HyeOctane

Last week the EU partially suspended Ankara’s accession talks over the Muslim country’s refusal to open its ports and airports to traffic from EU-member Cyprus, a country it does not recognize

But it was agreed that talks on policy areas not covered by the freeze should go ahead.
“We hope that the chapters which should be opened are opened in a short time. We expect some chapters to be opened speedily during the Finnish presidency,” Gul told a news conference. [Read more]

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said all 25 leaders “support the decision unanimously” to slow down talks with Turkey over its refusal to honor a pact to open its ports and airports to EU member Cyprus.

The leaders reiterated that Turkey and other EU hopefuls must comply with EU membership criteria — signaling that two years after taking in 10 new, mostly eastern European members, the path to the European Union will become considerably tougher. [Read more]

Although Iran surely intends this as an affront to Israel and Jewish people everywhere — my family and I fled Czechoslovakia in 1939, leaving my grandparents and many relatives behind to die in Theresienstad and Auschwitz — the real victims of this minor latter-day outrage are the Iranian people and rational discourse everywhere. [Read more]

At a summit this week, European leaders look likely to partially suspend membership talks with Turkey because of its refusal to trade with or recognize Cyprus. But with so many other issues to deal with, Turks are buckling down to a long, hard slog. [Read more]

Atop a pine-covered hill on this island in the Sea of Marmara, Metropolitan Apostolos, a gray-haired Greek Orthodox bishop, tends the empty, echoing halls of a seminary shuttered for 35 years by government order, dreaming of the day it will reopen to replenish the dwindling ranks of the clergy in Turkey.

An hour’s ferry ride away, Fatma Saglam, an observant Muslim, unwraps her headscarf every morning and walks bareheaded into her bustling Istanbul university, reluctantly choosing education over piety because the Turkish state policy forbids wearing the traditional religious headcovering on campus. [Read more]

Turkey passed the diplomatic ball back to Brussels Thursday with a fresh proposal to overcome a deadlock with the European Union over Cyprus.

In the latest twist in the complex diplomatic traffic holding Turkey’s EU bid hostage to an opening of ports to Greek Cyprus, Turkey is offering to open one port and one airport to traffic from Greek Cyprus for a period of one year. [Read more]

Haytayan is a survivor of the first genocide of the 20th century — the extermination by Turks of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians — which was the granddaddy, if you will, of all modern genocides, cited sometimes by historians as direct inspiration for Adolf Hitler and indirectly for Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, and the murderers of Rwanda and Darfur. This is the inescapable reality that informs the music and activism of System of a Down, a Los Angeles band whose four Armenian American members are all grandchildren of genocide survivors. Haytayan’s moving accounts of the destruction visited on his family and Tankian’s tender interactions with his frail grandfather lend a hopeful poignancy to the film, helping balance both the images of human annihilation and the band’s hard-edged vibe.

The film’s title has a double meaning: “Screamers” refers both to the band’s propulsive musical style and, as used by Harvard professor Samantha Power, who is interviewed in the film, to people who force the world to acknowledge atrocities that it would often rather ignore. [Read more]

Germany and France agreed Tuesday on a deadline of up to two years for Turkey to fulfill its commitment to open its ports to shipping from Greek Cyprus.

After a trilateral meeting with the French and Polish presidents, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would lobby for the European Commission to issue a report on Turkish compliance by the period beginning with Turkey’s elections next autumn, but no later than the European elections in 2009. This statement confirms reports that Germany and France would like to have a “rendezvous clause” that would set a deadline for Turkey to comply with EU demands. [Read more]