Cengiz Çandar

Cengiz Çandar    (journalist)
Born	1948
Nationality	Turkish
Alma mater	Tarsus American College, Ankara University
Interests	Middle East
Turkish journalist with Middle East as expertise area

Cengiz Çandar (born 1948) is a Turkish journalist, senior columnist, and a Middle East expert. He is the author of bestseller Mezopotamya Ekspresi- Bir Tarih Yolculugu (Mesopotamia Express- A Journey in History) (2012).

Early life

Çandar comes from an Ottoman aristocratic family that has been documented since the 14th century and provided leading officers and officials, especially in the first centuries of the empire.

He finished the secondary school at Talas American College in Talas, Kayseri and the high school at Tarsus American College in Tarsus, Mersin. Çandar graduated from Ankara University in 1970 with a Bachelor's degree in political science and international relations.

During his studies he took part in the 1968 movement and, after it had split up, took sides with the then Maoist Aydınlık group, led by Doğu Perinçek.

Career

After the military intervention of March 1971, he fled to Beirut and Damascus, where he joined the Palestinian PLO. He began his career as journalist in 1976 for the newspaper Vatan after living in the Middle East and Europe due to his opposition to the regime in Turkey following the military intervention in 1971. Being an expert on the Middle East (Lebanon and Palestine) and the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Çandar worked for the Turkish News Agency and for the leading Turkish newspapers Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, Sabah, Referans and Güneş as a war correspondent. Currently, he is a senior columnist for Radikal. and a columnist of Al-Monitor.

From the Middle East, he went to Western Europe and returned to Turkey in 1974 after a general amnesty under Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit.

After the military coup in 1980 he stayed frequently in Iran and Lebanon, and later worked for the daily newspapers Hürriyet, Güneş and Sabah. Çandar often wrote on foreign policy issues; especially to the Middle East, from the 1990s also to the Balkans and the USA.

Çandar was special adviser on foreign policy to Turkish president Turgut Özal between 1991 and 1993. He was the lead on the establishment of relationship between the Turkish Presidency and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership (1991) that led recognition of Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani in Turkey. He was also actively involved in Balkan politics, especially during the ethnic unrest in the Balkans between 1993 and 1995. In 1998, he was among the well-known journalists who have been subjected to an aggressive defamation campaign by the military.

Between 1999 and 2000, he did research work on "Turkey of the 21st century" as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Çandar is one of the Turkish intellectuals who have recognized the Armenian Genocide by releasing an apology for the "great catastrophe of 1915". The text of the apology was "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them." In 2007, he condemned the authorities for depriving Aghtamar of its Armenian past by renaming it to "Akdamar".

His report "Leaving the Mountain': How May the PKK Lay Down Arms?" was commissioned by Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) (published in Turkish in 2011 and in English in 2012) analyses what type of a political infrastructure is needed to ultimately resolve the 'Kurdish question’.

From 2016, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS) and Senior Associate Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

He has taught at Istanbul Bilgi University(1997-1999), Istanbul Kültür University (2002-2010), Özyegin University (2011). He is a frequent commentator on Turkey, Kurdish issue and Middle East affairs in international newspapers and on TV and lectures globally at universities including at Harvard University, Boston and University of Oxford.

Personal life

Çandar is married to writer Tuba Çandar, and they have one daughter. A lifelong Fenerbahçe fan, he has been a football commentator on Fenerbahçe TV since 2005.

Bibliography

The English translations of these titles are not the official titles.

• Direnen Filistin (The Palestine that Resists) (1976)
• Dünden Yarına İran (Iran: From Yesterday to Tomorrow) (1981)
• Ortadoğu Çıkmazı (The Middle East Impassé) (1983)
• Tarihle Randevu (Rendezvous with History) (1983)
• Güneşin Yedi Rengi (The Seven Colours of the Sun) (1987)
• Benim Şehirlerim (My Cities)(1999)
• Çıktık Açık Alınla (2001)
• Leaving the Mountain': How May the PKK Lay Down Arms? (2011)
• Mezopotamya Ekspresi- Bir Tarih Yolculugu (Mesopotamia Express- A Journey in History), İletişim Publications (2012)

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2007	31 May 2007	3 June 2007	Turkey Istanbul	The 55th Bilderberg meeting, held in Turkey
Bilderberg/2014	29 May 2014	1 June 2014	Denmark Copenhagen Marriott Hotel	The 62nd Bilderberg, with 136 guests, held in Copenhagen
Halifax International Security Forum/2012	21 November 2012	23 November 2012	Canada Halifax Nova Scotia	Spooky conference in Canada discussing the "New Normal" and Western nations' "special burden".
Halifax International Security Forum/2013			Canada Halifax Nova Scotia	Spooky conference in Canada
Halifax International Security Forum/2014	21 November 2014	23 November 2014	Canada Halifax Nova Scotia	Spooky conference in Canada in November 2014
Halifax International Security Forum/2015			Canada Halifax Nova Scotia	Spooky conference in Canada

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