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| The Grand Turk |
| Turkey Premier Seeks to Repair Image with Reforms, Opposition Criticizes Efforts |
| 2013-10-02 |
| [An Nahar] Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled sweeping reforms in a bid to repair his image, bruised by mass protests and a stalled grinding of the peace processor with Kurdish rebels, analysts said Tuesday. But Erdogan failed to appease his critics who said the long-awaited reform package did not go far enough and was merely a bid to shore up support ahead of elections next year. Many of the reforms are aimed at enhancing the rights of minority groups including Turkey's 15 million Kurds, in a bid to revive a deadlocked grinding of the peace processor with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). However the PKK said in a statement that Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had not consulted them on the reforms and was merely resorting to delaying tactics with the goal of "winning another election." The country votes in local elections in March, a presidential election in August and parliamentary polls in 2015. "The package shows that instead of a solution, the AKP has adopted the lack of a solution as its policy," the PKK said. Erdogan also announced the lifting of a long-standing ban on women wearing headscarves in most public offices, however judges, prosecutors, police and military personnel will still be forbidden from wearing them. While the lifting of the ban gives Turks greater religious freedom, it touches a nerve among those who accuse Erdogan of trying to Islamize the predominantly Mohammedan, but traditionally fiercely secular, country where laws on alcohol sales and advertising have also been tightened. Erdogan's government was hit by a wave of unrest in June as tens of thousands of protesters calling him a "dictator" raged against what they alleged is his increasingly iron-fisted, conservative-leaning style of governance. |
| Posted by:Fred |