Turkey’s government has won international praise for efforts to end a bitter dispute with Armenia and expand rights for Kurds, but a fierce battle is brewing at home over the highly charged issues.
Parliamentary sources said the government will put the two issues before lawmakers soon after they resume legislative work on Tuesday — five days after parliament re-opens. But it will have a tough time winning over opposition parties that have already raised objections to both projects.
For Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the two issues are of utmost importance to the nation’s standing on the international arena, but they could also cost him politically at home.
His government has been accused at home of making concessions that damage Turkey’s interests and of selling out Azerbaijan, which is locked in conflict with Armenia over the breakaway enclave of Nagorny Karabakh.
Turkey has long refused to establish diplomatic links with Armenia over Yerevan’s efforts to have World War I-era massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks recognised as genocide — a label Turkey rejects.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically killed between 1915 and 1917, and the massacres have been recognized as a genocide by France, Canada and the European parliament.
Reconciliation between Ankara and Yerevan would bolster Turkey’s bid to join the EU, as would a government plan to introduce measures to boost the rights of the Kurdish minority and erode support for a campaign by Kurdistan Workers’ Party rebels for self-rule.
The government remains tight-lipped on the contents of the package, but media reports say it may include steps to lift restrictions on teaching Kurdish in schools, renaming Kurdish villages that have Turkish names and allowing campaigning in Kurdish. Ankara could also open the way for the return of some 12,000 Turkish Kurds exiled in northern Iraq. Kurdish activists, on the other hand, want the government to recognize the Kurdish identity and culture in the Constitution, a proposal that Erdogan has rejected.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
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Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits