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.

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

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.