For a cellphone video of the second explosion as it occurs, click here, then play the screen that says Cihan in the top right corner. Seconds before the blast, a man in a black shirt is seen suspiciously running from the scene. In the video, it has been marked by a red square.
For a video […]
This was the view from my balcony last night.
Next Monday is D-Day, when the court meets to decide about closing the AKP. A decision may be announced that day or the next. Hold on to your hat. I’ll be very surprised if they don’t close it down. With the vast Ergenekon conspiracy of coup attempts being unearthed and new arrests every week, as […]
Trabzon is up in arms over a shopping center accidentally built in the shape of a cross. The shopping center’s theme is a lighthouse (with rays of light). A lighthouse-shaped cafe features outside balconies for shoppers to look at the view. The owners had to reshape the building and the cafe so as not to […]
Ha! I knew I wasn’t imagining things.
Lat year Istanbul was 38th in the survey, this year 23rd. The 2008 Cost of Living Survey by Mercer covers 143 cities across six continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.
From “Why Are Neocons Attacking Turkey? by Avni Dogru in Foreign Policy in Focus
(for article, click here) Excerpt below:
Much has changed in Turkey’s approach to foreign policy in recent years. When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it quickly broke the old patterns of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey’s role evolved […]
Also of interest is an interview with the Swiss historian Daniele Ganser about Ergenekon-like secret armies in Europe, such as Gladio, and the problems these countries had in exposing them. Even the Swiss were shocked to discover that they had a secret army! Click here
The emblem above is that of Gladio, the Italian branch of […]
One of the many startling things about the Ergenekon arrests is how diverse they are: retired generals and drug dealers, left-wing Worker’s Party members, and now far-right Islamists. One wonders how an organization like Ergenekon managed to keep all these groups on separate leashes.
(Excerpt from news article about the most recent arrests. For […]
An Istanbul court on Tuesday ruled against a demand to start an investigation into Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah and seven other police officers, including former Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Ahmet Ilhan Güler, who were accused of having disregarded intelligence information regarding a plot to kill Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was shot dead […]
Turkey Meets “Kemalist Terror” , by Mustafa Akyol. (click here)
[Last week], we heard at least a summary of the indictment in the Ergenekon case from Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, Aykut Cengiz Engin. Among the many striking things he noted, one was very new to Turkey. He said that Ergenekon was a “terrorist organization” that “used the […]