First draft of the 'Başbuğ doctrine' - 0 views
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İlker Başbuğ suggested ways to build healthy relations between the military and the government, used the phrase “the people of Turkey” instead of “Turks,” stated that cultural identities should be protected and emphasized that the military has never been opposed to religion, only its abuse by politicians.
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The civilian-military relationship in Turkey is often problematic, with the powerful military frequently interfering in politics, staging coups in 1961, 1972 and 1980. The European Union has pressed Turkey to harmonize its rules with those of the EU, finding unsatisfactory the steps the government has taken thus far to decrease the military’s influence in politics.
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The pious parts of our country love their army and trust it," he said. "The army of the Turkish people is the nation itself. It comes from the nation and is for the nation." In the second part of his speech, Başbuğ looked into the fight against terrorism and emphasized that the struggle against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, was not an ethnic conflict
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Women told: 'You have dishonoured your family, please kill yourself' - Europe, World - ... - 0 views
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So-called "honour killings" in Turkey have reached record levels. According to government figures, there are more than 200 a year – half of all the murders committed in the country. Now, in a sinister twist, comes the emergence of "honour suicides". The growing phenomenon has been linked to reforms to Turkey's penal code in 2005. That introduced mandatory life sentences for honour killers, whereas in the past, killers could receive a reduced sentence claiming provocation. Soon after the law was passed, the numbers of female suicides started to rocket.
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"I think most of these suicide cases are forced. There are just too many of them, it's too suspicious. But they're almost impossible to investigate," said Mustafa Peker, Batman's chief prosecutor.
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Most honour killings happen in the Kurdish region, a barren land ravaged by years of war and oppression. Rural communities here are ruled under a strict feudal, patriarchal system. But as Kurds have fled the fighting between separatist rebels and Turkey's government, the crime is spreading across the country into its cities and towns. According to a recent government report, there is now one honour killing a week in Istanbul."Families who move here are suddenly faced with modern, secular Turkey," said Vildan Yirmibesoglu, the head of Istanbul's department of human rights. "This clash of cultures is making the situation worse as the pressure on women to behave conservatively is become more acute. And of course there are more temptations."
Hit film's kiss gets Arab-Israeli teacher fired - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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“The mayor faces many problems with the opposition in Baqa al-Gharbiyye,” Muasi said. “Despite being secular himself, he needs the support of this Salafist group to bolster his coalition. And this is done at my expense. He simply sacrificed me as a teacher to serve his own political interests.”
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Despite having negligible political weight, radical Islamic groups like the Hedaya movement in Baqa al-Gharbiyye are central to the current political struggles within Arab society. Local leaders keep them politically on their side, apparently because they don’t know when and if they might need their support.
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“In the past three years we have seen at least 20 cases whereby artists or institutions came under attack by groups alleging to be Islam’s bona fide representatives,” Muasi said. “These are groups from Salafist Islam, far removed from the mainstream. Their people are trying to impose their worldview on an entire society and even on other Islamic movements that are more moderate than they are.”
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Note here that the teacher is being punished at the behest of a tiny group advocating views not shared by most in their community. But the mayor may rely on their political support at some point, so the teacher and his students suffer. The film is excellent, by the way: Omar was part of the Middle East Film Series at Dickinson in fall 2015.
How one sultan's harem is another's school - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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After naming a few prominent valide sultans — the title of the legal mother of the sultan — from the Ottoman era, Erdogan said, “Valide sultans have been pioneers of their generation and examples to our mothers.” Challenging the Orientalist portrayal of the harem as a place where ambitious women battled with the power of their sexuality, Erdogan praised the harem, saying, “For the members of the Ottoman family, the harem was a school. It was a center of education, where women were prepared for life and organized volunteer activities. This household was led by the valide sultans.”
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Indeed, despite harsh criticism by AKP elites, series like “Magnificent Century,” about the lives of prominent sultans and their lovers, such as Hurrem or Kosem Sultan, have become extremely popular in Turkey. These shows have also generated a niche for neo-Ottoman goods. Scents named after powerful women of the Ottoman court along with themed bathrobes, bathroom accessories, jewelry and even hair coloring are being sold. Ottoman-era aphrodisiacs to impress your partner have made a strong comeback and can be found in mainstream markets. Most of these products are not designed for Westerners fascinated by the ways of the East but for contemporary Turks. Today, one also has the option of partaking in the palace experience according to one's budget and tastes. For example, Les Ottomans, a fancy boutique and hotel on the Bosporus, offers rooms decorated to provide the unique atmosphere of the eras and tastes of 10 different sultans. US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has even visited the hotel.
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While journalists working for pro-government media outlets rigorously tried to prove the harem’s educational value, others asked whether the harem could be called a school simply because the residents were educated in certain trades. Ozlem Kumrular, a historian and author of the book “Kosem Sultan,” about the prominent valide sultan, tweeted an image of a painting depicting nude women around a pool, and wrote, “The artist of this harem painting is the last caliph, Abdulmecid. Odd but true.” It is interesting to note that although Kumrular’s message received hundreds of retweets, no backers of Erdogan’s praise of the harem tried to explain the rationale behind the painting. Most of the replies were satirical. For instance, one read, “Could [Sultan] Abdulmecid know the harem better than Mrs. Erdogan? I wonder what class this was.”
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Blaming Islam for ISIS: A convenient lie to prepare us for more war | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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We can’t defeat ISIS if we misrepresent what and who ISIS actually is. Far from being the apocalyptic Islamist group that Wood contends they are, actual IS documents and blue prints reveal IS to be methodical state builders, led by secular Baathists – who aim to restore Sunni-Baathist power in Iraq. These documents also make clear that Saddam’s former generals (anti-Islamists) use Islam as a recruitment tool. “They [ISIS founders] reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face,” notes the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
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recruits are drawn to ISIS for reasons that have little to do with extremist Islam. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the Caliphate,”
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the media welcomes only those who blame Islam or “radical Islam” and not those who speak to the conditions that make ISIS appealing
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Turkish newspaper with policemen 'playing editor' - 1 views
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Mustafa Edib has been working as a journalist for years and prides himself on fighting for the rights of the marginalized.In 2009, he publicly defended President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) when it faced a closure trial for alleged violation of the state’s secular principles. He has no regrets about helping to preserve a political force that would one day snub out his own voice, “because back then, AKP was being oppressed, and we stand against all types of tyranny”.
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the closure of numerous other media outlets has raised concerns about a wider political crackdown on media freedoms
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When Edib, the newspaper’s foreign editor, showed up to work on the morning after the seizure, his office resembled a police barracks. He told Middle East Eye that the Internet connection had been disabled and the paper was already prepared, but that he “didn't know where or by whom, quite frankly”.
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Exporting Jihad - The New Yorker - 0 views
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A friend of Mohamed’s, an unemployed telecommunications engineer named Nabil Selliti, left Douar Hicher to fight in Syria. Oussama Romdhani, who edits the Arab Weekly in Tunis, told me that in the Arab world the most likely radicals are people in technical or scientific fields who lack the kind of humanities education that fosters critical thought. Before Selliti left, Mohamed asked him why he was going off to fight. Selliti replied, “I can’t build anything in this country. But the Islamic State gives us the chance to create, to build bombs, to use technology.” In July, 2013, Selliti blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Iraq.
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Tourism, one of Tunisia’s major industries, dropped by nearly fifty per cent after June 26th last year, when, on a beach near the resort town of Sousse, a twenty-three-year-old student and break-dancing enthusiast pulled an automatic weapon out of his umbrella and began shooting foreigners; he spared Tunisian workers, who tried to stop him. The terrorist, who had trained at an Islamic State camp in Libya, killed thirty-eight people, thirty of them British tourists, before being shot dead by police.
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“The youth are lost,” Kamal told me. “There’s no justice.” Douar Hicher, he said, “is the key to Tunisia.” He continued, “If you want to stop terrorism, then bring good schools, bring transportation—because the roads are terrible—and bring jobs for young people, so that Douar Hicher becomes like the parts of Tunisia where you Westerners come to have fun.”
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Picking up the pieces - 0 views
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Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
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The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
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80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
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Egyptian drama 'Sheikh Jackson' effectively channels King of Pop - LA Times - 0 views
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it’s the cleric’s King of Pop-inspired crisis of faith and the ways it’s manifested and ultimately assuaged that gives the film its unique depth. To that end, Salama gently, effectively examines the role religion can play in one’s life and outlook versus how a secular, more free-thinking existence may offer greater latitude but not always better or happier choices.
US lobbying revelations upend Tunisia's presidential race - 0 views
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As Tunisians prepare for back-to-back legislative and presidential elections, news first revealed by Al-Monitor has had a bombshell effect: A purported emissary of imprisoned presidential candidate Nabil Karoui signed a $1 million lobbying contract to secure a meeting with President Donald Trump, among others.
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Karoui’s opponents cite laws that forbid any foreign funding or support for Tunisians running for office. “The money didn’t come from Tunisia so it came from outside Tunisia, and that is against the law,” said Leila Chettaoui, a member of parliament for Prime Minister Youssef Chahed’s pro-secular Tahya Tounes party. “If it’s proven to be the case, Karoui must be disqualified.”
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complaint also mentions Ennahda party, which has retained Burson-Marsteller (now BCW) for public affairs work in the United States since 2014, as well as parliamentary candidate Olfa Terras-Rambourg, who retained Washington firm America to Africa Consulting in early September
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Women's Testimonies of the Tunisian Uprising (2011-2015) - 0 views
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Testimonial narratives are an essential feature of intellectual life in post-totalitarian societies. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, post-dictatorial Latin America, and post-Apartheid South Africa all witnessed a proliferation of autobiographical accounts by victims of the ancien régime, seeking to reclaim their public voice. Currently, post-Ben Ali Tunisia is witnessing the same phenomenon. More and more activists and intellectuals have begun reflecting on the past, in order to forge the country’s future. What is remarkable about this wave is the increasing number of women, including both activists and intellectuals, who have written autobiographical accounts of the uprising and its aftermath
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For Tunisian activists and intellectuals, the urgency of remembering the past, in order to make sense of it, has been driven by the realization that authoritarianism can easily return in a different form
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As violence was increasing on the religious right, politicians on the secular left were encumbered by internal disagreements and unable to muster an appropriate response. As a result, the “old left’s” weakness and concomitant rise of the Islamist right have figured prominently in the testimonies of Tunisian women activists and intellectuals. Indeed, the testimonies published so far have mostly been triggered by a fear of an Islamist takeover of Tunisia’s newly-liberated public sphere
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Egypt's War on Books - The Atlantic - 0 views
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nothing seems to disturb Egypt’s ruling cadres more than the written word. The recent litany of bans and shutdowns, including blocking hundreds of web pages online, illustrates what Cambridge University’s Khaled Fahmy, a prolific historian of the Middle East, called “an alarmist moment of crisis,” one in which Egypt’s authoritarian state of emergency laws have turned something as simple as reading into a dangerous act. “Free press and freedom of information … are essential ingredients of any democratic system. The regime and many segments of society do not see it this way—they see the exact opposite. They see at times of crises we have to have absolute unity,”
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sentenced to five years in jail under a counter-terrorism law for possessing a copy of Karl Marx’s Value, Price and Profit
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Sisi prefers conservative Islamists who he can control over secular dissidents—chiefly writers—who threaten his rule.
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Erdoğan's Turkey and the Problem of the 30 Million - War on the Rocks - 0 views
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Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.
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The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?
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The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.
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Iran's elite technical university emerges as hub of protests | AP News - 0 views
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Thousands of Sharif University alumni power Iran’s most sensitive industries, including nuclear energy and aerospace. One of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s closest advisors has taught there for decades. But as demonstrations erupt across Iran — first sparked by the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police — the scientific powerhouse known as “Iran’s M.I.T.” has emerged as an unexpected hub for protest, fueling Iran’s biggest antigovernment movement in over a decade.
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Across the country and despite a violent crackdown, Iranians have taken to the streets, venting their outrage over social repression, economic despair and global isolation — crises that have clipped the ambitions of Iran’s young and educated generation.
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“They are demanding the end of the Islamic Republic.”
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RTL Today - Turkey introduces jail terms for 'fake news' - 0 views
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Turkey's parliament on Thursday approved a tough pre-election law that could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading "fake news".
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cement the government's already-firm grip on the media eight months before a general election that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters trailing in the polls.
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The Council of Europe said the measure's vague definition of "disinformation" and accompanying threat of jail could have a "chilling effect and increased self-censorship, not least in view of the upcoming elections in June 2023".
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