Capital News Service

Turkey should help Syrians, Turkish students here say

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By DUYGU KANVER
Capital News Service
LANSING – The Syrian town of Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish city by the Turkish border, has been under assault by the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since mid-September, leaving about 800 dead and 300,000 displaced from their homes. While airstrikes led by the U.S. have supported ongoing resistance by Kurdish forces in the region, Kurds say Turkey’s collaboration by opening its borders with Syria and Iraq is central to saving Kobani. “We ask for nothing from the Turkish government but this,” says Ruken Sengul, a Turkish Kurd postdoctoral fellow in the Armenian Studies program at the University of Michigan. On Oct. 29, Turkey’s borders were opened to Kobani-bound rebel fighters called the Free Syrian Army and a day later to Iraqi Kurdish fighters called the peshmergas, but those moves by the Turkish government didn’t satisfy the Kurds and Turks in Michigan.

Capital News Service

EU membership will elude Turkey, Michigan Turks say

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By DUYGU KANVER
Capital News Service
LANSING — Turks in Michigan say they’re not hopeful about the success of an initiative by the new government of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to accelerate negotiations to win European Union membership for Turkey. In the second cabinet meeting after Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s election as president, “the focus and primary agenda was the European Union,” said Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc.
Arinc outlined a three-step plan to begin this year as “a new but scheduled course of action” to be carried out within five years. The strategy aims at preparing Turkey for EU membership by 2019. But the new government is “trying to cover up their failed Middle East policy” with the new EU initiative, said Timur Kocaoglu, an international relations professor and the associate director of the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Michigan State University. Kocaoglu said he did not think anybody would take the three-stage plan seriously.