devletmemuru

ANKARA — Daily News Parliament Bureau

Turkey is set to finalize two required preliminaries to the visa exemption it seeks with the European Union – biometric passports and a readmission agreement.

In line with EU standards, Turkish officials are set to introduce biometric passports, which use electronic technology to authenticate travelers’ identities, in June.

“Prototype passports are ready. The physical preparations are under way in all consulates and police departments and the required machines will be put into service in May,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Özügergin said Wednesday.

“We’re working to introduce new passports June 1,” he added. “The current passports will be valid during the transition period, until 2015.”

The dark-blue passports used by ordinary citizens will be issued in a burgundy color, like those EU citizens carry; currently red-colored diplomatic passports will be issued in black.

A Turkish-Malaysian consortium had earlier won the tender to produce the new biometric passports but the contract was terminated in September 2009 when the prototypes failed to meet requirements. The government subsequently decided to print the new passports in the Darphane, or state mint. The French digital-security company Gemalto will provide the chips for the passports.

SEVGİ SAYAR BAŞARAN

ISTANBUL - Referans

As companies lay off people due to financial bottlenecks, some of the remaining employees might find opportunities for corruption and abuse. Indeed, audit firms such as Ernst & Young and KPMG are working overtime to inspect cases of abuse in Turkish companies.

The global financial crisis has also resulted in a boom in corruption and abuse within companies. As companies cut staff, duties of individuals have increased while employees have been going through financial difficulties. Due to all these hardships, abuse and embezzlement is on the rise, while audit firms are spending more time observing company operations.

ANKARA — Daily News Parliament Bureau

Against stiff opposition throughout Parliament, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, discloses its 26-item package of proposals for changes to Turkey’s Constitution. The most contentious issues include increasing the difficulty to close political parties, creating civilian trials for military officers, removing the head scarf ban from state-run universities and restructuring the judiciary and the Constitutional Court.

Turkey’s ruling party officially unveiled Monday its constitutional amendments package that seeks to bring radical changes to the judicial system and the procedure for party closures.

Included in the proposed changes, which are deemed controversial by some, is the power for Parliament to prevent the closure of political parties and allow civilian courts to try military officers, including leaders of the 1980 military coup.

Turkish opposition cool toward AKP's constitutional reform

While the government hailed Monday its much-anticipated constitutional amendment package as critical for Turkey’s European Union accession, the opposition criticized the proposed measures as an attempt to weaken the country’s secular system.

The package, meanwhile, also promises “positive

The partners in the planned Nabucco natural-gas pipeline to Europe will conclude a production-sharing agreement in April, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said Thursday.

A Project Support Agreement, or PSA, will be clarified and then signed, he added.

Comments by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, remarks amounting to a threat to expel undocumented Armenian workers from Turkey, are so deeply offensive they hardly deserve reaction. But this latest shoot-from-the-hip missive needs to be explored.

This latest outburst came as a warning that continued meddling by Britain or Sweden, or whatever legislature is up next in the political fireworks chain of “genocide” resolutions, could prompt Turkey to retaliate by kicking out undocumented workers, mainly domestic servants and manual laborers.

Turkey's village guards — men recruited by the military to protect areas of the Southeast — have played a significant role in the fight against terror in the country, the head of the armed forces said Monday.

A total of "1,340 village guards have given up their lives in this fight," Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ said at the two-day Global Terrorism and International Cooperation Symposium in Ankara.

These are some of the major headlines and their summaries in Turkish press on March 13, 2010. The Hürriyet Daily News does not verify these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

From the Anatolia News Agency:

HÜRRIYET

COMMON STANCE

After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan instructed his ministers and party administrators to "suspend visits to the United States", the Turkish Industrialists' & Businessmen's Association (TUSIAD) cancelled their visit to the United States.

After the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives had adopted a resolution on incidents of 1915, TUSIAD shelved its plan to visit the United States in the following week. TUSIAD Chairperson Umit Boyner said, "we decided not to visit the United States, thinking that this visit will not be so fruitful in a period when channels of dialogue have been closed."

STOCKHOLM (A.A) - 11.03.2010 - Swedish Parliament on Thursday approved a resolution on Armenian allegations regarding 1915 incidents.

The resolution including recognition of Armenian allegations was approved with 131 votes against 130.

Foreign Relations Commission of the Swedish Parliament discussed the resolution on March 2.

Parliamentarians from the leftist Social Democrat Party, Left Party and Environment Party, who were in favor of the resolution, said the incidents that had occurred in the last years of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 were "genocide" defending that Turkey had to face its history and admit it.