World Press on Israeli-Turkish Relations and North Korean Crisis (April 13-14, 2013)

On April 13th Hurriyet Daily News published an article by Cihan Celik headlined 'Israeli apology not that big a diplomatic score for Turkey after all.'

"The initial celebratory and self-centric mood over the Israeli apology for killing nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists has now started to wear off among senior Turkish officials after realizing that Israel’s unexpected move to thaw out chilly ties was not, after all, that big a diplomatic success," the article reads.

"During the course of frozen ties for nearly two years, Turkish officials seemed obsessed with obtaining an Israel apology, and with their other conditions, such as compensation for victims or an easing of the siege on the Gaza Strip, but the apology has so far borne little fruit for Ankara. Instead, the Turkish government ended up with a self-conflicting position from where it faced pressure from Washington, the architect of the “apology” deal, to avoid potentially jeopardizing steps to the normalization bid, while it also had to confront its Islamist base of support."

"Considering the wider picture, the hard-won Israeli apology; as a matter of fact, it was not a “magical touch” as has been portrayed by Turkish officials; however, it indeed marked a new era in the balances in the Middle East, where Turkey actually came under more complicated, heavy burdens amid the contradictory expectations of the United States," the author writes.

The Washington Post published an article by Ernesto Londono devoted to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "Having disavowed his country’s armistice with South Korea and threatened to fire his increasingly capable missiles toward the United States, Kim has put the Korean Peninsula and Washington on a war footing. His behavior follows the playbook of his predecessors, with one notable and potentially dangerous departure that appears to have him backed into a corner," the article reads.

"If factions of the military are uneasy, experts said, Kim has given them more reasons to be unsettled than simply his youth. Last April, he startled observers by acknowledging the failure of a satellite launch — a mission intended as a show of military prowess that could one day threaten the continental United States. Such admissions are unheard of in a country where citizens place a premium on saving face and display nothing but adulation for the military," the author writes.

"If Kim is in fact interested in reforms, he might be taking a calculated gamble that by raising the specter of bloodshed, a war-weary United States might be prodded to provide him with a pathway out of the strict sanctions that have helped turn North Korea into the world’s most isolated country."

“Kim Jong Un is making an effort to have a better negotiating position with the U.S. and South Korea,” the author cites Park Hyeong-jung, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification in Seoul as saying. “North Korea stands to lose or win.”