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Insight Turkey > Issues | Debating Democratic Initiative - Spring 2010 / Volume 12, Number 2

Debating Democratic Initiative



Editor's Notes


Editor's Note | Spring 2010
Turkey’s political transformation is continuing with new waves of democratization. The latest move is an initiative proposed by the AK Party’s parliamentary group to amend the constitution. With proposals to amend 27 articles, the reform package, currently being considered in the Turkish parliament, is one of the most comprehensive amendments to the current constitution. 


Commentaries


Turkish-Armenian Protocols: An Azerbaijani Perspective
This commentary addresses Azerbaijan’s position prior to and in the aftermath of the...

Russia and Turkish-Armenian Normalization: Competing Interests in the South Caucasus
Following the 2008 Georgia war, Russia reasserted itself as the main power in the Caucasus. The...

Prospects for Normalization between Armenia and Turkey: A View from Yerevan
Since Armenia’s independence in 1991, its three successive presidents have invariably expressed...

The Turkish-Armenian Debacle
Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols on October 10, 2009 at Zurich University in Switzerland,...

Turkey’s Constitutional Amendments: Between the status quo and Limited Democratic Reforms
This article deals with debates surrounding the package of constitutional amendments proposed by...


Articles


Prospects for Democratization in Iran: Policy Implications
The breakdown or modification of the Islamic Republic, though not imminent, is increasingly...

“Democratic Opening,” the Legal Status of Non-Muslim Religious Communities and the Venice Commission
This article deals with a recent opinion adopted by the Venice Commission at its meeting onMarch...

Reimagining Minorities in Turkey: Before and After the AKP
This article analyzes the changing concept of “minority” in today’s Turkey. Minorities have been...

Kurdish Political Movement and the “Democratic Opening”
There has long existed a Kurdish political movement with its illegal, legal, and semi-legal...

The Alevi Opening: Concept, Strategy and Process
The Alevis, with their varied discourses, are in the midst of a deep intra-comunial debate as to...

The AKP and the “Alevi Opening”: Understanding the Dynamics of the Rapprochement
The AKP government has undertaken a series of steps to understand and respond to Alevi...

Turkey’s Radical Right and the Kurdish Issue: The MHP’s Reaction to the “Democratic Opening”
Turkey’s current government’s ‘democratic opening’ project has led to a series of political...

The Militarization of Secular Opposition in Turkey
Turkey under the pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has represented an...

The CHP and the “Democratic Opening”: Reactions to AK Party’s Electoral Hegemony
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has initiated a number of democratic...

The “Democratic Opening” in Turkey: A Historical/Comparative Perspective
This article aims to analyze the process of AKP’s democratic opening in an historical and...

A Key to the “Democratic Opening”: Rethinking Citizenship, Ethnicity and Turkish Nation-State
This article focuses on the ongoing process of transition in Turkey from a “homogeneous national...


Book Reviews


The Magna Carta Manifesto
The Magna Carta tradition that has been enshrined in Anglo-American law and celebrated in liberal...

The Ties that Bind: Accommodating Diversity in Canada and the European Union
“The Ties that Bind” is an edited compilation of European and Canadian authors discussing the...

Islam in Nederland en België
Shadid and van Koningsveld are at it again, this time with a full-length comparative treatment of...

Geçmişiniz İtinayla Temizlenir (Your History is Carefully Cleaned: Historian as an Autopsy Expert)
The volume under review is the collection of many articles written at different times by Cemil...

Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages
“Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages” by Mark Cohen is a useful work for those...

American Ascendance and British Retreat in the Persian Gulf Region
This book examines the shifting balance of power between two western allies in the tumultuous...

U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamist Politics
“I argue that the vast majority of Islamist movements do not pose a real threat to the West and...

Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East
In this remarkable book, Ussama Makdisi offers a marvelously subtle analysis of American...

The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East
Political developments in the Middle East have recently received a great deal of attention by...

Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination
It is a truism of contemporary social thought that modernity is not singular in its trajectories,...

Turkish Politics in a Changing World, Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations
Turkish Politics in a Changing World, consisting of articles written by Keyman and Öniş discusses...

Blood, Beliefs and Ballots: The Management of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey, 2007-2009
Robert Olson has been a pioneering and prolific scholar of Kurdish nationalism. In Blood, Beliefs...

The Armenian Rebellion at Van
Devoid of rhetorical embellishment, this work challenges some traditional notions about the...

Winning Turkey: How America, Europe, and Turkey Can Revive a Fading Partnership?
In recent years, relations between Turkey and the United States have been tumultuous. This is in...

Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, the European Union and the Middle East
Various scholars have analyzed Turkey’s foreign policy in the post-Cold War era from different...


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