By YUSUF KANLI
TDN- Every day is a new beginning... It was moreso on Friday, as it was "Nevruz" or "Newroz" day... a day to mark the "rebirth of nature" or the start of spring. It ought to be a day to celebrate with hopes that the "New Day" will bring happiness and prosperity. Until a few years ago, however, reacting to the assumption that the day belonged only to the Kurdish people rather than to any actual festivity, the day was becoming an occasion of confrontation between security forces and demonstrating groups chanting separatist slogans and carrying portraits of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers` Party (PKK) who is serving a lifelong prison term on Ymraly island.
Was it much different this year? Yes, and no... There were still demonstrations... There were still people trying to provoke people trying to celebrate "Nevruz"... And, as always, security forces were trying to manage the situation and avoid violence... Particularly in the Southeast, there was not much attention by the local security people the people writing "Nevruz" on the placards they were carrying... Perhaps this country has managed to develop an understanding that clandestinely banning the letter "w" and making it a "crime" to use the word in reference to the day and writing "Newroz" will not help to solve any of the problems of the country...
Waking to the day, despite the rather gloomy and rainy weather conditions in Ankara, I thought, this is a day to wish "Nevruz kutlu olsun!" "Newroz Piroz Be!" and "Happy Nevruz!" to our people and to all of humanity... To tell everyone "Let this day be a new beginning..."
Half sleeping and still having difficulty finding the coffee cup on the breakfast table, I turned on the TV... Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdodan was talking about some serious subject... It was rather difficult to comprehend what he was saying, but I caught a sentence... The prime minister was appealing to the people to let the "new day" really be a new day devoid of violence... I would perhaps still not wake up... One of my eyes still fixed on the door of the bedroom expressing a strong desire to spend few more hours in bed, the bitter ring of the telephone turned me to the reality of the day... It was almost 9:30 a.m. and I was expected to participate at a news program half an hour later on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) regarding the meeting in the Nicosia buffer zone between the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot peoples of the island.
It was indeed a new day on Cyprus
For the first time since Sept. 5, 2007, leaders of the two sides were meeting and the entire international community was expecting them to use the opportunity to work out the modality of resuming the Cyprus peacemaking process. The TRT news program was to last 45 minutes; it continued for three hours and when it ended the Cyprus meeting was still going on. Well, no one must have had hopes that a problem that has resisted all efforts by an army of international mediators over the past more-than-four-decade period would be solved in a few hours just because there is a socialist Mehmet Ali Talat in North and a communist Demetris Christofias in the South as leaders of their peoples... The two agreed at the end of their three-and-a-half-hour-long meeting to open the Ledra (Lokmaci) border gate "soon" and continue peace talks with committees to be established within the next three months. Better than nothing... They at least said they have the intention to work for peace. Thus, it was indeed a new day on Cyprus...
In between the Cyprus discussions, there were "forced major interventions"... It was the state-owned TV channel, and the prime minister was talking at a meeting while the main opposition leader was hosting a press conference. Erdodan was still complaining about the closure case opened against his party at the Constitutional Court on the one hand and repeating his wish that the "New Day" be a peaceful day... Main opposition Republican People`s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, on the other hand, apparently had a more crowded agenda. On the one hand he was warning the government that legislating some amendments in the laws and the constitution with the intention of obstructing the closure case against the ruling party would be incompatible with the notion of law. On the other hand he was demanding the interior minister urgently make a statement and explain why so many leading personalities - including famous politician Dodu Perinçek and Ylhan Selçuk, the almost 90-year-old chief columnist and publisher of the Cumhuriyet newspaper - were arrested earlier in the day in connection with the so-called Ergenekon probe...
What new day?

(Yusuf Kanly can be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected])