Jörg Haider's party to expand into Germany

By Tony Paterson 
Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Austria's far-right Freedom Party has announced plans to expand into neighbouring Germany, where it hopes to join forces with another militant anti-Islamic group and campaign against Turkey's accession to the European Union as part of a widening bid for political power.


The party, which swept to power in Austria under the leadership of the late Jörg Haider a decade ago, made huge gains in Vienna elections earlier this month when it won 26 per cent of the vote and overnight became the city's second most powerful party. 


Read More from The Independent

FP Explainer: Why Does Turkey Always Arrest So Many People at the Same Time?

To make a statement.

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | OCTOBER 21, 2010

This week in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, 151 Kurdish activists, including 12 mayors of local towns, were put on trial for ties to the militant Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). In addition to the crime of belonging to the group, the activists are also accused of holding illegal demonstrations and distributing anti-government propaganda. According to reports, a special courtroom had to be built in Diyarbakir because of the number of defendants.

Read more at Foreign Policy 

Disgracefully, Turkey's EU accession bid is going nowhere soon

As a weak Europe frets over Turkey's membership, the booming south-eastern nation is increasingly thinking: why bother?
Martin Kettle, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010 20.30 BST

Seen from Turkey, the squabble about the EU budget seems like fiddling while Brussels burns. In the Turkish perspective, the large issues for Europe should not be the latest carve-up of the budgetary cake, or the palace power struggle between the European parliament and the member states, or even the necessary budgetary disciplines that Germany demands of its more rule-resistant partners and to which economically booming Turkey, unlike its economically wracked neighbour Greece, could sign up with barely a second's thought.

Read More at The Guardian

Armed EU guards to patrol Greece-Turkey border

Brussels deploys new force in attempt to curb entry of hundreds of illegal migrants a day via large unmonitored area
Ian Traynor in Brussels and Helena Smith in Samos | Monday 25 October 2010

A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country's border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe.

The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU's external land border.

Read More at The Guardian

German President's Criticism of Turkey Was Also Aimed at Germans

German President Christian Wulff told the Turkish parliament on Tuesday that Christianity belongs to their country, just as a few weeks ago he insisted that Islam belongs to Germany. The German press is impressed by a president who sticks up for what he thinks is right.

German President Christian Wulff

It was the first time a German president had ever addressed the Turkish parliament. But coming as it did just a few weeks after his remarks on the anniversary of German reunification that "Islam belongs to Germany," it was inevitable that there would be even more than the usual interest in Christian Wulff's speech on Tuesday in Ankara.

Read More at Spiegel Online International

Diyarbakir Mayor to Armenians: ‘This city is yours as much as it is mine’

Largest Church in Middle East Being Renovated

DIYARBAKIR (A.W.)—Speaking at a reception held on the occasion of the closing of the dome of the Sourp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakir, the mayor of the greater Diyarbakir municipality Osman Baydemir told the Armenians gathered there: “This city is yours as much as it is mine. You have as much a claim to this city as I do.”

Read More at Armenian Weekly

Turkish media comes under legal pressure

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and EROL ISRAFIL | October 26, 2010; 5:24 AM
These days, Busra Erdal wears two hats on her trips to Turkish courts. She writes for a newspaper, mainly about the trials of suspected coup plotters. And she defends herself - in about 60 cases that claim she broke confidentiality codes and other laws in her stories.

Read more at Washington Post

Uncovering Hidden Istanbul, Page by Page

Istanbul, SUSANNE FOWLER, NYT

Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

Cheap eats? Check. Bargain shopping on ancient side streets? Check. Photos of that mansion used in a favorite soap opera? Check.

Thanks to a handful of new books by locals in the know, visitors to Istanbul can now delve even deeper into this city’s culinary, artisanal and historical delights.

Read More at New York Times