The Turkey Analyst

Vol. 3 no. 17, 11 October 2010

ANALYSIS

Is Turkey’s Kurdish War About to End?
Halil M. Karaveli
At this stage, the Turkish government remains unprepared to commit itself to the kind of constitutional changes that the Kurdish movement requests. Yet a dialogue has presently gotten under way between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement. If that dialogue can be sustained over a longer period of time, the prospects for a resolution of Turkey’s intractable conflict would look brighter than ever.

A Dream Adrift: Kiliçdaroğlu’s Faltering Attempts to Transform the CHP
Gareth H. Jenkins
The election of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in May 2010 transformed the Turkish political landscape. After a decade in which it had appeared jaded and anachronistic, the party suddenly seemed set for a resurgence. Less than five months later, the initial excitement has evaporated. Not only has the CHP failed to sustain the momentum generated by Kılıçdaroğlu’s election, but it now looks in danger of losing direction. Kılıçdaroğlu has yet to announce a cohesive policy program or even a team which could formulate one; fuelling doubts about whether his promise in May 2010 to reinvent the CHP as a social democratic party was anything more than empty rhetoric – while his public commitment to abolishing the headscarf ban in universities has alienated the CHP’s support base among hard-line secularists.

What the Columnists Say
The cautious attempt of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), to chart a course away from the secularist orthodoxy with which the party has been identified for decades, has given the commentators in the Turkish press reason to dwell on the impact that economic and social change in society is having on the politics of the country. The case is made that socioeconomic change works to empower society and that it has acquired an independent force that invariably remolds the political parties in a liberal direction, whether or not that is something that they really desire.

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NEW Silk Road Paper published

Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation, by Gareth H. Jenkins, August 2009.


The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published weekly, and includes a topical analysis, as well as translations and summaries of selected Turkish news reports. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell, Halil M. Karaveli, and M. K. Kaya.

The Turkey Analyst welcomes article submissions.

The Joint Center
The Joint Center, created in 2005, is the product of the merger of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and the Silk Road Studies Program, at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

The Turkey Initiative
The Joint Center launched a Turkey Initiative in 2006 in order to improve understand of Turkish domestic and foreign affairs in Europe and the United States.

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