The Jerusalem Post published an article devoted to the Iranian nuclear crisis. "As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was en route to New York to address the UN General Assembly, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avigdor Liberman warned that Iran's recent "appeasement attack" was merely a trick to buy time for its continued development of nuclear weapons," the article reads.
"Liberman's comments came after US President Barack Obama spoke with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Friday, signaling a thaw in relations between the countries, which Israel fears will lead to decreased international pressure on Iran over its disputed nuclear program."
"Netanyahu, who is set to meet with Obama on Monday prior to his General Assembly address on Tuesday, directed his ministers not to comment on the Obama-Rouhani phone call or US-Iranian relations, in an apparent effort not to embarrass him before his scheduled meeting with the US president," the article reads.
"Liberman took to his Facebook page Sunday morning warning that Rouhani's efforts to put forth a moderate face were part of a "pattern of deception" that the Iranians have employed throughout the years," the article reads.
"With different tactics of playing for time and providing false information to the international community time after time, they have continued to advance toward the goal that they have set for themselves: obtaining a nuclear weapon meant to threaten the peace of the world."
"Liberman invoked Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, stating that in that case as well, Israel was the only voice warning against the Iraqi nuclear threat and acting," the article reads.
Hurriyet Daily News published an article by Nustafa Akyol headlined "The two faces of the AKP." "This Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to announce a big “democratization package.” Some of the expected reforms are the introduction of education in the Kurdish language (as opposed to mere “Kurdish language classes” in Turkish language schools), the recognition of the Alevi houses of worship, and the re-opening of the Halki Seminary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate," the article begins.
"These are, undoubtedly, great steps. They are among the big reforms that Turkey’s liberals have been dreaming of for decades. They will, certainly, be big gains for Turkey, and the AKP will deserve to be praised for that," the author writes.
"But does this mean that the AKP, after 10 years in power, is still a liberalizing force? If you focus on the upcoming “democratization package,” and similar reforms that the government has realized in the past 10 years, you can safely say yes. That is why the AKP indeed still gets support from some of Turkey’s liberals, who see the party as a liberator from decades of a quasi-military regime which imposed a strict nationalism and oppressed the minorities. They stress that no other political party in Turkish history made more reforms for the Kurds or the Christians, and they are really right."
"Other liberals, however, point to counter-facts. The AKP is intolerant towards criticism, and journalists in mainstream media who oppose the prime minister somehow magically lose their jobs one by one," Akyol writes.
"My answer is that, well, both of these views are true at the same time. In other words, the AKP still advances Turkish democracy in some aspects, but curbs it in some other aspects," he writes.
