| Frontilines
|  | The challenge of enlargement
Enlargement is a successful example of the EU’s soft power unifying nations peacefully to work toward common goals. It is the most powerful policy tool to extend the zone of peace, liberty and prosperity and to project Europe’s values and interests in the world. This ... read more » |
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 | Greetings to Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature ‘for the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency,’ is the first writer from Turkey to receive the much-coveted award. In his country the 54-year-old is known not only for his writing but also for the con...read more » |
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 | A region on the move
Bulgaria and Romania are set to join the European Union in January 2007. The Western Balkans and Turkey will face the prospect of EU accession once they meet strict conditions, providing them with a significant incentives to deliver further political and economic reforms. These i...read more » |
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 | In praise of the olive
Many elements constitute the vital factors required for the birth and development of a civilization. Among these are the inhabitants of a land and their memories, their language and the tales that preserve it, their faith and their religious festivals, their unspoken but universa...read more » |
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 | The freedom of identity
Many times I have tried to begin this article and many are the paths I have taken in order to express as genuinely as possible the thoughts and the causes that gave rise to it, yet always a quote from a short story by Antonis Samarakis kept coming back to my mind ― a quote ...read more » |
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 | A political question
This is my first trip to Turkey as European commissioner for trade*, and it is in many ways overdue. I want to make a few remarks about Turkey and enlargement, and the challenges that Turkey and Europe share in the face of globalization. And the way in which enlargement is a resp...read more » |
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 | True democracy in practice
Without the free expression of opinions, exchange of ideas and access to independent information, the wheels of democracy grind to a halt as voices are silenced and civil society stagnates. Without the opportunity to discuss issues with people from the other side of an ethnic or ... read more » |
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| Dialogue
|  | Turkey at a crossroads
Once more we are undergoing a crucial period in EU-Turkey relations. In the coming weeks, the European Commission will publish its Annual Progress Report on Turkey’s European course. This time, however, there is a qualitative difference. Since October 2005, Turkey has embar...read more » |
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 | Cyprus, Turkey and the EU: Time for a sense of proportion
In April 2004, Greek and Turkish Cypriots held referendums on a United Nations-sponsored plan to reunite their island. While the Turkish Cypriots accepted the so-called Annan plan, the Greek-Cypriot side rejected it. Since then, the Cyprus dispute has been deadlocked, perhaps eve...read more » |
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 | The impasse and the need for a compromise
It is both tragic and ironic at the same time that although Cyprus and Turkey want a solution to the problem of Turkey’s refusal to adopt the Ankara Protocol, the prospects are still anything but encouraging:
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 | Yet another critical juncture
About one year after the formal start of Turkey’s accession talks with the EU, the two sides are in the midst of a crisis. In the worst-case scenario talks could be suspended by the end of the year. The proximate cause of this negative turn in the EU’s relations with ...read more » |
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 | Can the train crash be avoided?
The commencement of the European Union’s accession negotiations with Turkey on October 4, 2005 can be characterized as a milestone in the long history of EU-Turkey relations. By the end of 2006 it will be determined whether these relations will continue to develop or whethe...read more » |
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 | Ankara and the Kurds
Turkey’s Kurdish areas are a far cry from the political centers of Southeast Europe and the affluent urban conurbations of western Turkey. A direct flight from Diyarbakir, the symbolic capital of Kurdish nationalist aspirations, to the Aegean metropolis of Izmir takes two h...read more » |
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| Themes
|  | Early warning: Rising populism and its impact
Political populism is on the rise. Traditional divisions between left-wing and right-wing parties are growing increasingly blurred, and in their stead the division between the people and the political elites is becoming ever more important for the understanding of political dynam...read more » |
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 | A provisional assessment
Populisms have a legitimate place in liberal democracies*. One could even say that they are inevitable, given the likelihood of entropy inherent in these regimes. They have their distinctive virtues, as well as vices, and it is by no means evident that the latter always prevail. ...read more » |
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A bluff package
Do you know a good populist? You probably don’t, unless you are taken in by one, and then you would not call him a populist, but a reformer, a revolutionary or simply a modernizer. Populism and populists very often divide countries and nations into two parts. One part just ...read more » |
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Migration in SEE: A development opportunity
In the Balkans, the second half of the 1990s marked the beginning of considerable changes in migration patterns in the region, following global migration transformations. An increase in the temporary and circular migration movements toward neighboring countries has been observed....read more » |
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| Culture
| Crossing the bridge
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF) is the leading film festival in Southeastern Europe, the showcase of annual Greek production and the Balkans’ primary and oldest festival for the work of emerging new international filmmakers. The festival has an Internati...read more » |
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Meeting points of culture
In a time of political and social flux, during which the Balkans were suffering from the civil war in Yugoslavia and the economic crisis brought about by the collapse of the communist regimes, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF) turned its gaze to the creative pow...read more » |
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American lifestyle and distribution
Many Romanians remember vividly one Bulgarian movie which was shown on TV on March 4, 1977. The reason is not cinematic: Midway through the movie, the big earthquake of March 1977 began. Since that was during the Ceausescu years, television was a one-channel sort of thing, and th...read more » |
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Grbavica leads the way
‘I hope to do justice to the award,’ declared Jasmila Zbanic when she was rewarded by the Balkan Fund for her script for the film Grbavica in 2003. And she certainly did, as her triumph at this year’s 57th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Gol...read more » |
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| Companies
| | Athens-Nicosia: A stock exchange alliance / The Bulgarian miracle / A newborn island in the Adriatic Sea / Environment and energyread more » |
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