Hürriyet Daily News published an article by Murat Yetkin headlined "Erdoğan got the EU message on judiciary."
"It is possible to separate Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s stance on the controversial judiciary bill in Turkey as before and after his visit to Brussels where he had top level talks with the European Union officials on January 21," the article reads.
"On his way back from Brussels on Jan. 22, he said he had told EU officials that the removals of judges and prosecutors who are involved in corruption probes from their positions and submitting a bill to the Parliament to have more control on the judiciary should not be counted as political intervention, but “cleaning” the judiciary from the members of what he calls a “parallel structure” within the state apparatus. He had also added that the EU officials “understood,” also meaning “sympathized with” in the way he put it in Turkish, when he explained properly," the author writes.
"On January 24, Erdoğan announced his party’s decision to suspend the articles of the bill on the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) related with the structure of the Board, the only controversial part," the article reads. "Surprisingly, a welcoming remark came from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the CHP. As soon as the word went around for the re-start of the Constitutional talks between the two, AK Parti said that they agreed with the CHP to freeze the HSYK bill to see whether they could go any further on the Constitutional package."
"That was exactly what both Gül and Kılıçdaroğlu had suggested in the first place. But the change came after Erdoğan’s visit to Brussels. That is another indication showing that Erdoğan really cares about Turkey’s links with the EU and cares about what the EU officials say, if they say it properly, despite his bitter rhetoric inside Turkey," the article reads.
The Jerusalem Post published an article devoted to the Iranian nuclear crisis and Israel's stance on the matter. "Iran's nuclear march, not negotiations with the Palestinians, dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's talks with world leaders in Davos, he told the cabinet Sunday, just hours after returning from the World Economic Forum in that Swiss city," the article reads.
"Netanyahu said that the most important thing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said during his speech to the conference was that Iran has not dismantled, and will not dismantle, a single centrifuge," the article reads.
"If Iran will stand by that statement, that means that a permanent agreement – which is the goal of the entire diplomatic process with Iran – cannot succeed. Iran is basically insisting on preserving its ability to get fissile material for a bomb without in any way extending the time-line to a nuclear break-out," the Israeli prime minister is quoted as saying by the news paper.
According to the news paper, Netanyahu also said that while there is an internal struggle taking place inside Iran for reform, there has been no change, neither in the country's goal of attaining nuclear weapons or in its aggressive policy and use of terrorism throughout the Middle East, and beyond.
