Writing

Michael is an experienced editor, broadcast journalist and reporter on day-to-day news stories. He is the Foreign & Broadcast Editor of Jewish News, which serves Britain’s Jewish communities, and freelances for BBC News and Euronews. He also writes columns and analytical pieces, particularly on Turkish issues, for a range of publications.

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CALAIS, France — The migrant camp in northern France known colloquially as “the Jungle” does a roaring trade in energy drinks.

Row upon row of Red Bull and Monster Regular cans line the wooden shelves of a makeshift convenience store serving the camp’s mostly male inhabitants.

The caffeine-heavy drinks sell in droves for €1 ($1.12) each and it is little wonder. The dozens of migrants who each night use the cover of darkness to try and hitch a ride on a heavy goods truck need all the energy they can get.

Their coveted destination is Britain, but the British government is funding a new 4-metre-high barrier close to the northern town of Calais that it hopes will stop them trying.

Political broadcast by Eurosceptic UKIP party provokes fury from viewers, MPs and members of Britain’s Turkish community

LONDON — Scenes showing the Turkish flag, Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar and boats buzzing across the Bosporus were transmitted to millions of British television viewers on Wednesday night.

But it was not the latest advertising spot by Turkey’s tourist board. It was a warning against Turkish membership of the European Union – coming in the form of a propaganda broadcast by the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), a right-wing group that took nearly four million votes in last year’s parliamentary election.

The broadcast contained extensive footage of mosques and women wearing headscarves before urging viewers to vote against Britain’s continued membership of the E.U. in the country’s forthcoming referendum.

Booming private sector, fueled by foreign visitors, threatens to upset island’s prized system of social equality

VINALES, CUBA — “This one is ready,” Lucilo said, turning the rooster upside down in his hands to inspect its plucked, featherless bottom. “He’s going to be a good fighter.”

The bird squirmed, unable to escape his grasp. It was weeks away from being thrown into the arena as gambling fodder in a cockfight.

While the farmer returned it to its small cage, his sleeve pulled back to reveal a nasty gash on his arm. Was that the work of one of his angry birds?

LONDON — An armed confrontation between Greek and Turkish soldiers on the island of Cyprus was a real possibility as recently as 1983, declassified documents have revealed.

Papers released in London show that Greece’s then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou was prepared to send troops to divided Eastern Mediterranean island after the Turkish community unexpectedly declared an independent state in the north.

He made the offer of military support to Spyros Kyprianou, the then leader of the Greek-Cypriot administration, at an emergency meeting in Athens just hours after the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was proclaimed on Nov. 15, 1983.

By Michael Daventry

LONDON

British Prime Minister David Cameron must rue the day in 2006 when, as the newish leader of his Conservative Party, he described members of the U.K. Independence Party as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly”.

That same party, commonly referred to as Ukip, comfortably defeated the Conservatives on Thursday to win a parliamentary seat in a special election in Rochester and Strood, a suburban district around 60 kilometers (38 miles) southeast of London.

The right-wing party favors Britain’s immediate withdrawal from the European Union and placing much stricter curbs on migration to the country.

What makes the defeat embarrassing for the British premier is that the winning candidate, Mark Reckless, was the second person in as many months to defect from Cameron’s party and successfully defend the seat for Ukip.

The architect of Turkey’s foreign policy is a pan-Islamist academic who considers Israel a “geopolitical tumour” and believes his country needs lebensraum.

That is according to an analysis of Ahmet Davutoglu’s writing in his former guise as a university professor in the 1990s, before he entered politics as Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign affairs adviser.

jc-2aThis year will be an excellent one for Turkey’s ties with Israel. The two countries are projected to trade a record $6bn (£3.6bn) in goods and services. A quarter of a million Israelis will visit Turkey, the highest number in five years. And this month, 13 daily Istanbul-Tel Aviv flights will facilitate this burgeoning traffic of business and tourism.

It is a remarkably healthy relationship for two countries that have barely spoken to each other in four years. Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Tel Aviv and expelled Israel’s own envoy following the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which nine people died in an IDF raid on a flotilla of ships bound for blockaded Gaza. Despite an Israeli apology, diplomatic ties have not been restored.

Turkey’s outgoing ambassador to London has insisted Britain’s press has shown no sign of vendetta against his country.

Ünal Çeviköz said his four-year posting in London represented a peak in UK-Turkey relations, seeing three presidential visits, two from the prime minister and “countless” trips here by the foreign minister.

In a wide-ranging farewell interview with Londra Gazete, conducted on the day the Alevi community demonstrated outside the embassy building, Mr Çeviköz defended their right to peaceful protest and said he did not feel any pressure from British officials over last year’s Gezi Park incidents.

After 301 people were confirmed dead in Turkey’s single worst mining disaster last month, critics blamed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish prime minister’s business-friendly government had privatised the mine in Soma and its inspectors had given a clean bill of health just weeks before disaster struck.

Mr Erdoğan’s supporters tried to shift the blame elsewhere. Their principal target was the mine’s owning company and its director Alp Gürkan. Among the many personal attacks on Mr Gürkan in the pro-government press, one headline was distinctive: “That boss’s son-in-law is a Jew”. For the pious daily YeniAkit, a board member who changed his name from Mario Asafrana to the more Turkish-sounding “Mahir”was sufficient for a front page splash.

By Michael Daventry

The BBC dramatically suspended its deal with its Turkish broadcast partner NTV tonight after it failed to show an item on media censorship produced by the World Service’s Turkish section.

The item on the flagship Dünya Gündemi programme, which was filed by BBC Turkish correspondents Selin Girit and Göktay Koraltan, covered the atmosphere of media censorship in Turkey and included a candid interview with NTV director Ahmet Yeşiltepe.

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