See this site for a legal discussion by one of TUrkey’s most renowned Constitutional scholars of the Turkish Constitutional Court’s recently published justification for its decision on June 5, 2008 to cancel law #5735, which would have amended several articles of the Constitution and allowed female students to attend university while wearing headscarves….
(click here for […]
The latest in a series of bans on popular Web sites has spurred many to question the future of Internet freedom in Turkey. Turkish Internet users trying to access the popular [and world’s largest] blog-hosting service blogspot.com get an error message saying that access to the site has been blocked by a court decision, without stating […]
“Human Rights in the Era of the AKP” by Howard Eissenstat (click here for full text):
…Turkey’s stance on basic human rights is complex. On the one hand, Turkey is a functioning parliamentary democracy with regular, free, fair elections in a region where this is still a rarity. Despite important limitations, the Turkish press is both […]
From Bianet: According to the information given by a prisoner’s relative to the Free Radio, the female prisoners who are imprisoned for sentences having to do with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) were attacked by the male prisoners who are imprisoned for non-political crimes in Gebze Closed Prison. The attack occured between October 17 […]
There’s never a failing grade in Turkey. You get to try again, and again. When I taught here in the 1980s, I was asked to change the flunking grade of a wealthy student who had never shown up for class and failed all his exams, but had his own private parking space on campus for […]
New draft regulations on alcohol are being debated that would ban alcohol sponsorships and other restrictions. (click here for article. Excerpt:)
…The number of businesses selling alcohol in Turkey has decreased by 12.6 percent over the past three years, according to a survey conducted by the Nielsen International Measurement Service. The number decreased from 58,649 in […]
In Eskisehir, the regional head of the Ataturkist Thought Association Azmi Kerman saw a schoolbag being sold in a shop that had a picture of a veiled woman on it. Kerman has put pressure [not clear on whom] to ban the sale of the offending bags and to confiscate them.
Eskisehir provincial director of national education, […]
Threatening to undo recent advances in the protection of women’s rights that have been made into law in Turkey, already problematic because of lack of enforcement, the Supreme Court of Appeals is threatening to unravel women’s protections altogether by suggesting that the penalty for rape be reduced if the rapist marries his victim. Why? Because, […]
Mourners bearing Engin Ceber’s coffin. Photo from Today’s Zaman
Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin apologized yesterday for the recent death of an activist [Engin Ceber] allegedly at the hands of police and prison guards and announced that 19 members of the security staff believed to have been responsible for the tragedy have been suspended, a […]
[Update: The Prime Ministry is investigating. (click here)]
…[Engin] Ceber, an inmate at Istanbul’s Metris Prison, died last week after allegedly being abused and tortured at the hands of police and prison guards. Ceber was reportedly taken into custody along with three friends in Istanbul for selling a leftist magazine. They were later convicted and sent […]