Five Turkish nationals, employees of Mehmet Akif schools in Kosovo, were arrested on Thursday morning in Gjakova and Prizren.

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The Turks are fiercely opposed to the U.S. plans, seeing the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. And when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the White House this week, the most he and President Donald Trump may be able to do is agree to disagree, and move on.

\”The Turks see this as a crisis in the relationship,\” said Jonathan Schanzer at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The challenge is hardly new. Long before Trump took office, U.S. presidents have grappled with the fragility of partnering with Turkey\’s government and the Kurds to carry out a Middle East agenda.

Past administrations have sought a delicate balance. Too exuberant in its support for the Kurds, and the U.S. risks pushing ally Turkey toward U.S. geopolitical rivals like Russia or emboldening the Kurds to try to create an independent state — a scenario that would destabilize multiple countries in the region. Too little cooperation with the Kurds risks squandering a battlefield ally with proven effectiveness against extremist threats and who has staunchly supported Washington.

Trump has made his priorities clear.

His administration is arming Syrian Kurdish fighters as part of an effort to recapture the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group\’s self-declared capital. Coupled with the U.S.-backed fight in the Iraqi city of Mosul, Raqqa is seen as a key step toward liberating the remaining territory the militants hold.

Turkey has been pressuring the U.S. to drop support for the Kurdish militants in Syria for years and doesn\’t want them spearheading the Raqqa effort. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish group, known as the YPG, a terrorist group because of its ties to the outlawed Kurdish Workers\’ Party inside Turkey. The United States, the European Union and Turkey all agree the YPG is a terrorist organization.

The Turks fear any weapons the U.S. provides the Syrian Kurds could well end up with their ethnic brethren in Turkey, who\’ve fought violently as part of a separatist insurgency for more than three decades. As a nod to Turkey\’s concerns, the Pentagon has promised tight monitoring of all weapons and greater intelligence sharing to help the Turks better watch over their frontiers. Kurds are an ethnic group predominantly concentrated along the borders of four countries — Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

But a face-to-face confrontation on the matter between Trump and Erdogan seems inevitable.

Erdogan and other top Turkish officials have pressed for the U.S. to reverse its strategy, however low the prospects of Trump changing his mind. As a result, experts see Erdogan using the meeting to confront Trump on a host of other Turkish grievances. Those include extraditing the Pennsylvania-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan blames for fomenting a failed coup last summer, and dropping U.S. charges against Reza Zarrab, a Turkish businessman accused of money-laundering and violating U.S. sanctions in Iran.

\”I see this trip as a new milestone in Turkey-U.S. relations,\” Erdogan said, as he prepared to fly to Washington.

The U.S., too, has a wish list for Turkey. Washington is concerned by rising anti-Americanism in Turkey that Erdogan\’s government has tolerated since the July coup attempt. The U.S. also has pressed unsuccessfully for the release of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor, and other detained U.S. citizens.

Trump also has much at stake. His willingness to partner with authoritarian rulers and overlook their shortcomings on democracy and human rights have alarmed U.S. lawmakers of both parties. Trump\’s premise has been that he is focusing on deal-making. That puts added pressure on him to get results.

Trump has gone out of his way to foster a good relationship with Erdogan. After a national referendum last month that strengthened Erdogan\’s presidential powers, European leaders and rights advocates criticized Turkey for moving closer toward autocratic rule. Trump congratulated Erdogan.

Now, the American leader may try to cash in.

\”Trump has prioritized protecting U.S. national security interests over lecturing allies on democratic values or human rights,\” said James Phillips, a senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation. \”I don\’t think the president will lose any sleep if he is criticized for meeting with President Erdogan, as long as it pays dividends for advancing his foreign policy agenda.\”

But Erdogan may not be amenable to accepting the U.S. military support for the Kurds in a quid pro quo. Last month, the Turkish military bombed Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, in one case with American forces only about six miles (10 kilometers) away. His government has insisted it may attack Syrian Kurdish fighters again. The U.S., whose forces are sometimes embedded with the Kurds, has much to fear.

Barack Aydin of the Washington-based Kurdish Policy Research Center, said the key ought to be a broader peace process between Erdogan\’s government and Kurdish opponents in Turkey, which would eliminate these problems.

\”That would be a very good start,\” Aydin said.

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But the European Union should also be held accountable for the outcome, and for a blatantly defective way of dealing with Turkey over the past decades. For instance, the EU failed to move forward with the accession negotiations at times when democratic support was desperately needed to empower democratic forces.

While the Turkish republic was left alone dealing with a mass influx of millions of refugees, the European Union only turned to its Mediterranean neighbour for help when confronted with its own refugee crisis.

Source: Equal.com

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“Capital erosion is the most important issue in the Turkish banking industry, because capital has become the most important limited resource,\” Turkiye Is Bankasi AS’s Ersin Ozince said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday in Istanbul. “Even the best banks are looking for subordinated debt,\” showing investors are reluctant to inject capital as returns on less risky investments rise.

Average return on equity for Turkish deposit banks was 13 percent last year, compared with an average yield on 10-year sovereign debt of 10.2 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Facing government pressure to increase credit after the economy expanded at the slowest pace since 2009, lenders have turned to subordinated debt, which supports capital buffers, carries higher risk for investors and costs more.

Currency Risk

“This isn’t a bad thing, but it shows that investors prefer not to be a shareholder due to better alternative yields plus risks,\” Ozince said. “Return on equity is approaching 14 or 15 percent, but when you add risk, this is even lower than government bonds,” he said.

Among the risks: another bout of currency weakness after a 17 percent drop in the lira against the dollar last year, higher interest rates due to soaring inflation, and the possibility of a jump in non-performing loans.

“We have to manage those risks because it’s not just the banking sector, but also the real sector that’s exposed,\” he said.

Turkish companies’ net foreign currency liabilities were around $200 billion as of the end February, according to the central bank data, or about 25 percent of gross domestic product. In an attempt to better monitor that exposure, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the government is working on a model for the central bank to gauge the impact of currency fluctuations on corporate liabilities.
While a credit guarantee fund helped boost lending in the first quarter, other initiatives floated by the government may not have the intended impact, according to Ozince. Nurettin Canikli, another deputy prime minister, told Bloomberg last week that legislation would be introduced to allow banks to securitize and sell off their loan portfolios, letting them raise cash to fund new loans. Ozince is skeptical.

“We’ve always wanted securitization,\” he said. “The reason it’s not being done is because it’s thought that there wouldn’t be enough demand. What’s important is stability in the country. If we have that, of course the demand will also come.\”

All of that leaves banks reliant on foreign financing to spur domestic growth, he said. “I don’t see a risk in roll-overs, but we can’t say there’s no problem,” he said, citing \”markedly” higher borrowing costs.

Source: Bloomberg

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For instance, this sentence is not frequently used abroad: “Let us eat Turkish food tonight,” whereas in big cities around the world, the French, Italian, Spanish as well as Chinese and Japanese cuisines are all popular.
The Peruvian cuisine that we did not know of until recently has become a global trend with its “ceviche.”

I have always thought that the state should act like a conductor for the promotion of our cuisine that has separate tastes in different regions. I have shared my thought with several top officials including former Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay because we know that the international promotion of famous cuisines including French and Italian are always supported by their state.

Despite the lack of required strategy for the promotion of the Turkish cuisine, there has been an interesting activity recently in our gastronomy world. Famous chefs as well as those cities that are known for their tastes are on the lead.

Chef Mehmet Gürs of one of Istanbul’s best restaurants Mikla has been able to make it to the top 100 restaurants of the world three years in a row. Mikla was 96th in 2015; it was 56th in 2016; and this year it is in the 51st place. Gürs is a chef who has created the “New Anatolian Cuisine” using local tastes of Anatolia, working with anthropologists from time to time.

İzmir University of Economics’ Department of Culinary Arts and Management International Coordinator Sırma Güven is a person who has made İzmir be included in “Delice Network Good Food Cities.”

The other day, while we were in the city for daily Hürriyet’s “Explore İzmir” tour, she said it was important to be a part of this network “because you pledge to carry out gastronomical projects, work on your culinary culture. Delice will enable the Aegean cuisine to meet the world.” As a matter of fact, the “Artichoke Festival” at İzmir’s Urla district has been held as part of Delice Network Good Food Cities.

İzmir seems to be ready to go international with its gastronomy that it has enriched for centuries with Sephardic and Levantine cuisines and the cuisine of the islands.

Another example is Gaziantep, from the other side of Turkey. This city has registered its “baklava” years ago; last year it was able to enter UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in gastronomy. It is the ninth city to make it to this category in the world up to now.

Istanbul is a city where a gastronomy festival was held for first time in Turkey. The city is the center of where the Ottoman cuisine is best represented, also with tastes of Armenian and Greek cuisines. This festival is held under the name “Restaurant Week” between April 20 and May 8, when celebrations will be held at several restaurants. Famous chefs will offer menus with reasonable prices. On the other hand, this past weekend, “101 Tastes of Istanbul Festival” was held.

This month, the “Cappadox Festival” will be held between May 18 and 21 in Cappadocia, where gastronomy has a significant place alongside music and modern arts.

Thanks to those who made gastronomy enter all fields of our lives, I guess this time Turkish cuisine is ready to challenge the world.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News

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Turkey has two main tourism destinations, which need to be preserved carefully: Istanbul and the Mediterranean resort of Antalya. Let me present some data of great significance for the sector related to these two destinations.

The number of foreign arrivals to Antalya, another top tourism destination, also plummeted to their lowest since 2004.

The number of foreign arrivals to Antalya declined to 6 million in 2016, a 43 percent fall compared to 2015, mainly due to the Russian crisis and rising security concerns.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Istanbul declined to 9.2 million in 2016, a 26 percent fall compared to the previous year, according to data from the Istanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate. This was the first year-on-year decrease in the number of foreign arrivals to Istanbul since 2000, amid escalating security concerns.

Overall, Istanbul dropped from the world’s sixth top visited tourism destination to eighth in MasterCard’s 2016 Global Destination Cities Index. According to the index, based on estimates from industry data, Istanbul’s international visitor arrivals decreased the most among all top 20 destinations. With a fall of 11.4 percent, Istanbul also saw the biggest contraction in visitor spending among the top 10, which is composed of Bangkok, London, Paris, Dubai, New York, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, Tokyo and Seoul.

Istanbul remained the third most visited destination in Europe in 2016. But unlike other top-ranked European destination cities, some 58 percent of international visitors in Istanbul are from outside of Europe. In terms of the origins of visitors, Germany leads with 11 percent to Istanbul, followed by Iran, Russia, and the U.S. all at 5 percent, and the U.K. at 4 percent.

According to Istanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate data, the largest number of foreign tourists still came from Europe with 3.9 million arrivals and the Middle East with 2.3 million. They were followed by Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America and Oceania. Top sender markets for Istanbul were Germany, Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2016, marking a significant change in the last decade, as in 2006 the top markets for Istanbul were Germany, Russia and the U.K.

The city saw a 22.5 percent fall in the number of arrivals from its top market Germany in 2016 compared to 2015 and a 14.2 percent year-on-year fall in arrivals from Iran, although there was a 15.6 percent of year-on-year increase in arrivals from Saudi Arabia.

While arrivals from Arab countries into Istanbul took a 22 percent share of the total in 2016, up from 11 percent in 2011, arrivals from Arab countries saw a 22 percent year-on-year decrease in 2016.

These figures tell us many things. First of all, Turkey needs to address the security and safety concerns for all potential comers, as well as for its own citizens. Fortunately, there has been no major attack since the start of the year, and this should be maintained in a robust way.

What’s more, all tourists, irrespective of their reason of purpose, want to enjoy their travel time and do not want to visit any country that faces crisis-like tensions with their own country. It is therefore key for Turkey to develop its diplomatic ties with others, including the recent normalization in bilateral ties with Russia. For instance, the number of tourists visiting Antalya saw a sharp rise in April, with a 40 percent increase since the same month in 2016. Arrivals from Russia soared by 15.5 times during the period, data from the Antalya Governor’s Office showed.

Turkey has always gained much from its unique position as a bridge between the West and the East. Most tourists from the West and the East actually want to see a mixture of these ways of life together. If one side wins in this unique pendulum, Turkey will surely lose its tourism attraction.

Finally, Turkey must work to protect its tourism treasures, including İstiklal Avenue, the historical peninsula and the Bosphorus, among others. The current state of İstiklal Avenue – connecting to a concrete-filled square, with an emptied culture and art center, and without a historical tramway – is a long way from being any kind of center of attraction for either tourists or locals.

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IIF economists Ondrej Schneider and Ugras Ulku, and analyst Yalcin Oney, who recently returned to Washington, D.C. from Turkey, published a note Thursday raising their GDP forecast to 4.2% for 2017 (previously 3%), and to 3.5% for 2018 (previously 3.2%). Data are now showing the effect of government efforts to stimulate borrowing after the coup attempt in mid-July, which was followed by more than 100,000 arrests, detentions or firings in the government\’s ongoing coup investigation.

In November the government funneled 25 billion Turkish lira ($7 billion) into a credit guarantee. The goal was \”to boost bank lending by 250 billion lira in 2017, or roughly 13% of the existing loan book of Turkish banks.\” In addition, the government cut some taxes and deferred social security contributions to loosen money flows. Then, in April, a narrowly-won national referendum gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more control through constitutional amendments, lifting a cloud of uncertainty, even if he was already considered an authoritarian.

The IIF trio thinks the environment is positive for real GDP, which slid to 2.9% in 2016 from 6.1% in 2015, with reduced political uncertainty after the April referendum, ongoing fiscal easing and a credit guarantee fund. But rising interest rates will weigh on investment and consumption later this year, the IIF researchers conclude, adding:

\” … banks have so far given out roughly TL140 billion in loans under the Turkish Treasury’s guarantee. As a result, it appears that a bulk of the recent pick-up in bank lending to the corporate sector was driven by the government’s augmented credit guarantee fund (CGF) program, which allows banks to offer loans more easily, as part of the credit risk is covered by the Treasury guarantee. … The government guaranteed scheme has encouraged banks to restructure some of their existing (and often non-performing) loans into the CGF program. Such portfolio shifting provides little support to economic activity but it should give support to bank profits in 2017 …
To overcome structural impediments to growth and tackle the persistent external deficit problem, reforms or further incentives for innovations geared towards increasing value added of exports are needed. Channeling a higher share of the working age population and investment into technological innovation and R&D, thus helping Turkey to produce higher value added tradeables and improve productivity and competitiveness, should improve exports and growth potential significantly.\”

Source: Barrons

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During a visit in Ankara where he met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and President Erdogan, Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati has been told by the Turkish side that Ankara is paying particular attention to terrorist activities of Gulen’s FETO network which widely spread across Albania, and that all its assets and people should be dismantled without further delay.

According to Albanian TV ‘Top Channel’, Albanian Foreign Minister Bushati has confirmed the will to work with Turkey as allies and friends, but according to the best international practices and in respect of internal procedures of Albania, demanding facts for any person involved in terrorist activities in Albania.

In an official press release, the Albanian Foreign Ministry has said that during his meetings Foreign Minister Bushati spoke of the importance of the Turkish-Albanian ‘strategic relations’ and the firm will to cooperate against terrorism and extreme phenomenon as two NATO countries.

Since the attempted ‘coup’ in July, Turkey’s authorities have stepped up their action to close down all Gulen’s investments in Albania which Tirana Echo has learned that a massive ‘whitch-hunt’ is undergoing to remove all people with links to Gulen and its institutions, from any positions they may hold in Turkish investments or other institutions. It is rumored that several Albanian citizens working in Government have been included in the so called ‘black List’ of Erdogan which has been delivered to Albanian authorities.

 Outline of FETO Network across the Balkans according to Anadolu Agency Website

According to Turkish authorities, FETO runs 12 prestigious schools in Albania and 40 in total in the Balkans.

Earlier this month, Turkey’s Ambassador to Albania Hidayet Bayraktar said that Albania should stand by its strategic partnership and should not turn into a threat for Turkey demanding the Albanian authorities to “show the necessary sensitivity to destroy all FETÖ‘s extensions active across the beautiful country of Albania”.

Fethullah Gülen’s Organization FETO has build a wide network of private companies, media, civil society and educational institutions across the Balkans, but more notably in Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia.

Since the coup, relations between Ankara and Tirana have been strained due to a heavy presence of Gülen’s investments in the Balkan country. While Turkey has declared FETÖ a terrorist organization, Albania maintains that no terrorist organization has any educational activity in its territory.

Copyright 2016 TiranaEcho.com  All Rights Reserved

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In their latest European Council conclusions heads of EU member states called for a lasting stabilisation of the situation on the Eastern Mediterranean route which “requires the further implementation of the EU-Turkey statement and continued support for countries along the Western Balkans route”.

The European Council has called for further efforts to accelerate returns from the Greek islands to Turkey, in line with the EU-Turkey statement, asking Greece to “enhance the efficiency and speed of asylum procedures, and for the rapid appointment of permanent coordinators in the Greek hotspots”.

The Council has also called on member states to help Greece with further resources needed to speed up the process of asylum cases and returns while they should revise the visa mechanism with regards to a visa free regime with the Schengen area, as part the EU-Turkey deal.

While the situation is not urgent in terms of numbers of refugees knocking on Europe’s doors, the EU is eager to return refugees to Turkey without further delays from the Greek side, amid fears that the Agreement is only working in Turkey’s favor.

Greece is host to some 50,000 migrants with huge numbers still trapped in several Greek islands in the Mediterranean demanding clarity about their status. Although number of migrant arrivals into Greece has fallen drastically, very few are being sent back to Turkey due to paperwork problems and lack of proper resources to deal with their asylum cases.

Copyright 2016 TiranaEcho.com  All Rights Reserved

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