Birmingham News Commentary: U.S. should properly recognize Turkish Republic Day

Today, October 29th, over half a million Turkish-Americans celebrate their national holiday Turkish Republic Day. Eighty nine years ago, on this date, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed realizing the aspirations of Turkish people for freedom, justice and peace. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkish Republic became the only secular parliamentary democracy with predominantly Muslim population.

Over the past nine decades, Turkey has demonstrated its strong commitment to the universal values of liberty, justice, democracy and tolerance as well as to its long-term strategic alliance with the United States. During the 1950-53 Korean War, over 5,000 Turkish soldiers took part and over 700 of them fell as heroes fighting alongside the Americans. Since 1952, Turkey has been a key NATO ally and a major contributor to the alliance missions, most recently in Kosovo and Afghanistan. It is among the fastest growing emerging markets and remains an important U.S. partner in a vast region stretching from Eastern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia.

Within less than a century of immigration, Americans of Turkish descent have left a significant imprint on a diverse cultural spectrum of our nation and have contributed to America's advancement in the fields of business, science, medicine, technology and arts.

I join all Turkish-Americans, members of the Pax Turcica Institute, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and the Federation of Turkish-American Associations, in requesting elected U.S. officials to properly recognize Turkish Republic Day.

Ozge Cavusoglu

Calera

URL: http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-commentary/2012/10/your_view_us_should_properly_r.html

Read More

Statement by Secretary Clinton on Turkey's National Day

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesperson
October 26, 2012


STATEMENT BY SECRETARY CLINTON

On the Occasion of the Republic of Turkey’s National Day

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to the people of Turkey as you celebrate the 89th anniversary of the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey this October 29.

Read More

Armenia's Oscar nomination - a state-sponsored propaganda film

Armenia has recently announced the If Only Everyone as its official submission for the 85th Annual Academy (Oscar) Awards under the best foreign-language film category. Shot under the patronage of Armenia's President, Serzh Sargsyan, this film promotes a one-sided political agenda and misrepresents the long-standing Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It ignores the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis currently displaced by the Armenian occupation, instead seeking to justify the war crimes committed by the film's sponsors as a struggle for freedom and self-determination.

Join the Pax Turcica action campaign by Azerbaijani-Americans to raise awareness in media and to call upon the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences to withdraw the If Only Everyone from consideration.

CLICK TO TAKE ACTION

Read More

ASA celebrates 55th anniversary at the famous U.S. landmark

NEW YORK - On October 18, 2012, in celebration of its 55th anniversary and the 21st anniversary of Azerbaijani Independence Day, Azerbaijan Society of America (ASA) organized a reception at the landmark Empire State Building in New York. The nearly 100 attendees at the reception included high-ranking diplomats from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, representatives from various New York-based governmental, non-governmental and business organizations, CBS News and other media groups, Azerbaijani, Turkish and Jewish communities, students from Columbia and New York Universities.

Read More

Haaretz: Pax Turcica – The rise of Muslim democracies in the Middle East

Many in Turkey see post-Arab Spring regimes as potential partners in a regional coalition under Ankara's leadership.
 
by Avraham Burg

ISTANBUL - Istanbul is always fascinating in its vitality, with its endless traffic jams and young women in traditional scarves kissing their boyfriends in public. Very few women wear a veil; in any case, they're all connected on Facebook. Commerce is flourishing, global companies are knocking on the door and the shopping centers feature an impressive array of international brands. The middle class' purchasing power is steadily growing, not all bearded men kneel when the muezzin calls, and not all women are conservative.

Read More

NYRB: When satire conquered Iran: Molla Nasreddin

Slavs and Tatars

One of the most important contributions to modern Azerbaijani literature and culture was the irreverent early twentieth-century magazine Molla Nasreddin. What follows is an introduction to the magazine by the artist collective Slavs and Tatars, together with a series of magazine excerpts featured in their book, Molla Nasreddin: The Magazine That Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, recently published by JRP-Ringier, in a series edited by Christoph Keller.

—The Editors 

Read More

Metsamor, a powder keg waiting to happen

News.Az interviews Rafiga Gurbanzade, a student in Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California-Irvine and a member of the Pax Turcica Institute.

Last month you published an article titled “Metsamor, the Fukushima of the Caucasus” in the Journal of Turkish Weekly. Was the choice of this topic incidental?

Not at all, the Metsamor nuclear power plant (NPP) has long been a concern not only for Armenia’s neighbors, but also for the international community, especially the European observers. The leakage of radioactive materials from the Fukushima NPP, in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, highlighted threats posed by NPPs to the people and environment in seismically active regions, such as the Caucasus. And the recent August 11, 2012 devastating earthquake in the neighboring South (Iranian) Azerbaijan was an alarming reminder that, with Metsamor NPP in operation, the South Caucasus region is very susceptible to disasters alike the one at Fukushima Daiichi.

Read More