Turkey

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

Leftovers. The word, in most families, is synonymous with the Thanksgiving holiday. Following the recipe for the Center City sandwich, found at South Street's Chef's Market (where all of the sandwiches are named after parts of Philadelphia), you can use your own roasted turkey, as the Chef's Market does theirs. But with this sandwich, you'll escape the world of stuffing and cranberry sauce, because the Center City sandwich adds a French twist with Brie cheese, honey mustard sauce, lettuce and tomato, all on a French roll.

Police Department employees pack boxes of turkey dinners to feed the city's poor and needy families during the holidays. About 50 personnel took part in the department's 22nd annual Operation Thanksgiving program.

The safe way to thaw a frozen turkey is in the refrigerator, but often there isn't enough room in the refrigerator to make that a practical option. If your turkey is reasonably small, and you have a microwave oven, you can thaw it there. Thawing procedures vary by oven, however, so you will need to check the manual carefully for instructions. You should plan to thaw the turkey right before cooking. A somewhat more cumbersome method is to place the turkey in a heavy-duty freezer bag and carefully tie it closed.

Crown Holdings Inc. says it expects to produce an additional one billion more aluminum cans a year - about a 66 percent increase - after an expansion project in Turkey that will see increased capacity at one plant and construction of a new facility. The Philadelphia-based company said in a release today that the increased capacity at the plant in Izmit, near Istanbul, will be ready in early 2011. A new plant, in south-central Turkey, is expected to be running by early 2012. Located near the Mediterranean, the new site is also expected to provide products for Middle Eastern and North African markets.

The petty, imbecilic way both Greece and Turkey competed over a pile of rocks off the Turkish coast, with warships lining up against each other before American diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke cooled them off, surely demonstrates that when they behave like this neither deserves to be a member of the European Union. Yet one is in and one is out. One is regarded, for all its posturing over relations with Turkey, Cyprus and Macedonia, as European, civilized, Christian and economically mature.

A number of things about the new American republic, including the choice of the eagle as a national symbol, annoyed Benjamin Franklin. He would have preferred the turkey, and shared his thoughts on the subject in this letter written to his daughter from France in 1784. (This selection was provided by Roy Goodman, research librarian of the American Philosophical Society.) For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly.

Thanksgiving dinner is in less than 24 hours - do you know where your turkey is? Here's hoping you remembered to pick it up from the farmer's market or the store; and that it is not frozen; and that it is already brining in your refrigerator. Here's a roundup of how-tos, how-comes, and hotlines to make your meal a success. Last-minute thaw. Defrosting a turkey in the refrigerator (the safest method) can take up to four days. But you don't have four days-so try the running-water method recommended by NSL International, a nonprofit that's been doing food safety testing since 1944.: Keep the frozen bird in its original wrapping and place it under cold, running water or let it sit in a sink or tub filled with cold water.

After learning about the suicide bombings at two synagogues, Neve Shalom and Beth Israel, in Istanbul on Saturday, I had a terrible sense of d?j? vu. I began sending e-mails seeking answers to two questions: Had any friends or acquaintances been hurt or killed? Luckily, no. And second, who were the bombers? Istanbul, and by extension Turkey, has become my second home. I know Istanbul's streets and neighborhoods as well as the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. And because I know people of many faiths - Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, devout and moderate Muslims - I have put great hope in Turkey as an example to the West that there is a bright future for a predominantly Muslim country with a secular constitution.

Praised by Benjamin Franklin as "a true original native of America," the turkey is the focal point of the Thanksgiving feast. It's also the receptacle of a fine, heady mixture of starches and seasonings and other assorted delights that goes by the most inglorious name of stuffing, or the somewhat gentler name dressing. A turkey dressing will enhance the flavor of the bird, help keep it moist and preserve the turkey's shape. And many Americans secretly feel that the crackly brown and tender Thanksgiving turkey is merely an accompaniment to the succulent dressing contained within.

Anatolian Days & Nights A Love Affair with Turkey By Joy E. Stocke and Angie Brenner Wild River Books. 264 pp. $16.95 Toward the end of Anatolian Days & Nights, a 12-year-old boy, tour guide for a day to the two authors, encourages them to take shards of pottery that lie amid the rubble of the ancient Turkish city of Harran. "There are so many pots to choose from and all of them so very old, ladies. So old it makes my head hurt," he says. The honest, childlike remark seems to encapsulate the modern-day view of this intensely complex, richly fabled country.

Greece again fails to form coalition ATHENS, Greece - A second round of talks to form a coalition government collapsed Wednesday, with Greece's future in the euro and commitment to its international bailout deal in the balance and the specter of new elections looming ever larger. Sunday's election threw the country's political scene into turmoil after voters angered by years of Europe's harshest austerity program - implemented to secure vital international bailouts and fend off bankruptcy - hammered mainstream politicians, but left no party with enough seats in Parliament to govern alone.

A 16th-century English proverb holds that "turnabout is fair play. " That may be true for election campaigns, sporting contests, business disputes, even war. But it should have no place in the objective rule of law. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's five-year-long campaign of investigation and imprisonment of alleged coup plotters is a case in point. In 2007, a cache of explosives was allegedly found at the home of a former military officer. State prosecutors tied the find to "Ergenekon" - what they claimed was a shadowy network of ultra-national secularists in the military and national security establishment intent on overthrowing Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)

When it comes to foreign policy, the current Republican candidates are so incoherent they make George W. Bush look like a savant. I know that what candidates say on foreign affairs on the stump is often abandoned once in office. Yet it certainly looks as if the old guard of Republican foreign-policy experts is obsolete in the age of angry tea party populism. At a time when diplomatic savvy is desperately needed, outrageous remarks get the most cheers from the base. The comments on international affairs at Republican debates are often so clueless they've become grist for satire in foreign capitals.

PARIS - Ties between France and Turkey, strategic allies and trading partners, abruptly unraveled Thursday after French legislators passed a bill making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constitute genocide. The bill strikes at the heart of national honor in Turkey, which denies the genocide label and insists that the 1915 massacres occurred during civil unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, with losses on both sides.

Being pulled over by police and cited can be a stomach-churning experience. Unless the officer is Rodger H. Ollis Jr. and he wants to talk turkey. The Coatesville gendarme, who handles the department's community relations, was asked to orchestrate a bird giveaway for Wednesday. An anonymous donor had 40 turkeys that he decided should land on the tables of the most-deserving residents. Ollis recognized an opportunity to create good will among the citizenry. But how to select the right recipients?

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's prime minister on Saturday sharply criticized France for a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the World War I-era mass killing of Armenians was genocide. Saying France should investigate what he claimed was its own "dirty and bloody history" in Algeria and Rwanda, Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted Turkey would respond "through all kinds of diplomatic means. " Historians estimate that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks as their empire collapsed, an event many international experts regard as genocide and that France recognized as such in 2001.

ISTANBUL - A free political climate is essential to economic innovation, and countries that try to censor the Internet are pursuing a "dead end," U.S. Vice President Biden told a group of young entrepreneurs gathered in Istanbul on Saturday. The international forum, which drew hundreds of attendees, followed up on a meeting in Washington last year aimed at deepening ties between the United States and Muslim communities around the world. Biden said a political system based on freedom of speech and religion also is the "truest shield" against sectarian strife that has afflicted the Middle East, as well as western Europe in past centuries.