

Turkish leaders appeal for unity after deadly car bomb | Reuters

EurActiv on Cyprus-EU-Turkey relations

Hello readers. I am back from vacation and my first post is recommended reading. Here are links to two interesting interviews over at EurActiv:

EU-Turkey relations are as bad as they that can be at the moment, largely because of the Cyprus EU presidency. But they should not get any worse because the two sides are dependent on each other, Ayla Gürel of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo tells EurActiv Czech Republic.

Statements by Turkish leaders who say their country will boycott the Cyprus EU presidency are “insulting and provocative” to Cyprus and the EU as a whole, says Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulis.

And here's, for your benefit, the view that I enjoyed over the summer. Add the smell of lavender and you get the idea (now back in rainy Sweden...):