A recent survey by Istanbul Bilgi University’s Human Rights Law Research Center revealed that 60 percent of Turks believe the decisions of Turkish courts are unjust. The survey also showed that women, lower income groups and people with less education tend to have more confidence in the courts than others.
The media is the least […]
LOVE SONG INSTEAD OF CALL TO PRAYER
April 12, 2008 in the Turkish Daily News
A mishap Thursday caused some mosques in the Black Sea province of Trabzon to broadcast a love song instead of the call to prayer for the noon prayers.
According to reports, all mosques are connected to a central system from which the call […]
Photo from Milliyet
Yesterday an estimated 25 thousand people marched in Tandogan Square in Ankara in what have been called Republic Meetings (Cumhuriyet Mitingleri) (there was one last year around this date) to support secularism in Turkey and to protest threats to the state. (Organizers claimed 40 thousand participants.) Among the speakers were members of […]
Graphs from Today’s Zaman
Turks are unhappy about the case before the Constitutional Court to close down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). If the party is closed down and new elections are held, none of the other parties will have enough votes to create a functioning government and at present there are no […]
In a seeming about-face from recent government overtures to Turkey’s Alevi minority, Professor Ali Bardakoglu, head of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, issued a statement Wednesday that rejected a request by Alevis to have their cemevis acknowledged as places of worship. At present, they are considered cultural institutions and, as such, do not receive […]
The other day, when I asked a Turkish colleague what she thought about the court case against the ruling party, she admitted, “It bores me. I don’t understand how, after all these years, we are facing this AGAIN. The same arguments, the same vocabulary we learned in grade school.”
Regarding the strangely blase attitude of much […]
It seems the incident that sparked the violent outbreak at Akdeniz University a few days ago (see my April 7 post) was personal, not political — a male student verbally harrassing a female student, and when he was told off, sneaking into her dorm and sexually harrassing her. A female friend tried to protect her, […]
Photo from Turkish Daily News
According to news reports, the thousand-year old Romani (gypsy) Sulukule neighborhood that dates back to Byzantium has become a site of despair as more and more houses are torn down with many residents given only 24-hour notice. (70 houses have been demolished so far.) An urban transformation project will replace […]
Antalya Governor Alaaddin Yüksel asked last week, “Why is it that in this country there are over 400,000 coffeehouses, when there are only 1,500 libraries?” Turkey currently has 800,000 carded library members compared to 36 million members in Mexico. In Turkey, there is one library for every 50,000 citizens, compared to one for every 7,558 […]
This morning the sky flushed salmon as the sun mounted the hills of Asia across the Bosphorus. It is 8 am now and the hills are sheathed with mist. The sky is white with it, but the Bosphorus shines beneath like beaten silver. An enormous cargo ship plows into the sheet of light, setting it […]