An Obligatory Break

Tomorrow, I'll begin my six-month-long military service, which is obligatory in Turkey.

I hope that I'll continue where I left off after May 2011.

Until then, I won't be able to post anything or moderate comments here. So please send an email instead, if you have a message to me. I may be able to check my mail in a couple of weeks.

My email address: ekizilkaya at gmail.com

So long!

Istanbul 360 Degrees

I've recently discovered 360tr.com, a great website that hosts panoramic Turkey photos.

It may be a late discovery, but better late than never.

I recommend you to take a guided virtual tour in the Harem section of the Topkapi Palace, before watching other Turkish landmarks panoramically.

A Photo Story of Our AKP-guided Democracy

Student protests in Turkey continue...

Meet Burhan Kuzu, a leading AKP member of parliament.

Kuzu is heading the parliamentary commission for constitution.

He is the key figure to write the next constitution, which is as highly praised as the AKP government itself by the European Union.

In Ankara University today, there was a panel about Turkey's next constitution. Kuzu participated in it.

CHP spokesman Suheyl Batum was another participant. He was the first person to be booed off the stage by the students.

Then came Burhan Kuzu, our democracy-builder hero.

Kuzu's bodyguards seemed well-prepared as they had already seen the placard that a group of students was holding: "Welcome to the Collective Festival of Eggs."

The students shouted the same slogans that they used when confronting the CHP supremo earlier in the day: "We want free education. AKP, stay out of universities!"

The bodyguards were quick to protect their boss with umbrellas when eggs started to rain.

They were not so successful, though. Kuzu, with his egg-stained dress, shouted at the students: "Retards! This is not democracy. The president and the board of your university will pay for this!"

Kuzu was right. This was not democracy. The police attacked the university students with batons and tear gas once again, even though there was no physical threat, excluding the egg shells around.

And let me remind you: Those police officers belonged to the same law enforcement agency which had killed the unborn baby of a pregnant student yesterday, when trying to disperse an anti-government protest.

It was the same police, whose new members were singing the favorite song of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in their graduation ceremony last year.

Aren't these scenes increasingly looking like the oppression of the Basij militia in Iran?

Are you "retard" enough to believe that people like Burhan Kuzu can make a democratic constitution?

Why Should Julian Assange Be Executed and the Turkish Students Be Crucified?

With the arrest of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, global capitalism -and neoliberal democracy as the foundation of today's hegemony- is dying for the third time, although it keeps coming back as a zombie.

Slavoj Zizek had argued that it died twice: "first as a political doctrine in the tragedy of the attacks of 9/11; then (with) its farcical collapse as an economic theory when the meltdown at the end of 2008 brought an end to the utopia of global market capitalism."

And now it is dying socially in the fractal space of the Internet, while everybody is listening to the echoes of a public secret: King Midas has donkey's ears, even though it is as rich as Croesus.

So what?

I believe that we are in a point of realization, that we're suddenly enlightened as it is obvious to us now that democracy is not really practiced anywhere in the world. As long as certain interests (class or individual) are threatened, "Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster – and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger," as John Naughton says.

This democracy simulation is global. It is the Assange-esque drama in western Europe and the United States. In the twilight zone of capitalism, with the tragic limbo that we call Turkey as an instance, the spectacle changes its shape: The oppressor is an Islamist neoliberal here, while the victim is the last frontier of any agonizing democracy: university students.

In Western Europe and the United States, the democracy simulation is more successful at pretending as if it is really democratic, really for and by the people. Unfortunately, it is much more vulgar and obscene in Turkey.

Recently, I reported about the police brutality a couple of times (here and here). This week, the police kept beating the students who just wanted to peacefully protest the Prime Minister. Considering the anger and the intolerance of Tayyip Erdogan, the actions of the police force, which is directed by the Minister of Interior, are normal. "The police was not brutal," the chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis told, "The students were brutal."

If it is obviously clear that AKP is not democratizing Turkey, but turning it into another Iran or -most optimistically- Russia, then why does the EU and several American opinion-makers keep praising it?

The answer is WikiLeaks. The people who praise AKP even though they see it clearly that their neoliberal Islamism is a danger for any real democracy share the mindset of the people who would like to see Julian Assange executed.

In a democratic world where a website can easily be banned, blocked and attacked by the government...

...in a democratic world where the champions of free press can suddenly turn into tyrants, starting to defend that there may be exceptional situations to restrict freedoms...

...in a democratic world, where merciless dictatorships like Saudi Arabia can be tolerated by developed countries, in spite of their fundamental hate of democracy and the documented support for terrorism on their behalf...

...those Turkish students should not only be executed, but also be crucified...

...in the neo-Ottoman style...

Erdogan Threatens Assange?

Neither Barack Obama nor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened Julian Assange yet, but Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is the only one of his kind.

Responding to the WikiLeaks' Cablegate allegations that he has got eight bank accounts in Switzerland, Erdogan has reacted with his usual temper today.

"Don't forget that the person who once alleged that I have one billion dollars is in jail as an Ergenekon suspect now," Erdogan kindly reminded us.