* As you may remember from our news, on May 31st Israeli commandos raided the ships of a group of activists carrying aid to Gaza Strip. The raid resulted in the deaths of 9 activists, all Turks, one with US citizenship.
  The raid further plunged the already-souring Israeli - Turkish relations.
  Since the raid, the Turkish administration has been asking for an apology from Israel. Israel so far has refused an apology.
  However, there are reports that Israel is trying to find a way out, and revitalize its relationship with Turkey.
  The latest report appeared in the Turkish daily Hurriyet. The daily, quoting reports coming from Israel and Britain, reported that Israeli administration is offering to pay $100,000 to each of the families of the killed.
  Hurriyet says that the Turkish foreign affairs minister calls the news reports speculative and says that money does not mitigate the grief to the families.

* According to the British daily The Guardian, one more Wikileak this week revealed a US Embassy cable from Vatican claiming that Vatican has softened towards Turkey's European Union bid.
  The document says the following:
  " [..] the pope expressed his hope for 'joint Christian and Muslim action on behalf of human rights' and emphasized his hope that Turkey would be a 'bridge of friendship and of fraternal cooperation between the East and West.'"

* According to the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, State Department's spokesman Philip Crowley responded to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who defined WikiLeaks documents as "not serious correspondence including rumor, magazine-like matter, claims and slander by the U.S. diplomats."
  Mr. Crowley said "our diplomats provide frank, candid assessments of what's happening in countries around the world. It is useful and important that our diplomats continue to do that. We take it on faith that the diplomats of other countries do the very same thing here in the United States, reporting back to capitals in countries all around the world. "
  As we reported to you last week, a former US ambassador to Turkey wrote that the Turkish prime minister and his family had several Swiss bank accounts to stash the money they received from third parties as "gifts".
  See the State Department briefing for more at http://fpc.state.gov/152475.htm

* Turkey's trade ties with Iran do not contradict US efforts to isolate the Islamic republic, the US State Department said Wednesday, reported the Hurriyet Daily News.
  "Turkey is a neighbor of Iran," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told a daily press briefing. "It does have economic relationship with Iran, and in fact, there are categories where trade between countries and Iran are fully authorized."
  Mr. Crowley said there are certain categories under UN sanctions on Iran that are prohibited and that Turkey has clearly indicated that it will abide by those.
  On Turkey hosting the next round of talks between the Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany next month, Mr. Crowley said the US hopes the meeting will be the start of a serious process.

* Student protests were in the news in Turkey. Some papers blamed the students for unruly behavior, while some criticized the Turkish police for using excessive force.
  Some of the student protests were directed towards the members of the ruling Justice and Development party.

* Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert of CNN report that Turkey is quitely giving Turkish citizenship to Greek clergy to make them eligible for becoming the Greek patriarch.
  Greek patriarchate is located in Istanbul.
  According to a treaty drawn out in 1920's between Greece and Turkey, the Greek patriarch has to be a Turkish citizen.
  The Greek patriarch says he is the head of all Orthodox Christians throughout the World.
  However, Turkey officially does not recognize this and says it is only the religious leader of the small indigenous Greek community in Turkey.
  Read more at http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/

* Speaking of Greeks, the Turkish daily Yeni Shafak writes that a Turkish company is planning to buy 18 of the 6000 islands Greece put up for sale.
  The Greek government is struggling with a major economic crisis, the paper writes.
  The Turkish company says that there is "serious tourism potential there".
  Most of these islands are right off the Turkish coast.

* According to Bloomberg, Turkey's lira strengthened against the dollar for the first day this week after the central bank bought the smallest amount of dollars in a daily auction for more than two months.

* Hurriyet daily News reports that due to its fast growth, Turkey will soon join the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - as an emerging power of the global economy, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says in his book "Beyond the Crash," published last week.

* Turkish builders won a tender for building homes in Iraq on Thursday, reports the Hurriyet daily News.
  Several other companies from around the world participated in the tender.
  However, six Turkish builders who established a Turkish Group Business Partnership won the tender on construction of 75,000 condominiums worth $11.28 billion.
  The condominiums will be constructed in Sadr region of Baghdad.
  Social facilities, mosques and schools will also be built under the project.

* Gul Demir and Niki Gamm of Hürriyet Daily News report that canvasses on the walls of Hagia Sophia bearing the names of Muslim holy figures have been repaired and restored to their former glory following a year of work. The iconic canvasses, which are each about eight meters in diameter, were placed there during 19th-century restoration conducted by two Italians. Modern restorers also repaired chandeliers and stained-glass windows. The canvasses were restored with funding from the 2010 Istanbul Capital of Culture Agency.
  The agency also supported the year-long restoration of the museum's large, wrought-iron chandeliers for candles and oil lamps, as well as the building's stained-glass windows in the sanctuary.
  Contrary to popular belief, the canvasses were not affixed in the upper portions of the edifice following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, but were placed there during 19th-century restoration by Giuseppe Fossati and Gaspare Fossati, two Italian brothers who were commissioned to do the work by Sultan Abdulmecid II and financed by an Arab sheikh.
  The canvasses, meanwhile, were painted by calligrapher Kazasker Izzet Efendi. The large pieces are so securely attached to the walls that they reportedly cannot be removed without risking damage to the walls. Some have also said the canvasses replaced panels that were there before the middle of the 19th century, but it is unknown what these panels were, or whether they actually existed.
  Other calligraphic panels have been taken out over time and placed in the Sultanahmet Mosque and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, now located at Ibrahim Pasa Palace.
  Meanwhile, Fatih district's Süleymaniye Mosque has also been completely reopened following an extensive face lift that lasted three years.
  The restoration took more time than originally expected because the work was the first professional renovation in the mosque's 460-year-old history.
  Restorers also discovered Iznik tiles and previously unknown classical-period engravings in the mosque. Süleymaniye is considered one of the very best mosques built by the architect Mimar Sinan in the 16th century. It is surpassed, in the architect's own opinion, only by his Selimiye Mosque in Edirne.
   See a photo gallery on Hagia Sophia http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/

* Casting a light on the various ethnic and religious groups that call Istanbul home, a new documentary called "The Colors of Cultural Differences" is set for showing in various showings throughout the city in the near future, reports Niki Gamm of Hürriyet Daily News.
  The film was produced by director Annie Pertan with the assistance of the 2010 Istanbul European Capital of Culture Agency.
  The documentary features 16 artists who were born and raised in Istanbul and tell of their continued love for the city from which they draw their inspiration.
  Some of the best known artists included are Ara Güler, Izzet Keribar, Hayko Cepkin, and Suzi Hug Levi.
  All those featured speak against the background of the city with some of the shots are from the water, some from the air. Avoiding any glossing over of their difficulties of living in the city, the artists touch on the problems of life in Istanbul as a member of non-dominant ethnic or religious groups.
  Ultimately, Pertan said the city was like ebru, the Ottoman art form in which colors are spread over a liquid mixture – never mixing, yet still creating a picture. Pertan said she hoped to complete work on the film and subtitles before submitting the final production to various documentary festivals around the world.
  Born of a Norwegian father and a Greek mother in Istanbul, Pertan studied in Oslo and in Paris but later decided to settle in Istanbul.
  Pertan has 25 years of experience in the film industry and started as an art director for an early Halit Refig television film, "Ask-i Memnu."
  The director said her next project would be "Istanbul – City of Miracles" – although the project is contingent upon finding financing. She said she would like to film places where miracles are said to have occurred, such as holy springs, türbes (shrines) and other such area, combining those scenes with interviews with people who have experienced miracles.

* Zübeyde Atan, a master of calligraphy and the Ottoman art of ebru, has opened a new exhibition in Istanbul last Tuesday called ‘41 Besmele,' providing artistic interpretations of the opening line of the Quran. Although the exhibition has already been staged in both New York and the Marmara province of Sakarya, the show is only now coming to Turkey's largest city .
  The exhibition, "41 Besmele," began in New York in 2009 at the Turkish Cultural Center before moving to the chamber of commerce and industry in the northwestern province of Sakarya, Atan's hometown.
  Ms. Atan is a practitioner of the Ottoman art of ebru, in which paint in water is used to make designs on a piece of paper. More particularly, the artist focuses on reproducing the calligraphic version of the opening line of the Quran, using the same ebru techniques. The difficult task of reproducing handwriting is called akkase marbling or two-tone marbling.
  Ms. Atan's besmele is based on the calligraphy of the late Professor Emin Barin, one of the foremost calligraphers of the 20th century in Turkey.
  Ebru is considered one of the outstanding Turkish art forms although it is possible that it originated in Iran while others believe it came from Central Asia. Its elements include a type of gum from the tragacanth tree, natural dyes, absorbent paper and a tray that is the size of the paper and holds approximately six centimeters of liquid. Liquid is poured into the tray and paint sprinkled on top using a brush. When artists are satisfied with the design, they lay the paper on top to absorb the paint, take it out and then rinse and dry it. Many Westerners know ebru as marbled paper or Turkish marbled paper because sheets of marbled paper would often be found in the inside covers of leather-bound books.
  The Ottomans developed ebru into a sophisticated art form with some of its best products including identifiable flowers, a subject that is not easy to produce by moving a piece of paper over a pan of liquid.
   Zübeyde Atan was born in 1978 in Sakarya and graduated from the Adapazari Girls' Professional School in the Handicrafts Department. In addition to further academic work, she has studied different styles of Ottoman calligraphy and ebru as well as the technique of gilding. Her first exhibition was in 1998.

* The Ankara municipality of Çankaya unveiled its "Chopin Park" Wednesday at a ceremony held in honor of the 200th birthday anniversary of the great Polish composer, Frederic Chopin.
  Polish First Lady Malgorzata Tusk attended the ceremony and said she welcomed the inauguration of the park, adding that the park's Chopin bust was made by a Polish sculptor.
  Tusk expressed hope that the park, the first place in Turkey to be given Chopin's name, would serve as a place to bring people and music together and host cultural activities. The park is situated in the municipality's Emek neighborhood.
  Çankaya Mayor Bülent Tanik said the park was the brainchild of the municipality.
  Chopin was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist, and music teacher of French-Polish parentage. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music and invented the musical form known as the instrumental ballade while also making major innovations to the piano including sonata, nocturne, polonaise, impromptu and prélude.

* According to the Anatolian Nws Agency, the Mayor of Istanbul, Kadir Topbas, received a certificate declaring Istanbul "2012 European Sports Capital" at a ceremony held in the European Parliament on Tuesday.
  "We will devote more time and energy to sports activities in Istanbul". "We will try to be an example to future European Sports Capitals", Topbas said.

* After winning eight points in four matches, Turkey's Be$ikta$ soccer team defeated Bulgaria's CSKA Sofia 2-1 in the UEFA Europa League.
  Be$ikta$ secured their place in last 32 of the UEFA Europa League.
  Zapotocny and Holosko scored the goals.