Where is Turkey heading on the Threshold of the

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1 International Conference Where is Turkey heading on the Threshold of the Millennium? Wednesday, May 4, 2011 Venue: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Loretánské nám. 5, Prague, Mirror Hall

2 Conference Synopsis Panel I: Where is Turkey heading? At the beginning of the millennium, Turkey s economy was considerably weak and its political environment, with its short-lived coalitions, was unstable. Ten years later Turkey is a member of the G20 and the domestic political situation has become more stable. The respect for human rights has been strengthened and the key historical and nationalist taboos have been partly broken. However, the society and politics in Turkey remain internally deeply divided on key issues such as laicism, minority rights, freedom of the press, and the democratization of the political system. The process of political reforms seems to have lost momentum and the EU accession negotiations are confronted with severe obstacles for both internal and external reasons. At the beginning of the new decade and before the next parliamentary elections in June 2011, Turkey experiences again a fierce debate on many issues lying at the heart of Turkey s approach towards democracy. Could Turkey be a role model for the democratization and reform in the Middle East, as some observers and politicians present it? Panel II: Turkey A rising power? Ankara s influence in the region of the Middle East is rising under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdoğan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Davutoğlu. Taking advantage of its economic strength and historical and cultural links with the Muslim world, Turkey s relations with its neighbors have improved. In general, Ankara s foreign policy is becoming more assertive. Turkey is taking advantage of its geopolitical position and wants to become a regional power with global influence. Today, Turkey matters more than many would have predicted ten years ago. Yet, the dynamism of Turkey s foreign policy raises some questions and concerns. Irena Kalhousová Chief Analyst Erik Siegl Program Coordinator Heinrich Böll Stiftung

3 Conference Program 8.45 Registration 9.15 Opening of the conference Panel I: Where is Turkey heading? What are the main accomplishments and deficits after eight years of AKP s rule? How democratic are the main political actors in Turkey the AKP and CHP? Who are the proponents and opponents of democratic changes? Are there any serious initiatives to overcome the deep controversy regarding laicism, rights of religious minorities and the Kurdish issue? What are the main issues and who are the main actors as Turkey moves toward the parliamentary elections in 2011? What policy options do they offer? To what extend is the EU still important for the country s democratisation process? Could Turkey be a role model for the democratization and reform in the Middle East? Key note speech: Joost Lagendijk, Politician and Analyst, Former Chairman of the Turkey-EU Parliamentarians Delegation, Istanbul Policy Center, Sabanci University Panelists: Nurcan Baysal, Researcher, Diyarbakır Institute for Political and Social Research (DİSA), Turkey Murat Belge, Civil Right Activist, Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey Gareth Jenkins, Writer and Analyst, Turkey Initiative, Johns Hopkins University, USA Chair: Ulrike Dufner, Head of Heinrich Böll Foundation in Istanbul, Turkey Coffee Break Panel II: Turkey A rising power? Is Turkey s political system rooted in an identity-based foreign policy? Is Ankara leaning East-ward and risking the deterioration of relations with the EU and USA? Should Turkey play a stronger role as a part of the foreign and security pillar of the EU? What would be the prerequisites? How do we evaluate Turkey s recent foreign policy in this regard? Are the Turkey-US relations under Obama undergoing a considerable change? What are the determinants of Turkey-US relations? How will the relations between Turkey and its Eastern neighbors, including Iran, affect the relations between Turkey and the US/EU? What are the short- and midterm consequences of Turkish-Israeli tension? What should be done in order to restore the good relations between both countries? To what extent are Turkey s foreign policy and its economic and energy relations affecting Turkey s possible role as the energy hub for Europe? Panelists: Anat Lapidot-Firilla, Researcher, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel William M. Drozdiak, President of the American Council on Germany, USA Soli Özel, Senior Analyst, German Marshall Fund in Istanbul, Turkey Abbas Djavadi, Associate Director of Broadcasting at Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic Chair: Irena Kalhousová, Chief Analyst,, Czech Republic Concluding remarks Lunch

4 Speakers Panel I: Where is Turkey heading? Joost Lagendijk Joost Lagendijk graduated as a historian from Utrecht University. He was a publisher of magazines and non-fiction books for ten years. From 1998 till 2009 Lagendijk was a Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Green Left Party. In the parliament he specialized in foreign affairs and security and defence issues. For many years he was the chairman of the Turkey Delegation of the European Parliament and the rapporteur for the Parliament on Kosovo. Together with his colleague from the European Parliament Jan Marinus Wiersma, Lagendijk wrote three books: on the borders of Europe, on the foreign policy strategies of the US and the EU and on the European policy towards its Muslim neighbours. Since July 1, 2009, Lagendijk is a senior adviser at the Istanbul Policy Center, the think tank of Sabanci University in Istanbul. He is a columnist for the Turkish dailies Zaman and Today s Zaman. Nurcan Baysal Nurcan Baysal is a founder of DISA (Diyarbakir Political and Social Research Institute), the first Kurdish think-tank in Turkey and a founder of Development Centre Association in Diyarbakir. From 1997 to 2007, she was the Coordinator of UNDP in the Southeast Anatolia of Turkey. She put major effort in developing women snon-governmental organizations in the Southeastern Turkey. Baysal serves as an advisor to or a board member on many non-profit organizations like Global Fund for Women, Open Society, Women Labour and Employment Platform, Urgent Action Fund, Dicle University Women Centre, etc. She wrote many articles on development, forced migration and Kurdish issue. She was awarded the WWSF (World Women Summit Foundation) prize for women in She has been also working in Ozyegin Foundation since February Murat Belge Murat Belge holds his degree from the Department of English Language and Literature, İstanbul Bilgi Unversity. As a founder and a head of the Department of Comparative Literature at this university, he taught courses on Western and Turkish culture and civilization as well as on militaristic pathways into nation-statehood. Author of dozens of books about literature, he is also a translator of the classics of Anglo-American literature such as Charles Dickens, William Faulkner or James Joyce. Belge has been a regular contributor to many daily columns, most currently to Radikal. Gareth Jenkins Gareth Jenkins is a writer and analyst based in Istanbul, Turkey, where he has been resident since During his first ten years in Turkey, he worked as a journalist for international wire services, newspapers and periodicals, covering a broad range of political, economic and social issues related to Turkey and the surrounding region. In recent years Jenkins has focused primarily on analysis, contributing numerous articles, reviews and commentaries to scholarly journals and edited volumes and delivering presentations at seminars and conferences. His special fields of interest are civil-military relations, terrorism and security issues and political Islam. He is currently a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, a joint initiative by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University (US) and the Institute for Security and Development Policy (Sweden). Ulrike Dufner Ulrike Dufner has been the Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Office in Turkey since January She is an expert on foreign policy and international relations, conflict resolution and management as well as on Turkey, Near and Middle East. Dufner previously served for two years in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Turkey and South-Caucasus desks. During the years , she served as an advisor on international politics, conflict management and resolution, international human rights issues with special emphasis on the Near and Middle East as well as Maghreb countries at the Parliamentary group of Alliance 90/The Greens in the German Bundestag. Dufner, who took an active role in feminist and peace movements in Germany, conducted a research in Egypt and Turkey. In 1996 she acquired her PhD in Political Science, Turkology and Modern History.

5 Panel II: Turkey A rising power? Abbas Djavadi Abbas Djavadi is associate director of broadcasting at RFE/RL, overseeing programs in Persian (Radio Farda), Dari and Pashto (Radio Free Afghanistan), Arabic (Radio Free Iraq), Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh.He joined RFE/RL in 1985 as an editor of the Azeri Service and later served as a supervising analyst of the Central Asian programs and Director of RFE/RL s Tajik Service. He set up RFE/RL s first broadcasts to Iran (Radio Azadi) in 1998 and Radio Free Afghanistan in After serving for more than three years as Director of RFE/ RL s Azeri Service, Abbas was promoted to Associate Director of Broadcasting. Before joining RFE/RL, Abbas worked as a lecturer at the University of Cologne, Germany, and contributed to a dozens of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast services in Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan. He has written two books and numerous articles on Persian and Azeri languages,socio-linguistics, politics, and history. Djavadi spent six years in Turkey, speaks Turkish fluently and is a close observer of Turkish affairs. William M.Drozdiak William Drozdiak is the President of the American Council on Germany, one of the oldest and most prestigious non-profit organizations devoted to cooperation between the United States and Europe. Previously, he was founding executive director of the Transatlantic Center in Brussels, Belgium, created by the German Marshall Fund of the United States as its hub of operations in Europe and as an independent think tank for U.S. European relations. For two decades, he served as a senior editor and foreign correspondent with the Washington Post, based in Paris, Berlin and Brussels. Before joining the Post, he covered the State Department and later the Middle East as Cairo bureau chief for Time Magazine. He has written extensively about global issues for many publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Time, Newsweek and the Financial Times. Before becoming a journalist, he played professional basketball for seven years in the United States and Europe. He graduated from the University of Oregon and earned a masters degree in economics from the College of Europe in Bruges. Anat Lapidot-Firilla Anat Lapidot-Firilla is a senior research fellow and academic director of the Mediterranean unit at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She teaches Turkish foreign policy and contemporary Middle East politics at the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the head of the Contemporary Turkish Studies Forum (VLJI in conjunction with the Hebrew University) and editor of the new Journal of Levantine Studies.. Lapidot-Firilla received her BA in History of the Middle East from Tel Aviv University, and holds a PhD from the Department of Politics, the University of Durham, U.K. Prior to joining the VLJI she was researcher and academic director at the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies, School of Public Policy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has been granted numerous scholarships and awards, among which are grants from the Wingate Scholarship, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, U.K, HIRIJW Research Grant, awarded by Brandeis University USA and the Young Truman Scholar at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace ( ). In 2002 she was a visiting scholar at the Center of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Soli Özel Soli Özel is a professor of international relations and political science at Istanbul Bilgi University. He received his B.A. at Bennington College, M.A. from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Özel taught at U.C. Santa Cruz, SAIS, University of Washington, Hebrew University, and Bogazici University in Istanbul. He was a fellow at St. Antony s College at Oxford in the spring of 2002, and a senior visiting fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in the fall of the same year. Özel s articles and opinion pieces appear in a wide variety of leading newspapers in Turkey and elsewhere around the world. Currently, he is a columnist forhaberturknewspaper, a frequent contributor tothe Washington Post s Post Global, and the former editor of the Turkish edition offoreign Policy. Most recently, he co-authored thereport Rebuilding a Partnership: Turkish-American Relations For a New Era with Dr. Suhnaz Yilmaz. Irena Kalhousová Irena Kalhousová works as a chief analyst at the. She focuses on the contemporary Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict and transatlantic relations. Irena is a lecturer at the Anglo- American University, where she is teaching courses on the Middle East and the European Union. She regularly writes for the main Czech newspapers and journals and contributes live commentaries to the Czech TV and radio on contemporary Middle-Eastern issues. She is a co-founder of the European Leadership & Academic Institute, where she is the Program Director. She holds M.Phil. Degree in Contemporary European Studies from University of Cambridge and a B.A. degree in Political Science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

6 Conference Team Irena Kalhousová Head of the Conference Team Tomáš Kopečný Chief Organizer of the Conference Erik Siegl Program Coordinator Heinrich Böll Stiftung Eva van de Rakt Director Heinrich Böll Stiftung Oldřich Černý Director Petr Lang Program Coordinator Conference Staff Tomáš Brodec, Kamila Čermáková, Pavel Dan, Veronika Doskočilová, Martin Dunaj, Karel Manoch, Peter Mecko, Ondřej Šumavský, Petr Vrchota

7 PSSI is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in early 2002 to advance the building of a just, secure, democratic, free-market society in the Czech Republic and other post-communist states. PSSI s mission is to help build an ever-growing number of informed and security-minded policy-makers dedicated to the development of democratic institutions and values in the Czech Republic and its regional neighbors. PSSI offers programs that meet the critical academic and experiential requirements to equip new generations of young leaders to manage the complex, security-related challenges of the 21st century. To fulfill its mission, PSSI undertakes to organize a variety of activities under its four principal programs: the Security Scholars Program; Program of Atlantic Security Studies; the Outreach Program; and the Corporate Council Program. PSSI also aims to identify and analyze select, cutting-edge foreign policy and international security issues and propose prudent and achievable policies to address these challenges. Heinrich Böll Foundation The Heinrich Böll Foundation is part of the Green political movement that has developed worldwide as a response to the traditional politics of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism. Our main tenets are ecology and sustainability, democracy and human rights, self-determination and justice. We place particular emphasis on gender democracy, meaning social emancipation and equal rights for women and men. We are also committed to equal rights for cultural and ethnic minorities and to the societal and political participations of immigrants. Finally, we promote non-violence and proactive peace policies. Our namesake, the writer and Nobel Prize laureate Heinrich Böll, personifies the values we stand for: defense of freedom, civic courage, tolerance, open debate, and the valuation of art and culture as independent spheres of thought and action. To achieve our goals, we seek strategic partnerships with others who share our values. We are an independent organization that is headquartered in the Federal Republic of Germany, yet we are an international actor. We cooperate with 160 project partners in over 60 countries and maintain offices in 28 countries, including ten in Europe and one in the United States. We regard ourselves as a European organization. We support the process of European integration and promote transatlantic relations. Our international offices in Prague and Warsaw conduct their activities in support of civil society organizations. They coordinate the foundation s regional work in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The offices work on the challenges of European integration, gender democracy, as well as on energy policy and climate protection in the project countries. The Warsaw office has a special regional focus on gender policy matters, while the Prague office deals with interregional issues on energy and climate policy and Green movements in Central and Eastern Europe. The Prague office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation was established on August 21, 1990 and was the foundation s first-ever office abroad.

8 International Conference Where is Turkey heading on the Threshold of the Millennium? May 4, 2011 Co-authors: Irena Kalhousová, Tomáš Kopečný Edited by: Edit for Excellence PSSI, HBS 2011 Europe for Citizens Programme

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