The jailing of two retired Turkish generals over the weekend has heightened tensions between the government in Ankara and its critics. The generals are among 21 people whom police have detained over the past week, including a senior industrialist and a prominent journalist, on suspicion of plotting a coup against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Interestingly, the interrogations occurred as the chief prosecutor appeared before the constitutional court to make his case that the AKP be shut down for violating the state's official secularism.

Located at the strategic crossroads of Europe, Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, Turkey still maintains a vast conscript army of over one million men, the second-largest in NATO and the largest in Europe. Major reforms to the military are underway which will reduce its overall size by 20-30 percent while increasing its professionalism, training and technological capabilities.

In the parliamentary elections of July 22, 2007, AKP (Justice and Development Party) won 47% of the votes, obtaining a very strong mandate to take issue with Turkey’s outstanding problems. In the predominantly Kurdish east and southeast region, the AKP doubled its vote from 26% to 53%. The AKP seemed to have persuaded the Kurds thanks to the party’s earlier moves to solve the Kurdish problem by granting more rights and freedoms as well as jobs and economic prosperity. Having started the negotiation process with the EU and obtaining such a strong mandate from the Kurdish voters, why did the AKP turn its back to the Kurdish issue? This can be explained with reference to three groups of factors working at the domestic, the EU and international levels.

The geopolitical importance of Asia has been manifestly growing with the new conjuncture that started to be built after September 11. The US operation to Afghanistan was the first indicator of a great competition between the only global actor, the USA ; the heir of a former superpower, Russia ; and a new but a very strong state in Asian politics, China . Asia will continue to be the area of rivalry between major powers in the foreseeable future considering the existing conjuncture. Alliances against common threats may continue to be set up but it is a fact that each of these countries will continue its struggle to remain or become a global actor in world politics by trying to shape the world around it.

2007 was a dramatic year for Turkish politics and society, even by the standards of a country used to political drama. However, few people would have expected 2008 to be even more volatile, and potentially catastrophic, for Turkish democracy. The fact that the Turkish Constitutional Court agreed unanimously on 31 March this year to hear an appeal by the Chief Prosecutor to close down the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and to ban 70 of its members from political life is a serious blow to the credibility of Turkish democracy.

In recent years, the Kurdistan Autonomous Region has developed many of the trappings of a fullyfledged state. It currently remains unclear whether it will be able to extend its de jure as well as de facto control over the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. It is also unclear whether the recent cooperation between the KDP and the PUK is likely to be long-lasting. However, regardless of its form, there is likely to continue to be some form of Kurdish political entity in northern Iraq with many of the features, if not the name, of a state.

The period covered by this report is from 1 October 2006 to early October 2007. Progress is measured on the basis of decisions taken, legislation adopted and measures implemented. As a rule, legislation or measures which are under preparation or await Parliamentary approval have not been taken into account. This approach ensures equal treatment across all reports and permits an objective assessment. The report is based on information gathered and analysed by the Commission. In addition, many sources have been used, including contributions from the government of Turkey, the Member States, European Parliament reports, and information from various international and non-governmental organisations. The Commission draws detailed conclusions regarding Turkey in its separate communication on enlargement, based on the technical analysis contained in this report.

The July 2007 Turkish parliamentary elections were a major victory for the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), entrenching it in power. By the same token, the historic center-right parties virtually disappeared, the left stagnated, and the number of nationalist MHP and independent Kurdish members increased. This article lays out the reasons both for the AKP’s success as well as the performance of other forces.

Turkish-American relations currently face two significant challenges. One has to do with the Turkish inclination to enter northern Iraq in order to deal with Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters operating there. The other is connected with an upcoming U.S. House of Representatives vote on a resolution to recognize as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Both challenges touch on very sensitive issues for the Turks, who are convinced that the U.S. is insufficiently attentive to their needs and demands.

Following the extended presidential election process that began on April 24th, with the offi cial announcement of Abdullah Gul as the AKP’s candidate, and ended on August 28th, with the election of Gul as president, Turkey has entered a new phase in its political life. These developments attracted much attention from the European continent, Muslim world and the other side of the Atlantic. Why was the world watching so closely and what were they expecting to see?

L’élection, le 28 août, d’Abdullah Gül, numéro 2 du Parti pour la Justice et le Développement (AKP), à la présidence de la République de Turquie, est un évènement. Non pas parce qu’il aura fallu aux parlementaires trois tours de scrutin pour désigner le onzième successeur de Mustapha Kemal «Atatürk», non pas, non plus, parce que ce résultat survient après quatre mois de vifs débats et contestations, mais bien parce que le nouveau chef de l’Etat est issu du courant islamiste. Pour la Turquie, c’est une rupture.

On June 19, the Turkish Supreme Elections Board, an independent body that monitors the elections process, finalized the candidate lists for the July 22 early parliamentary polls. The outcome at the polls should be easier to estimate now that the electorate can judge the parties as well as their candidates. Will the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) win? How will the other major parties fare? And what issues will dominate, among them the Constitutional Court's decision yesterday to overturn President Ahmet Sezer's veto of the AKP's proposal for direct presidential elections?

In Turkey’s recent elections, almost half the voters opted for continuity and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won an impressive parliamentary majority (340 out of 550 seats in parliament) that will enable it to govern without coalition partners.

The effort of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to elect one of its own to be president of the Republic provoked a crisis. The nominee, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, has roots in Turkey’s Islamist movement and his wife wears a head scarf, which some secularists consider a symbol of both Islamism and backwardness. Moreover, because AKP already controls the prime ministry and parliament, some argue that the balance of political power would be disturbed if the party also assumed the presidency.

Turkey differs from the Arab states studied in the CEPS–FRIDE Political Islam project in not only in having a European Union membership prospect, but also in the fact that a broadly Islamist-oriented party has been in office since 2002. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) still enjoys the primary support of pro-Islamic constituencies in Turkish society and its orientation towards the EU has not changed since its assumption of power. An overwhelming majority in the party still sees the EU as the primary anchor of Turkish democracy and modernisation despite the inferred limitations of cooperation on issues relating to the reform of Turkish secularism. Yet the growing mistrust towards the EU as a result of perceived discrimination and EU double standards is beginning to cloud positive views within the party. Decreasing levels of support for EU membership in Turkish society and the fact that explicitly Euro-sceptic positions are now coming from both the left and the right of the political spectrum suggest that the sustainability of the pro-European discourse within the party could be difficult to maintain in the longer run.

Since the start of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq in 2003, one of the primary goals of the United States has been to prevent Turkey from intervening militarily in northern Iraq. For the United States, maintaining the support of northern Iraq's Kurdish population has been critical throughout its intervention since it has faced instability in the central Sunni and southern Shi'a regions. While Turkey shares the U.S. objective of creating a united, stable Iraq, Ankara differs from Washington over the level of autonomy that should be granted to the Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R.G.) in northern Iraq.

Turkey is often said to offer a counterexample to every cliché regarding Muslimmajority countries and the Middle East. For starters, the country has been westernizing since the days of the Ottoman Empire. Second, Turkey has been staunchly secular since the interwar-era reforms initiated by its founding president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Third, Turkey has been a multiparty democracy since 1950. And last but not least, Turkey has maintained a pro-Western political orientation since the end of the World War II. Yet today, Turkey bows to the ultimate Middle East cliché: the rise of a strong religion-based movement, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government. The AKP, which came to power in 2002, has since undermined Turkey’s traditional pro-Western foreign policy orientation.

How should the current impasse between the European Union and Turkey be interpreted, and how should Turkey react? Commissioner Olli Rehn says there is no train crash, but rather a slowing down because of works on the line. The Commission manifestly seeks to avoid a crisis, while being obliged to react to the non-implementation of the Ankara Protocol. Actually one can read the measures taken – namely to freeze (or not to open) 8 out of the 35 chapters of accession negotiations – in even lower key than Olli Rehn. The so-called ‘negotiations’ are not really negotiations at all, rather a process for monitoring Turkey’s unilateral adoption of the EU acquis.

Two major events placed Turkey under special scrutiny this week. The first was Pope Benedict's visit to Ankara only a couple of months after the pontiff's controversial Regensburg speech, which enraged Muslim communities worldwide. The second was the European Commission's decision to "freeze" negotiations on Turkey's accession to the European Union. The move was justified by the European Commission on the basis of Ankara's refusal to open its ports and airports to Cyprus vessels and airliners.

On June 29, 2006, the U.S. Department of State's International Information Programs in Washington D.C., the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, and the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center jointly held an international videoconference seminar focusing on the state of Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy, especially Turkey-Israel and U.S.-Turkey relations. Brief biographies of the participants can be found at the end of the article. This seminar is part of the GLORIA Center's Experts Forum series.

Iran’s nuclear program presents one more issue on which Washington sees Middle East developments in a different light than does the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Turkey.