The emphasis in Turkish schoolbooks (see my previous posts on education) and state propaganda urging a militaristic response to Turkey’s “enemies within” is bearing fruit. Turkish society is boiling with anti-Kurdish sentiment that extends beyond the Kurdish terror movement PKK to include any citizen of Kurdish descent. Following the recent deaths of Turkish soldiers at […]
Singers, caricaturists, writers, translators, publishers… the court cases against them seem unending, not only under Article 301 (that bans insulting Turkishness), but under a variety of other laws that restrict speech, and increasingly civil lawsuits that impose punitive monetary punishments, or ban websites. See for instance the recent debate about a Turkish court ban on […]
Mustafa Akyol’s take on the recent “anti-Crusader” incident in Kayseri (click for full article):
The most tragic-comic news story of this week came from the central Anatolian town of Kayseri. A film crew was shooting a documentary about the medieval past of the town, and they decided to use the city’s ancient castle as a stage. […]
The list of those detained Tuesday as part of the Ergenekon investigation contains several former notable members of Turkey’s security, politics and judicial structure.
Former police officer Adil Serdar Saçan, whose name was mentioned as the first official to confiscate documents regarding the Ergenekon gang in 2001, was detained together with 15 other suspects. Former mayor […]
The prosecutor conducting the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine network made up of former and active military officers, journalists, academics, politicians, mafia leaders and other professional segments allegedly attempting to overthrow the government, has mapped out what he believes is the organizational structure of the network and submitted it to the court that will start […]
Nineteen people, including … five lieutenants and [a] military student, were detained on Thursday in police operations… as part of an investigation into Ergenekon, a neo-nationalist gang believed to be the extension of a clandestine network of groups with members in the armed forces that planned to overthrow the government…
Land Forces Lt. Mehmet Ali […]
Nineteen people, including six active army lieutenants and a military academy student, were detained yesterday in police operations in five cities, including Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, as part of the investigation into Ergenekon, a neo-nationalist gang believed to be the extension of a clandestine network of groups with members in the armed forces that planned […]
Following upon the recent case in Trabzon where protesters demanded that a new shopping center be torn down because it had been built in what they saw as the shape of a cross, here we have another set of passersby, this time in Kayseri, stepping into the limelight by protesting the display of a Byzantine […]
One of the assailants in a deadly armed attack on the US Consulate General in Istanbul in July had engaged in phone conversations with suspects arrested as part of the investigation into Ergenekon, a neo-nationalist gang believed to be the extension of a clandestine network of groups with members in the armed forces that planned […]
The German Marshall Fund has issued its 2008 Transatlantic Trends Report. This year’s report has a special section on Turkey. (For the report, click here) Data for the survey was collected in the United States and twelve European countries: Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. A […]