Yusuf Kanlı

It was sad to follow TV reports from the southeastern Mardin province about carnage at a wedding ceremony in a small village in that region. Reports said 44 people, including the bride and the bridegroom, were killed in an attack by some masked gunmen, while most of the men of the village were village guards and were out in the fields to guard the village against a possible attack by the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, terrorist gang. The gunmen reportedly killed scores of some and children in one room, then moved to another room of the same house, where men were reportedly performing evening prayers, and killed scores of men there.

Of course authorities, as expected, have started stressing that what happened at that village was an "exceptional" criminal case, that it was not a terrorist incident and that an investigation would soon establish the reason behind the carnage, though they suspected a blood-feud between the two families or that another family that also wanted to "buy" the bride for their son but was rejected by the girl’s family might have acted in vengeance.

Whatever the reason, what happened in that village in the Mardin province was not something confined to Turkey and such countries with incredible backward traditions. Perhaps not with similar primitive instinctive motivation but we see as well in societies with a far higher per capita income or more advanced democracy and definitely a far better education system that sometimes such heinous crimes are committed.

Sometimes mental disorder, often parental ignorance and insensitivity to the adolescent member of the family, and frequently worsening economic reasons, inability to pay debts and such "modern time failures" are cited as the prime reasons that lead individuals in modern societies to kill other people indiscriminately during a tantrum.

Yet, it is only in backward societies of the East where we still see outrageous "honor killings" or "blood feuds" to save the "honor and pride" of a family or a clan. No, don’t take seriously those racist evaluations by some "intellectuals" that in Turkey only among the ethnic Kurdish population we see such oddities. This is an illness of the feudal lifestyle that somehow could not be transformed "despite all efforts" during the republican era, and unfortunately feudalism is mostly seen in today’s Turkey in the ethnic Kurdish populated areas.

That is, the problem is not something confined to an ethnic group, but rather to continued primitive patriarchal feudal relations and lifestyle in parts of Turkey (and in many Eastern societies). Until this country and countries with similar residue of the backward feudal social fabric undertake radical reforms to promote the individual and place the individual before everything else, including the family, clan, religious sect or whatever; establish gender equality not only in words but also in actions; and undertake a comprehensive education drive, we are all doomed to suffer from this menace.

How many of us care about the "suicides" of young girls in eastern Turkey? Why do they "commit" suicide? How many of them "save" the honor of their families by murdering themselves? Do any of us care about the continued sale of "brides"?

Respect for gender equality
If women are something to be traded, why do we feel shocked reading reports of carnage from that Mardin village, all indicating that the murderers probably belonged to another family who wanted to "buy" the "bride" for their son but the family of the girl preferred to "sell" their daughter to someone else, perhaps for a better price? If in this country there are still feudal lords who own dozens of villages and hundreds of villagers and count the villagers as if they are counting their herds, the problem we are faced at that village in the Mardin province is something far graver than a mass murder. The mass murder is just one of the many symptoms of the gross primitivism and the gross negligence of current and past governments in answering the need of ending that primitive lifestyle in those regions.

It is sad, but even most of the deputies of the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, which claims to be supporting the rights and freedoms of the ethnic Kurdish population of the country, are themselves feudal landlords and are quite happy with the continuity of the backward feudal setup in that geography.

The other night, on the Al Jazeera International channel, there was a debate on the place of military in Turkish society, relations between the military and civilian administration, how Turkey will balance out secular and Islamist fundamentalism, and establish cohesive democratic, secular governance adhering to the principle of supremacy of law. I was one of the participants of the debate, which was held after Turkey’s top commander declared that anyone aspiring to stage a coup would have no place in the military, ruled out as "products of a sheer smear campaign" charges that the Turkish military was against Islam, and recalled that one of the most common names given to the Turkish military was "home of the prophet."

Indeed, for some time Turkey has been striving to complete a transition from a phobia-ridden, restrictive and defensive democracy understanding dominated by secular fundamentalism to a liberal new understanding where there will be no place to either secularist or Islamist fundamentalism, state-imposed definition and a state-regulated practice of Islam and which will be characterized by wider individual, communal, religious and cultural rights for everyone living on this land without compromising the integrity of the nation and the state but with due respect to all differences.

This is not only a very painful and long process, but also a very rather paradoxical situation. While on the one hand it has to be obvious for everyone that at this age of informatics it is no longer possible to sustain as it is the restrictive understanding of religion, secularism, nation building and even unitary state of the founding period of the Turkish Republic, or the "traditional" distribution of power, on the other hand it is obvious as well that Turkey cannot sustain its republic, national integrity and perhaps even territorial integrity if for the sake of wider individual and communal rights, enhanced religious freedoms and consolidation of democracy and democratic rule through delegating more power from the central authority to local administrations we over-compromise in redefining the Turkish nation, secularism, role of religion and of course duties, responsibilities and obligations of both the civilian government and the military.

There are fears bordering phobia among the "republicans," the "secularists" and the "democrats" not necessarily for the same reasons that in this transition process Turkey may as well end up in a religious or nepotistic dictatorship, put aside the grave concern of losing national and territorial integrity of the country and thus "betraying to the heritage of the founding fathers," who managed to build the Turkish Republic on the ashes of a shrunken Ottoman Empire and on a land described by the last Ottoman Parliament as the "national borders."

Again, paradoxically, the advent of political Islam and the continued almost three decades of separatist terrorism by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, gang are both the greatest impediments making this huge transition in Turkey very difficult while at the same time serve as a "wake up call" for wider reforms, if not as a catalyst, for the creation of a better democratic governance in this country of over seventy million people with millions of differences of all sorts. The March local polls, in this respect, while on one hand demonstrated visibly the rejection of the possibility of an aggressive political leadership and a conservative Islamist party’s domination over the nation, while on the other hand underlined the grave dangers ahead if politics on the basis of ethnicity is allowed in this country.

A lot of things have changed in Turkey since the last military "post-modern" intervention in politics in 1997. Turkish people no longer see the military as the "absolute and the only savior" of the secular Republic. The nation has started developing the understanding the notion that it itself is the guarantee of the future of the republic. Thus, the top general declaring there was no place for coup plotters in the military was just a reaffirmation that despite all its concerns the military is aware of the change in the nation.

Despite all the odds and possible pain, Turkey has to walk this road and succeed in balancing fears, phobias, expectations, desires and move on to a new national charter respecting the differences, rights and freedoms of the individuals but safeguarding at the same time our mutual interest, the modern, democratic, secular Turkish Republic integrated with the league of advanced democracies.

Once upon a time, under accusations that the AKP was an Islamist party adhering to the "National View" doctrine of Necmettin Erbakan, the founding father of the political Islam movement in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan disavowed political patrimony declaring "We have changed and developed. We have taken off the (National View) shirt. We are a new conservative-democratic party." Now, there is a consensus within the AKP and the opposition parties, as well as among most political observers, that with last Friday evening’s major cabinet reshuffle the ruling party has put on the old National View shirt in hopes of winning back the conservative religious electorate it partly lost in the March 29 local elections to the Islamist Saadet (Felicity) Party the only other successor of the Refah (Welfare) Party of Erbakan who immediately after restoration of his political rights last month ignored his advanced age (83), grabbed a suitcase of pills and travelled to Tehran for a visit at the invitation of the Hizbollah.

With the reshuffle, Erdoğan promoted his top foreign policy advisor Professor Ahmet Davutoğlu, who has shifted Turkish foreign policy toward a greater focus on the Middle East, as the foreign minister of the country while Ali Babacan was shifted to an enforced seat of economy minister. While all together eight ministers lost their portfolios, Erdoğan appointed nine new ministers, including Davutoğlu and former parliamentary speaker Bülent Arınç, a former confidant of Erbakan and a personality who has been often at odds with the military.

Evaluating the names left out of the cabinet, as well as those who assumed ministerial posts in the reshuffle, many AKP deputies lamented that the new cabinet was contradicting the claim of Erdoğan that the AKP has become the new "center party" of the country because the new cabinet has become a far more conservative one, more in conformity with the National View doctrine. Naturally, these complaints were partly a product of disillusionment among ministerial seat aspiring deputies or a natural psychological outburst by some of those who lost their seats in the reshuffle. Yet, there are evidences that indeed such comments reflect the bitter high probability that in the new period the AKP government will be far more conservative.

The most important and perhaps the most contagious new element of confrontation was the "return of the myth", as Bülent Arınç’s becoming the deputy premier in the new cabinet was reported by some newspapers. Given the fact that Arınç has the habit of confrontation with the military and his outspoken Islamist views, there were serious fears that the government will eventually land into some serious problems in its relations with the powerful military of the country. Will he be able to avoid some new confrontation and further polarization in the country?

Return of Arınç
Furthermore, Arınç is not the only prominent National View representative in the new cabinet. New Labor Minister Ömer Dinçer, who was much opposed when he was undersecretary of the prime ministry because of his fundamentalist views, new Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin, new Industry and Trade Minister Nihat Ergün, and new Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız are as well considered to be from the National View flank of the AKP. Of course rather than labeling the new ministers with their professed world view, their actions in office must be watched and an evaluation should be made accordingly. However, these assessments made inside the AKP are apparently shared to a great extend by the opposition groups in Parliament.

Still, for the time being, the greatest allergy in Parliament was on Davutoğlu, a non-parliamentarian, assuming the Foreign Ministry portfolio. Both the AKP deputies and the opposition were asking whether of the 312 deputies AKP has apart from those in cabinet, there was no one eligible to become the foreign minister and Erdoğan was compelled to appoint someone from outside of Parliament in such an important portfolio.

With the Hamas fiasco, Davos theatrical show, Armenia road map and the "one step ahead" adventure on Cyprus in mind, it becomes obvious that with Davutoğlu as foreign minister and a cabinet more in tune with National View of Erbakan there will hardly be any dull day in Ankara in the period ahead.

It was just great. For the first time since 1978, one year after the 1977 May Day carnage in which 37 people were killed in a provocation staged by some "dark elements" within the state, Turkish labor was allowed to demonstrate in Taksim Square with a "reasonable number" and mark the International Day of Solidarity of Labor, or May Day, which was re-instituted as a public holiday almost three decades after it was banned by the 1980 military coup administration. Istanbul Gov. Muammer Güler accepted an interference by President Abdullah Gül and toned down his strong opposition to a mass rally of labor in Taksim Square, yet he agreed to a demonstration by a controllable "reasonable" group. Even that was a success, and in hopes that it would be the first major step to overcome the official allergy to a massive labor demonstration, labor groups agreed to keep hundreds of thousands of workers away from the historical square at the heart of Istanbul and organized a "limited celebration." The huge banner, a reminder of the 1977 May Day rally in the same square, depicting the world rising within the callous hands of a worker, was hanging again down the platform where labor leaders addressed the "reasonable crowd."

There was no violence in Taksim Square. Labor leaders did not allow provocative elements join in. Speaking on the platform, leaders of the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers’ Unions, or DISK, and the Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions, or KESK, lamented that if authorities had allowed a mass celebration, they would have taken measures to have a peaceful mass celebration.

Hours before the DISK and KESK "reasonable" demonstration, other labor union confederations were briefly allowed in Taksim Square to lay wreaths at the Taksim Monument in memory of the 37 people killed during the 1977 May Day rally. But, there was not peace on the sideways leading to Taksim Square. There were groups attacking police, and police mercilessly gassing and attacking those groups with water cannons and truncheons.

Unemployment day
I have a suggestion. Why doesn’t Parliament convene and rename the recently re-instituted May Day holiday for labor as the "Unemployment Holiday," or better, as the "Police Entertainment Day." In a country where unemployment has reached an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, record of 15.5 percent and likely climb to even a higher percentage soon thanks to the "tangentially" passing economic crisis, is it not odd to celebrate the International Day of Solidarity of Labor, or May Day?

Well, while our government finally agreed last month to allow "legs to become heads" and re-instituted May Day as an official holiday for labor, in view of the massive masochism demonstrated by the police on the sideways leading to Taksim Square, will it not be more appropriate to rename this recently re-instituted May Day holiday as "Police Entertainment Day"? With his white hair and dark black moustache, Istanbul’s Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah was touring the area like a victorious commander, and while on the police wireless, there was an appeal: "We have run out of gas bombs. Send us ammunition, reinforcements!"

There were, of course, groups trying to provoke violence on the streets leading to Taksim. Of course, police were required to prevent provocation and violence. But, several hundred meters away, for the first time since the 1977 May Day carnage in Taksim Square, a "reasonable" crowd of workers was peacefully celebrating the International Day of Solidarity of Labor. That is, when the police take security measures and allow labor to celebrate their day, labor can indeed celebrate the May Day in organized discipline, and in peace.Still, despite the violence on the sideways leading to the Taksim Square, it was great to see thousands of workers demonstrate in Taksim Square and remember the victims of the 1977 massacre under that gigantic banner of a world rising in the callous hands of a worker that has become the symbol of May Day in Turkey. Right, this year the government has re-instituted May Day as an official holiday and for the first time since 1978 allowed labor to have a May Day celebration in Taksim Square with a "reasonable number" of participants. Despite violence on the sideways leading to Taksim, steps have been taken toward eradicating the May Day tensions and violence that have become a tradition since the 1977 carnage. Hopefully, next year the government will allow a mass celebration in Taksim.

Perception is often far more important than reality, especially when it comes to social issues, and in evaluating Gen. İlker Başbuğ’s press conference on Wednesday, the media divided, as always, into two camps. One group was of the opinion that the top general was constantly on the defensive, while the other group praised his declared commitment to democracy and to the supremacy of law. One camp said that Başbuğ’s defensiveness and need to declare the military’s commitment to democracy was a sign of "weakness" and of a "serious complex" within the military, while the other maintained that he was so self-confident, he even confessed the existence of some problems at military stockpiles of arms and ammunition.

How could a group of people gathered in a hall listen to the same man and produce such diverse opinions about what he said? It is a matter, of course, related to where one stands, physically as well as mentally. The same thing is often perceived differently by people with different opinions. Some journalists must have been so obsessed with flattering the top commander that they forgot that early the same morning, nine soldiers lost their lives in a mine blast. They ignored the apparent pain on Başbuğ’s face and even what the commander said right at the beginning about the fallen soldiers and attempted to congratulate the general on his birthday. Others were so fixated on the so-called Ergenekon case and the "coup memoirs" that they could not understand why the top general put such emphasis on the military’s commitment to democracy and the supremacy of law.

"The Turkish military is committed to democracy," Başbuğ said. "No one with a different opinion [on this issue] can stay in the military. We shall not allow that." Though even the tradition of Turkey’s top commanders hosting press conferences, issuing e-statements and commenting on political matters is itself an anti-democratic heritage for this country (albeit with a reduced rate), such a reassurance coming from Turkey’s top commander is indeed very important. Why? First of all, the top general who made that statement is the commander of the Turkish military, not the French, British or German military, where the armed forces are not under daily attacks by some sections of the media, as well as politicians, accused even by some foreign politicians of having "political aspirations," and where they do not face indictments claiming that they were, or that some elements within them were, planning to plot a military coup.

Was Başbuğ on the defensive?

Thus, if a top military commander feels the need to reaffirm his and the Turkish military’s commitment to democracy, and if feeling this way is something to be ashamed of or something demonstrating "weakness" or indicating a "complex," who might be responsible for this? Should we look to the military or to those who have been busy fabricating all sorts of slanders and ridiculous claims, exaggerating some wrongdoings by some retired officers or generals to portray an image of the entire military as busy plotting to overthrow the government of the country and worse, including all these baseless elements of tragicomedy in an indictment that resembles nothing but a thriller?

Yes, Başbuğ was, in a manner, on the defensive because he tried to provide answers to sets of questions, including those I asked in this column two days ago, about the arms caches found in various cities, most recently at the lot owned by Bedrettin Dalan’s foundation. None of us were expecting him to provide such extensive answers to our questions. So rather than appreciating the demonstrated transparency and the effort made by the top general to provide answers to all doubting minds regarding the allegations of a "military role" in the alleged Ergenekon crimes, how can we attack him for being on the defensive? Başbuğ’s answers might not have been fully satisfying to some of the journalists, yet he seemed to have done the most he could do, without compromising respect for justice, to demonstrate the oddities in the Ergenekon indictments and the related legends pumped up by the allegiant media.

Thus, the emphasis in Başbuğ’s words that everyone should respect the judiciary and the judicial process was not a demonstration of weakness, but a reminder particularly directed toward the prosecutors of the importance of their job and the need to put aside politics and political differences when distributing justice.

Reading the reports on the decision of the European Court of Justice backing the right of Greek Cypriots to reclaim property they abandoned in the north of the island in the aftermath of the 1974 Turkish intervention, I remembered a discussion under a bower in a Nicosia suburb. It was immediately after the April 23, 2004 opening of the border gates between northern and southern Cyprus, the first time since the 1974 Turkish intervention provided Turkish Cypriots a safe haven in the northern third of the island. Ahmet was drinking Turkish coffee together with some of his customer-friends under the bower covered with a giant "verigo" grapevine "tree" on the sideline of his barber shop next to an old church, converted into a mosque after Turks moved into the area from their houses in southern Cyprus in the aftermath of the 1974 Turkish intervention. His wife Sadiye was busy preparing lunch back in the house several yards away, while the deaf mother in law who spent more than ten years cooking for free for the Turkish Cypriot resistance fighters, after her husband, a fisherman, went missing in early 1964 on the Limassol highway.

Accompanied by a woman in her seventies, a man in his fifties stopped in front of the barber shop. He opened the iron gate of the garden as if he was entering his own home. He approached Ahmet and his friends and in broken and heavily accented Turkish yelled at the group: "Çıkın evimden!" (Get out of my house!). Like many Turkish Cypriots who moved after the Turkish intervention from their villages in what became the Greek Cypriot southern Cyprus and were settled on properties left by the Greek Cypriots in the north, Ahmet was expecting such a visitor ever since the gates were opened and the two peoples of the island found an opportunity to see "the other side" freely. Ahmet stood up in respect for the visitor. In broken Greek, he replied "Ela re gumbare" (Come on in my friend) and extended his hand to shake the hand of the approaching Greek Cypriot. The Greek Cypriot man, hiding his hand behind his back to avoid a handshake, shouted again in anger: "Get out of my house!"

Ahmet, maintaining his calm, showed a chair to the Greek Cypriot man and asked whether the accompanying "old lady", who was still standing outside the fence with wet eyes, would like to enter as well. He called Sadiye as well to come and greet the "guests."After the man and the lady in his seventies sat under the bower, nearby neighbors started to gather seeing that something exciting was happening in Ahmet’s house. "Welcome," Ahmet said, "I understand that you are the former owners of my shop and house. We have some items that we have been keeping for you ever since we settled in here. There are some family photographs and a small wooden box containing some hand-made toys. Simple things, but we kept them in anticipation of this day.""Really?" the Greek Cypriot man asked. "I am Andreas. This is my mother Maria." In the mean time, Sadiye dashed into the house and came back with the photographs and the wooden box. The photographs were wedding photos of Maria and her husband, and photos of some babies and some elderly people. Maria did not know Turkish or English, but Andreas started to translate. "Thank you...

You have given me precious gifts. You have given me my memories," the old woman in tears was saying. Andreas said the wooden box belonged to him and the toys inside were made by his late father.Soon, the discussion focused once again on the key demand of Andreas: "When are you going to give back our house?""I do understand you," Ahmet said. "You want your house back and you are ready to forget whatever has happened on Cyprus over the past many decades. But, who is going to give back my father. Who is going to give back my childhood that I spent in sheer poverty because I was left without a father. Who is going to give back my youth that I spent fighting to stop you Greek Cypriots annihilating all of us Turkish Cypriots on Cyprus? Who is going to give back the husband of my mother or give back her hearing that she lost in the fighting? Am I responsible for whatever went on in Cyprus? Who started this fight and what for? Who is to compensate my loses?"After an hour-long discussion, they became friends. Since then Andreas has been stopping once a while to have a coffee under Ahmet’s bower. Both of them wait for a resolution to the Cyprus problem which might provide a comprehensive settlement on the Cyprus issue, including the property matters that take into consideration not only the "former owners" but also the "present owners."

Though overall daily circulation of national newspapers in Turkey has remained at around 6 million copies for many decades, despite sharp increases in the population, there are still people who read them every morning. For the many years, after going through the news agency reports, I generally start the day by reading the Radikal newspaper. Why? Even though I might not subscribe to the obsessive evaluations made by some of its writers, I believe that most of the time the paper manages to separate news and commentary, as is very much in the Anglo-Saxon media tradition, which I tried my best to achieve when working as an editor.

On April 26, Radikal posed a set of questions to General İlker Başbuğ, the top commander of the Turkish military. The general is expected to host a press conference today and perhaps, rather than confining himself to the delivery of a long statement, he will answer at least some of the questions from journalists. So, despite the awareness that he will likely not do so, in anticipation of Başbuğ providing an answer to them, I borrowed some ideas from Radikal, added some of my own, and prepared the following list of questions:

1. To the vast majority of Turks, the Turkish military remains the most trusted institution. Yet we keep reading allegations in the Ergenekon indictments of some serious illegal activities (including coup attempts) by senior active and retired officers. Is there a "smear campaign" being conducted against the military, or do these allegations reflect a bitter reality? What legal actions is the military judiciary taking against these allegations?

2. Do "covert operations" still continue in the military? Or could there be an organization within the military that is autonomous or independent from the chain of command and can engage in activities that might be illegal, but considered a requirement of "national security"?

3. What is the meaning of the arms caches found buried here and there? Specifically, what is your response to the revelation that most of these buried weapons and ammunition were manufactured at the state-owned Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, or MKE, factories for the use of the Turkish military?

4. Is it possible to take any weapon, bomb or ammunition from the depots of the Turkish military without proper authorization? What punitive action has so far been taken against military personnel, at any rank, who may have taken out weapons, bombs or ammunition from military deports without proper authorization?

5. How often does the military make an inventory of the weapons, bombs and ammunition in its depots? What is done when a discrepancy is found between the registered contents of a depot and the outcome of the count?

6. If, irrespective of by whom and how they were buried, the weapons, bombs and ammunition found in caches around the country mostly belong to the military inventory, why has the Turkish military not yet made any public statement as to how those weapons might have been taken out? Are not stockpiles of military arms guarded?

7. If those weapons, bombs and ammunition were stolen from the military, did the military investigate how they were stolen? What measures are being taken to prevent such "theft" in the future?

8. Has there been a general count of the entire weapons stockpile of the military to establish if there are more missing weapons, bombs and ammunition than those that have been found in buried caches thus far?

9. Can the military provide sufficient guarantee that new and effective measures are being taken and that such "theft" will never again occur in the future?

10. Since the buried caches were all found as part of the so-called Ergenekon probe, and since there are allegations that these arms were to be used to realize the "heinous aims" of the "Ergenekon gang," if the Ergenekon trial ends with a verdict endorsing the claims of the prosecutors, would not such a verdict ruin the good reputation of the military and the established confidence of the nation in the military? So, why is the military so silent on this issue?

There are, of course, several more questions that journalists have to ask General Başbuğ, but if he can provide answers to at least some of the above, he will have done a great service to this country.

The basic principle of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP's, mentality in dealing with problems, whatever they might be, is to create a "pro-settlement" perception without necessarily committing themselves seriously to a settlement, particularly if a resolution of the problem at hand might be a painful or politically costly one. The AKP is willing to walk the extra mile on any issue provided that it is pretty sure the "other side" will eventually not budge, refuse a compromise and thus blame the failure to resolve the problem on the shoulders of the "other side" without the AKP undertaking any painful steps.

That was so in 2003-2004 with the United Nations peace plan on Cyprus (which is named after the then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and is often referred to as the Annan Plan); it is now with the American-sponsored, Swiss-brokered, Turkish-Armenian moves for a historical rapprochement.

In the 2003-2004 exercise, the belief in Ankara was that eventually either the Greek Cypriot leadership would throw in the towel and withdraw from the exercise of a painful compromise to share power with the Turkish Cypriot side, or at the end of the day Greek Cypriot voters would vote against the plan at a referendum and kill the plan anyhow, while in the meantime the perception in the world that the Turkish Cypriot side was against a resolution would be eradicated with a new pro-settlement image.

"Yes, we are against the plan as well, but Greek Cypriots will say no anyhow. Say yes and win without compromising on anything. Why is President Rauf Denktaş insisting on now understanding that without losing anything, we will be changing our global ’anti-settlement perception’ with a very strong pro-settlement image?" some senior political figures of the AKP administration complained to us at the time behind closed doors, while Denktaş was telling us, "Right, they believe Greek Cypriots will say no, but what if they say no?

Are we ready to accept this plan as a settlement? Are we happy with the terms of it? I am not! This is a defeatist approach. I will not subscribe to it!"

It took six years for Turkish Cypriots to get rid of the anomaly and bring an end to the CTP dominated governance on the island, though Talat still has one more year in the presidency. Anyhow, seeing the uncompromising stance of his Greek Cypriot counterpart Demetris Christofias, even Talat is no longer subscribing to the romantic "We shall be one step ahead of Greeks and Greek Cypriots" statement of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Turkey is surfing in difficult waters with the "We shall open our ports and airports to Greek Cypriots" pledge the AKP government made to the EU in exchange of getting a date and actually starting the accession talks. Ankara is now in pains about how to avoid paying the bill, which could bring down any government in Ankara if it is to be done without a settlement on Cyprus.

Azerbaijan is no northern Cyprus
We now have a similar situation with Azerbaijan. Ankara is sure that whatever "road map" we might have with Armenia to normalize relations will eventually collapse because Armenia cannot take the required steps to bring an end to its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ankara is after pleasing the U.S. with its movement toward normalizing relations with Armenia and thus avoiding Congress from legislating a genocide recognition bill.

President Barack Hussein Obama, however, delivered a strong slap in the face of the AKP government by not using the English "genocide" word, but using the term Armenians use in referring to the 1915 events. Thus, the U.S. so far has told Ankara that deception will not work this time; it wants to see "steps on the ground."

Taking steps on the ground, on the other hand, is not at all easy because Azerbaijan is not a northern Cyprus and is not dependant financially on Turkey. On the one hand, Ankara has no power to replace either Ilham Aliyev or the government in Azerbaijan; on the other, any move without the consent of Baku will stir serious political consequences at home.