HURRIYET- Columnist Oktay Eksi comments on developments from last year and his expectations for the new year. A summary of his column is as follows:
Yesterday we completed the first day of the new year. One down, 364 to go. We hope these 364 days will bring happiness to our nation as well as all of humanity. When starting a new year, you can’t help looking back for a moment and also thinking of the future. It’s the same if you’re a citizen of a country like Turkey, which starts the day with one issue and then goes to bed with new ones. The last year was very busy indeed. When we were on the verge of solving our economic crisis, we held elections. We swept 90% of the political actors from the stage. We took important steps concerning such important issues as the European Union. However, things ultimately fell short at the year’s-end. Turkey implemented important reforms both to the Constitution and in other laws in 2002. If Turkey had been able to implement such reforms in 2000 or 2001, we also would have been able to make a better case for our EU membership bid. Actually if this delay had occurred in another European country, this would have been tolerated as the problem sprang from the coalition parties’ obligation to convince each other to reach a consensus, for example, when they tried to soften the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) concerning the death penalty issue. Before an atmosphere of consensus emerged, the proposed reforms might have been rejected, which could have spelled the end of the government. Europe tells us constantly to do our homework, but last year it failed to do its own. It also continued to keep Turkey’s EU membership bid in a waiting-room limbo. For every single request they make of countries due to join the Union imminently, they give us three or four, but they will eventually give in because the Turkish nation is determined to join. The most dramatic incident of the last year was how the coalition partners of the Ecevit government paid the price on Nov. 3 for their mistaken economic policies. Now a new year full of foreign problems concerning Cyprus, the EU and Iraq is before us. Meanwhile, the Turkish nation is expecting the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to expand freedoms, solve the unemployment problem and protect the secular republic. We hope that over the next 364 days, most of these problems will be solved and most of these hopes fulfilled.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION