Kamil Pasha

Almost half  [45%] of urban Turkish women believe economic independence for women is unnecessary, and younger generations seem to share this view more than the older generations, according to [a newly published poll by the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, or KAGIDER]. Almost 50 percent of women between ages 15 and 19 believed a woman’s place was at home, near her children.

The profile of an entrepreneur in Turkey is of a male aged 25 to 34 with a primary or high school degree coming from a mid-level income, KAG?DER said in its press release about the research. In an environment like that, only slightly more than 13 percent of urban women ever seriously contemplate starting a business and nearly half of those who started a business quit later. The tendency to undertake such an enterprise is much higher for those women who are university graduates and divorced. (click for article)

Women in politics (click here):  Women represent 9.1 percent of the Turkish Parliament and 0.56 percent of local administrations, while the figure sits at 30 percent in the European Parliament. Among 3,225 mayors in Turkey, only 18 are female.

Tags: Culture, Education, Istanbul, Rights, Women // Add Comment »

From a Spiegel article about Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, the creationist cult leader in Turkey whose libel lawsuit recently led to the blocking of the world renowned scientist Richard Dawkins’ website in Turkey (click for entire article):

“In 20 years,” [Yahya] says in serious tone, “humanity will enter a golden age.” Yahya says that he discovered these joyful tidings in the Bible and the Koran. He maintains that it is a “scientific fact” that Jesus and Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, will return to mankind to solve all global conflicts. Beforehand, however, he says that these two heavenly emissaries will have to tackle another challenge: They must eradicate the heresy of British naturalist Charles Darwin, who postulated that all life arose from a process of natural selection.

As Yahya sees it, Darwinism is the root of all the world’s evils. In order to help rid the world of this theory, he has had thousands of copies of The Atlas of Creation printed and shipped around the world. This large-format 800-page tome aims to prove that there never was a natural evolution of species. Instead, it contends that all forms of life on earth have remained unchanged for millions of years. Brightly colored illustrations of fossils have been included so as to document the lack of so-called transitional forms….

Also see the Spiegel interview with Oktar/Yahya. Click here. Excerpt:

[W]hen we look at the present day, we see that all the members of terrorist organizations — even those that portray themselves as Muslim organizations — are Darwinists, atheists. That is to say, a faithful person who prays regularly does not go and plant bombs here and there. It is just people who pretend to be Muslims, those who depict themselves as Muslims, who perpetrate bombings, or Darwinists who make it clear that they are terrorists or communists who commit terrorism. Consequently, they are all Darwinists.

Tags: Education, Religion, Science // 2 Comments »

A storeowner in the secular Çankaya area of the capital was beaten by three people over the weekend for selling alcohol during the holy month of Ramadan.  After purchasing bread, three people broke the nose of storeowner Müslüm Göksu for selling alcoholic drinks during Ramadan and tossed the alcohol bottles inside the shop, which was only 300 meter from the Yildiz Police Station. Before running away, they also warned Göksu not to call the police and customers outside not to purchase alcohol. Surveillance cameras inside the shop recorded the whole incident.  (click here)

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The Transparency International CPI measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. The 2008 CPI scores 180 countries (the same number as the 2007 CPI) on a scale from zero. In this year’s index, Turkey ranks 58 and with a transparency score of 4.6, while in 2007 it ranked 64 with a transparency score of 4.1. (Click for article)
2008 CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX
Rank - Country - Confidence range

1 - Denmark - 9.3
4 - Singapore - 9.2
5 - Switzerland - 9.0
9 - Canada - 8.7
18 - Japan - 7.3
18 - US - 7.3
31 - Cyprus - 6.4
33 - Israel - 6.0
41 - Mauritius - 5.5
47 - Malaysia - 5.1
57 - Greece - 4.7
58 - Turkey - 4.6
70 - Romania - 3.8
85 - Serbia - 3.4
134 - Pakistan - 2.5
141 - Iran - 2.3
147 - Russia - 2.1
176 - Afghanistan - 1.5
178 - Iraq - 1.3
180 - Somalia - 1.0

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 The Education Ministry’s announcement about changes to school uniforms has caused debate among secular segments of society, who have found the new “tie-free” uniforms to be “not modern.”… Istanbul’s provincial director of national education, Ata Özer, announced that students could wear t-shirts instead of shirts and they did not have to wear ties until the warm weather ended…

“…The policy is against modernization, enlightenment and westernization as the tie has been the symbol of all these since the establishment of the Turkish Republic,” said Alaaddin Dinçer, ex-president of the Educators’ Union…

…A popular argument by radical Islamic groups [is that the tie is] an invention of the West, and therefore carry[ies] Western values. In Iran, for example, the tie is neither part of the common nor the official dress code. Historically speaking, the tie caused debates between progressives and conservatives in Ottoman Empire as well. “Tie wearing was supported by Ottoman intellectuals but was opposed by conservative segments,” wrote Hürriyet columnist Soner Yalçin last week.  “Islamic scholars stood away from it. The common use of ties only started during the establishment of the Turkish Republic,” he said. “Even today there are examples of people who are against the tie, such as [conservative writer] Abdurrahman Dilipak.” Recent examples are not just limited to writers, but also politicians. The AKP’s pioneer Welfare Party was also known to have members who refused to wear a tie…  (click for the article)

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A doctor investigating the deaths of 13 newborns at a hospital in western Turkey said Monday that the deaths were a result of an infection spread by intravenous treatment, the Dogan news agency reported. The babies, all of whom were premature, died late Saturday and early Sunday in Izmir. It was the second mass death of babies in a Turkish hospital in three months. A local prosecutor is investigating whether neglect was a factor. (New York Times)

Shortly after the death of 27 infants at a hospital in Ankara in early August, Turkey has once again been shocked by the death of 13 infants at Izmir Tepecik Research and Training Hospital within a 24-hour period….

The Zekai Tahir Burak Hospital in Ankara had witnessed 49 infant deaths in July and 27 infant deaths in August, which triggered a flurry of debate over infant deaths and neonatal department practices in Turkey. According to a study carried out by the Health Ministry, the infant mortality rate in Turkey increased to 10 percent this year. (Today’s Zaman)

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An excerpt from the article “Without God” by Steven Weinberg, in The New York Review of Books. Weinberg was  awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. (click here for full article)

…A third source of tension between science and religious belief has been more important in Islam than in Christianity. Around 1100, the Sufi philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali argued against the very idea of laws of nature, on the grounds that any such law would put God’s hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smolder because of the heat of the flame, but because God wants it to darken and smolder. Laws of nature could have been reconciled with Islam, as a summary of what God usually wants to happen, but al-Ghazzali did not take that path.

Al-Ghazzali is often described as the most influential Islamic philosopher. I wish I knew enough to judge how great was the impact on Islam of his rejection of science. At any rate, science in Muslim countries, which had led the world in the ninth and tenth centuries, went into a decline in the century or two after al-Ghazzali. As a portent of this decline, in 1194 the Ulama of Córdoba burned all scientific and medical texts.

Nor has science revived in the Islamic world. There are talented scientists who have come to the West from Islamic countries and do work of great value here, among them the Pakistani Muslim physicist Abdus Mohammed Salam, who in 1979 became the first Muslim scientist to be awarded a Nobel Prize, for work he did in England and Italy. But in the past forty years I have not seen any paper in the areas of physics or astronomy that I follow that was written in an Islamic country and was worth reading. Thousands of scientific papers are turned out in these countries, and perhaps I missed something. Still, in 2002 the periodical Nature carried out a survey of science in Islamic countries, and found just three areas in which the Islamic world produced excellent science, all three directed toward applications rather than basic science. They were desalination, falconry, and camel breeding….

Tags: Education, Religion, Science // 2 Comments »

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 hearing the Ergenekon case on Oct. 21.  click here for the article.

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I took this photo of the Bosphorus Bridge from the terrace of a friend’s house in Kuzguncuk on the Asian side.

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Excerpt from an article on the rise of Turkish soap operas, not only in Turkey, but the entire region (click for full article):

Turkish soap operas have lately become so popular in Middle Eastern countries that in this upcoming season, 18 soap operas will be airing in 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, reported daily Hürriyet on Saturday…

The soap opera craze started when one series, “Gümüs,” or “Noor” in Arabic, became an obsession among young women in Saudi Arabia…. The show, based around a love story between the “poor but proud” Noor and the “rich but macho” Mohannad, has indeed affected millions of people in countries such as Morocco, Dubai, Algeria, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan and especially Saudi Arabia. The lead actors have become big-time celebrities on Arab streets….

In Saudi Arabia, the only country with viewer ratings, about 3 to 4 million people watch the show daily, out of a population of nearly 28 million, The Associated Press reported…

Today, the overall export revenue from Turkey’s soap opera industry has reached $3 million… The number of Arab tourists that visited Turkey has increased from 30,000 to 100,000 this year…

“Some Muslim preachers in the West Bank and Saudi Arabia have taken notice, saying the show is un-Islamic and urging the faithful to change channels.”… “This series collides with our Islamic religion, values and traditions,” the AP quoted Hamed Bitawi, a lawmaker for the militant Islamic Hamas and a preacher in the West Bank city of Nablus, as saying….

“A West Bank poster vendor has ditched Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein for Noor and Mohannad,” [AP] reported.

Tags: Culture, Fiction, Religion, Rights, Women // 1 Comment »