Submitted by Peter Korzun via Strategic-Culture.org,
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on November 20 that Turkey did not need to join the European Union «at all costs». Instead, it could become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact. The Turkish leader said he had already discussed the idea with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Turkish opposition journalist Can Dündar narrowly escaped an assassination attempt outside a courthouse in Istanbul where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets. The shooting happened during a break in the court proceedings where Dundar was awaiting a verdict that could see him imprisoned for life. Dündar, editor-in-chief of the leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet and Gül, the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, face life sentences for publishing a story that said Turkey was delivering arms to Islamist rebels in Syria.
Earlier this week we observed that in what may be Europe's latest mistake, the European Union is about to grant visa-gree travel to 80 million Turks: a key concession that Erdogan obtained as a result of the ongoing negotiations over Europe's refugee crisis which has pushed Turkey into the key player spotlight. And then, overnight, the European Commission officially granted its support to a visa-free travel deal with Turkey after Ankara threatened to back out of a landmark migration deal. It proposed to lift visa requirements by the end of June.
One month ago, we cited Turkey's president Tayyip Recep Erdogan who said that "it is not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title," when was urging parliament to include journalists, politicians, academics, and activists under the country’s anti-extremism laws.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had predicted the Brussels attacks over a week ago, warning European countries that they were likely to become the victim of terrorist attacks similar to the car bombing in Ankara on March 13. Erdogan singled out Brussels in a speech last week, saying “There is no reason why the bomb that exploded in Ankara cannot explode in Brussels, in any other European city,” during a speech in Canakkale.