TURKISH TORQUE... Short News & Quick Notes By UGUR AKINCI tork.blogspot.com

New Election for Erdogan, Feb ‘03
In Turkey, new political realities on the ground are creating their own "corrections." Erdogan is the new de facto leader of Turkey. However, he is not even a member of the Turkish Parliament. So new solutions are rushing in to remedy the problem. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Turkish Supreme Election Board (TSEB) has cancelled the election results in Siirt. Fadil Akgunduz an independent deputy from Siirt, will lose his seat. Akgunduz had been a principal in the Jet-Pa embezzlement scandal. But it seems TSEB forgot all about that when they approved Akgunduz candidacy before the elections.Now all of a sudden the bureaucracy’s memory is refreshed.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and (yes!) Necmettin Erbakan will be able to run in the new February by-election. There will be no 10% threshold. Thus any party that could not enter Turkish Parliament in Nov 3 election will be able to do so in February.

Kerkuk ‘03 = Cyprus ‘74 ?
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Pauley Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of State Mark Grossman visited Ankara. They handed a list of 4 demands in a hot war against Iraq:

U.S. wants to use Turkish 1) ports, 2) territory, 3) airbases, and even 4) troops.

In return, Washington assured Ankara that this time around Turkey’s economic losses would be compensated. Son Bush seems to be trying not to repeat his father’s fiasco. But there’ll be new errors this time, for sure. And someone will pay.

My crystal ball says hell will break loose not when U.S. special forces enter Baghdad but when Massoud Barzani of KDP captures Kerkuk and as a response Turkish armed forces will be forced to enter northern Iraq and save Turcomans from a certain annihilation. And I’m not even mentioning the rich oil fields in Kerkuk. Unfortunately Cyprus ‘74 may be played all over again, this time in northern Iraq. I just hope I am dead wrong.

A Mighty Oak Topples
Melih Cevdet Anday, one of the giants of Turkish literature and a columnist for the social-democrat daily Cumhuriyet, has died on Friday at age 87. Anday’s funeral was held in Istanbul, attended by thousands of his friends and readers including a who’s who list of Turkish politics, arts and sciences.

Melih Cevdet, together with Orhan Veli (Kanik) and Oktay Rifat was one of the founding members of the "Garip [Strange]" movement in Turkish poetry, introducing a new paradigm that did not care for strict rhyming and freely talked about the daily concerns of the common people. In the "Garip Manifesto" published in 1941, Anday stressed the need to get Turkish poetry rid of "artistry and poeticism."

Anday was born in Canakkale on March 3, 1915. He was the great grandson of Mirlava Mehmet Rasit Pasa, the first pharmacist in the Ottoman Empire. Following his middle and high school education in Istanbul and Ankara, he went to Belgium to study Sociology. However, at the declaration of WW2, he had to return to Turkey.

The winner of dozens of poetry and literature prizes, Anday’s works have been translated into Russian, French, English, Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian and Polish.

God bless his sweet soul.

Views expressed in this column belong only to its author.