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US assures Turkey over straits convention

To the relief of Turkey, the U.S. State Department has assured Ankara that the Montreux Convention of 1936, which governs the passage of military ships from countries that do not have coastal

Turkey and the Caucasus | Waiting and watching | Economist.com

A large NATO country ponders a bigger role in the Caucasus

AP Erdogan plays the Georgian flag

AT THE Hrazdan stadium in Yerevan, workers are furiously preparing for a special visitor: Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul. Armenia’s president, Serzh Sarkisian, has invited Mr Gul to a football World Cup qualifier between Turkey and its traditional foe, Armenia, on September 6th."

Russia to convey Turkish-led proposal to Armenia first

Turkey’s proposal to create a stability pact in the Caucasus is helping improve Turkish-Armenian ties amid low-profile diplomatic contacts that have commenced between the two neighbors.

Pipeline to resume in ‘a few days’

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, or BTC, pipeline, which transports oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, will be fully operational within “a few days,” the Turkish Energy

Turkey’s Montreux concerns revisited

US intentions to dispatch two military hospital vessels to war-torn Georgia, one of the littoral states of the Black Sea, have once again raised Ankara’s long-standing concern that any attempt to revise the 72-year-old Montreux Convention may endanger Turkey’s control over the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus.

Scholar: Secular-Islamist tensions in Turkey ‘need to be watched’

While the Turkish court’s close decision last month not to shut down the ruling AKP party kept the country’s EU membership bid alive, tensions between secularists and modern, moderate Islam remain strong and need to be closely monitored by the EU, Professor Kevin Featherstone of the London School of Economics told EurActiv Turkey in an interview.

Interview: Turkish court ruling narrowly keeps EU hopes alive

While the Turkish court’s close decision last month not to shut down the ruling AKP party kept the country’s EU membership bid alive, tensions between secularists and modern, moderate Islam remain strong and need to be closely monitored by the EU, Professor Kevin Featherstone of the London School of Economics told EurActiv Turkey in an interview.

Turkey’s top national security body discusses Caucasus union

Future prospects for Turkey’s economy

Confidence in Turkey’s long-term economic prospects is growing but further labour market reforms, increased spending on education, better transparency of public finances and a more credible monetary policy are required if the country is to maintain its recent impressive growth, according to Rauf Gönenç, the senior officer responsible for Turkey at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), writing for EurActiv Turkey.

Long-awaited national program for EU alignment on the way

The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has drafted a new national program regarding European Union accession, in a sign that the government plans to reinvigorate EU-backed

Israel Need Not Fear Turkey’s Islamist Government – Middle East Times

Yusuf Kanlı: EU, Turkey and the AKP verdict

The Turkish government has reportedly prepared a new 400-page long national document consisting of four parts and which aims at accelerating the EU accession process of the country. One may say that as the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has realized with its narrow escape from the gallows that converting Copenhagen criteria to Ankara criteria and decreasing the pace of the EU accession process of the country could indeed be very costly to itself as well as to the country, it is now reorienting itself on the EU course.Some of the legislations in the national program “that need improving to meet European standards” are constitutional articles, while some are laws the amendment