Job Discussion Forums

[yaramaz]

Exactly.

[FGT]

[tvik]

Yaramaz, how was kayseri??? did you find it boring at times?? i often think of going to a smaller place in the east.

don't mean to change the subject. carry on

[Laura777]

[yaramaz]

Kayseri was a bit boring at times, mainly in the greyness of winter, but overall I liked it and was prepared to do a 3rd year. i decided to go to Istanbul because I felt a bit limited there- I missed diversity and feeling inconspicuous. However, a lot of the time I was pretty happy. I'd recommend it.

[tararu]

Well, l suppose we will see what happens with the elections. The AK party will probably be re-elected with a majority.
Hopefully the way that Turkey elects presidents will change in the future.

[007]

�Democracy� of Mickey Mouse and the Double Standards of the US and the West towards Turkey!

I wonder why the West and US get irritated when an Islamic party win an election by vote, and they turn a blind eye when the military interfere in the politics!

It seems the �Democracy� of the West is different from that in Turkey!
It seems US and the West are more interested on who will control the pipes than in the �democracy� or human rights in the ME countries!

�Nevertheless, it was striking that the U.S. response to the military's dismissal of an elected government in a current NATO member was hardly consistent with the standards that Washington was demanding new members meet. There were no stinging denunciations from the White House or the State Department.5 In fact, stories were leaked to the press that the United States was quietly supportive of the quasi-coup. Even when the new, military-backed regime pressured the courts to outlaw the Islamic Welfare Party--which had become the country's largest party in the last elections--Washington's criticism was perfunctory at best.6 (Banning the party served little purpose. It merely re-formed as the new Virtue Party.)
That was not the first time the United States had followed a blatant double standard on democracy with regard to Turkey. Washington "looked the other way" on other occasions when the Turkish military displaced civilian governments, most notably in 1980. But at least on those occasions it could be argued that Washington could not risk a breach in NATO by condemning the Turkish military, lest such a quarrel weaken the alliance and encourage Soviet adventurism. Moreover, during the Cold War the United States did not put the same emphasis on supporting democracy as a central feature of American foreign policy that it has in the post-Cold War period. Those two changes make the U.S. nonresponse to the dismissal of Erbakan all the more hypocritical. There was no Cold War strategic excuse for Washington's indifference about the anti-democratic practices of the Turkish military in the most recent episode. It was simply an example of flagrant foreign policy double standard.
Likewise, human rights concerns do not appear to be a U.S. priority when it comes to Turkey. Turkey's government has routinely jailed opposition political leaders, journalists, and human rights activists for daring to challenge current policies--especially if the critics have expressed sympathy for the plight of Turkey's Kurdish minority.7 U.S. criticisms of those actions have been exceedingly mild. (Compare that response, for example, to the vehement condemnations directed at the government of Malaysia for similar practices.)
Washington has largely echoed Ankara's assertion that the European Union's rejection of Turkey's membership application was a reflection of religious bigotry rather than legitimate worries about Turkey's human rights record, especially the treatment of the Kurds. The New York Times rightfully rejected such reasoning. "Turkey is being kept out of Europe, to its immense resentment and rage, not because of an ancient European prejudice against Turks, but because its government curtails Kurds' human rights on a broad scale."8 U.S. officials clearly did not see matters the same way; they went out of their way to assure their counterparts in Ankara that Washington placed the highest priority on ties with Turkey, even if the myopic EU did not.9
Even the Turkish military's 14-year-long campaign against Kurdish separatists rarely provokes adverse comment from the White House or State Department. (Restrictions on arms sales to Turkey because of that country's human rights record usually came about because of congressional mandates.) Indeed, the executive branch tries to evade congressionally mandated restrictions on ties to the Turkish military whenever possible. In 1997, the U.S. European Command's special operations branch conducted joint training exercises with Turkey's Mountain Commandos, a unit whose principal mission is to eliminate Kurdish guerrillas. That unit has been responsible for atrocities against Kurdish civilians and the razing of Kurdish villages.10
U.S. officials routinely excoriated the Bosnian Serbs for "ethnic cleansing" whenever Serb forces created flows of Muslim or Croat refugees. Washington's outrage led to NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions in 1995 and the subsequent "imposed at the point of a bayonet" Dayton peace accord. More recently, the Clinton administration's outrage over the creation of refugees (and the killing of 500 to 700 Albanian Kosovars) during the Serbian government's offensive in its restive province of Kosovo led to U.S. charges of "genocide" and threats of NATO military intervention unless Belgrade withdrew its security forces from the predominantly Albanian province.
That reaction stands in stark contrast to Washington's attitude toward Turkey's treatment of the Kurds. The struggle between the Turkish government and the guerrilla forces of the Marxist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has led to more than 35,000 deaths--mostly of civilians. Ankara routinely charges the PKK with responsibility for the bloodletting, but at least a third of the fatalities have apparently been inflicted by government forces. Human Rights Watch estimates that several thousand Kurdish villages have been heavily damaged or destroyed entirely.11 Yet such violence, on a scale far greater than that occurring in Kosovo, provokes no administration allegations of genocide or demands for the withdrawal of Turkish security forces from the predominantly Kurdish districts in southeastern Turkey. It goes without saying that there have been no threats of air strikes if Ankara does not take unilateral steps to halt the violence and turn over de-facto control of the region to the Kurds.
U.S. policymakers cannot even bring themselves to use the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe Ankara's conduct. The closest was the comment by an administration official in November 1994, expressing U.S. "concern" about the Turkish military's "campaign to depopulate Kurdish regions through the forced evacuation of hundreds of remote villages."12 The United States is not indifferent because the victims are Kurds. Washington has shown no reticence in condemning Iraq's brutal treatment of the Kurds--or Iran's, or Syria's. Once again, U.S. leaders use one standard to judge the conduct of most other countries and an entirely different standard for Turkey.
Even the loudly proclaimed U.S. intolerance of aggression does not seem to apply to Turkey. Evidence for that double standard is not merely Washington's anemic response to Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the subsequent "ethnic cleansing" of the Greek Cypriot population in the northern portion of the island. That was an early sign of the double standard in action, but there have been numerous examples since then--including the notable lack of pressure to get Turkey to withdraw its forces from Cyprus. (Again, the contrast between the U.S. reaction to the Turkish invasion and nearly quarter-century-long occupation of northern Cyprus and the reaction to Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait is dramatic).
Consider more recent examples of Washington's placid acceptance of belligerent behavior by Ankara. There has been no criticism of Turkey's repeated incursions into Iraq as part of the war against Kurdish separatists Indeed, Washington has been quietly supportive of such incursions.13 Imagine what Washington's reaction would be if Serbian forces entered Albania in pursuit of Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas"

http://ies.berkeley.edu/research/

This is the Mickey Mouse 'Democracy'!! Enjoy Freedom of speech.


[url][/url]

[Golightly]

well, hot diggety dog! We'd better replace it with the old caliphate then.
A mickey mouse democracy is still better than a donald duck dictatorship.
there's less quacking.






















*massive fart*

[justme]

America? Double standards? Hypocrisy? Well, I never!

[dmb]

[yaramaz]

No, not sure- just what I was told. Maybe just their support base? Or because a lot of candidates come from there? I'll ask again- I was basing what I said on what I heard while living there. Feel free to correct me.

[tararu]

007, not a big fan of Turkey, are we?

[007]

[Baba Alex]

[scot47]

Bring back the Caliphate ! And while we are at it we should restore the monarchy in Egypt. And what about those nice Romanovs in Moscow ?

I am pleased to see that 007 has revealed his true colours. Or should I say exposed his beard and short thobe !