The Istanbulian

Istanbul as a Veiled Corpse Bride

2012-01-30T21:44:00.007+02:00

My home is just 15 minutes driving distance to my workplace, but the same road took almost three hours today, because of the blizzard. It was more of a thrilling ice-skating than a drive.

I'm in high spirits, anyway, thanks to the beautiful scenes from Istanbul under the cover of thick snow. I like the city even more, when it's smooth over the cracks. When the mistakes done to her by our human hands, which is what turned her into a corpse bride with a white veil now, seemed to be corrected by the nature, temporarily...

Take this photo of Sultanahmet district. There is a deep symbolism here:

See how the snow further alienates the palm tree, a tropic/subtropic plant that is not native to Istanbul flora?

Not only this palm tree reveals the kitsch, arabesque aesthetics of our neo-liberal Islamist government, but it also reveals the fact that those municipal authorities could waste public funds to build such ugliness, instead of just keeping the roads clean of ice (or floods).

Anyway, I want to remain positive. After all, it is good that it snows here, as it gives us hope. It shows that Turkey still has several types of climates, despite the people who don't really like any kind of pluralism. They will lose, because nature always wins in the long term.

Turkish Coffee Briefings

2012-01-29T21:58:00.003+02:00

Kader Sevinç, the Brussels representative of Turkey's main opposition party CHP, has recently unveiled an exciting project: Turkish Coffee Briefings, a roundtable debate club on international issues in Brussels. Check out the attractive summary:

According to the Turkish tradition, it is customary for the host to serve Turkish coffee to guests as soon as they arrive, as a gesture of hospitality. As parties start sipping their coffee from traditional demitasse cups, they also engage in a short pep talk to “melt the ice” which spurs on the main conversation. Therefore a cup of Turkish coffee is an important part of daily social and business life in Turkey as stated in the following proverb: “A cup of coffee will not be forgotten for 40 years”...

The intent of the Turkish Coffee Briefings is to carry that tradition over to our roundtable discussions in Brussels. Since the Turkish coffee is inherent in the social customs in showing respect to each other, intrinsic in interpersonal relations of people as the icebreaker and it is an expression of hospitality, we want to apply the same principles to our intellectual debates.

At the Turkish Coffee Briefings we will host the participants to discuss a topic by exchanging ideas from different perspectives and creating an intellectual framework of debate in an entertaining and enjoyable manner, while we are savoring our freshly brewed coffee and Turkish delights of different flavors. These roundtable sessions are devoted to promoting debates concerning selected topics in relation to the European social, economic and political agenda. The sessions are introduced by guest speakers, followed by the views of the participants.

Turkish coffee and international relations are two soft spots of me, so I'm impatient to participate in one of these briefings the next time I come around Brussels. I congratulate Kader and thank her for giving such a name and context to her initiative.

Waiting for an Istanbul Blizzard

2012-01-26T22:00:00.007+02:00

Snow is falling on Istanbul tonight and more snowfall is on the way, according to State Meteorology Bureau forecasts.

While we're bracing for the blizzard, the cats of Hagia Sophia are warming themselves not in the hands of U.S. President Barack Obama, but this time in some other place inside the former church/former mosque/contemporary museum.

As can be seen from these photos that I've taken, Hagia Sophia cats chose the spotlights in front of the splendid mihrab to get warmer, posing like golden statues from the pharaoh tombs of the Ancient Egypt. This is how an Istanbul blizzard creates a multi-layered symbolism of various cultures and religions:

As Anti-Turkish Policies of France Continue, What Would Hollande Do?

2012-01-24T23:50:00.005+02:00

As expected, French senators approved the bill to make it illegal to deny the tragic events of 1915 was "genocide". If President Nicolas Sarkozy confirms (it is almost certain as it was a bill sponsored by Sarkozy himself to get the Armenian votes in the upcoming elections), those found guilty of denying the "Armenian genocide" would be sentenced to one year in jail and fined 45,000 euros.

Followers of this blog know very well that I am not a fan of Sarkozy, but my dislike doesn't shadow my judgment about him: He is a scapegoat now. When I saw that a populist newspaper in Turkey has called him "Satan Sarkozy" in its headline today, I was more than convinced that he didn't deserve to be turned into such a bogeyman.

After all, the French Senate is controlled by Socialists and their leader François Hollande also supported the bill. Although I'm closer to Hollande's discourse and practice, the fact that he is giving an example of Sarkozien hypocrisy now may fatally damage the bilateral relations between Turkey and France during his upcoming presidency, especially if this bill is not abolished by the Constitutional Court.

The saddest part of what happens in France now is that such policies of anti-Turkism is not exclusive to the Sarkozy administration, as it has become a historical pattern long ago.

When France made a secret agreement with its allies to use Ottoman Armenians as a tool to dismember the Ottoman Empire, and supported one of its ally, Russia, to kill and expel 550,000 Muslims from the modern day Armenia in 1910s, these policies were in action.

When France invaded southeastern Turkey and used legionnaire divisions consisted of Ottoman Armenians to realize the plan in 1920s, these policies were in action.

When France unsuccessfully tried to snatch the Turkish province of Alexandretta in 1930s, these policies were in action.

When France, allied with the Nazis, tried to kill 15,000 Turkish Jews, which were eventually rescued by Turkey in 1940s, these policies were in action.

When the French socialist government made a secret agreement with Armenian terrorists, in which the government would allow ASALA to use France as a base of operations in exchange for refraining from launching attacks on French soil in 1970s, these policies were in action.

When ASALA was dissolved and its infrastructure started to be used by the PKK militants, as France shifted its "humanitarian support" towards the Kurdish cause in 1980s and 1990s, these policies were in action.

Considering this historiography, I hope that when he will be elected, Hollande will change to break the vicious cycle. I wish that he stopped being a hostage of the rich Armenian nationalists in France, who are just hate-merchants. I expect him to read the hard evidence of history, instead of listening to the one-sided propaganda.

Here I suggest him a beginning... The National Archives of the United Kingdom released some files under the 30-year rule last week. Hürriyet's London correspondent went there to take a look at them. Some of the British Foreign Ministry cables, all from 1981, are about the "Armenian terrorism", which Hollande should take a lesson about. The cables show how the French-speaking Armenians in Switzerland started to assassinate Turkish diplomats. The Swiss government were initially quite tolerant to such crimes, although Britain was diplomatically criticizing them. The Swiss started to penalize the Armenian terrorism harshly, only after those terrorists started to attack Swiss interests, too!

Armenian Terrorism in Switzerland, According to Britain

France's Crime Against Democracy

2012-01-23T12:20:00.016+02:00

French senators are about to vote a bill to make it illegal to deny the tragic events of 1915 was genocide. If the French bill passes, those found guilty of denying the "Armenian genocide" would be sentenced to one year in jail and fined 45,000 euros.

But is the vote really important?

After all, many people in France accept that this is an electioneering attempt by Nicolas Sarkozy and the law is doomed to be revoked by the Constitutional Court. Robert Badinter, a former judge in the French Constitutional Court, as well as Thierry Fragnoli, an influential judge, and respected historians like Pierre Nora and scores of MPs and experts are all against this bill.

In democratic countries, parliaments don't write history and then restrict freedom of speech according to this precise version of history. If Sarkozy opts to do it for a few thousand Armenian votes, it means that he is ready to turn France into anything but a democracy. Fortunately, France still has an independent judiciary, unlike Turkey, and it won't surrender to Sarkozy in the end. If it does, then the French state would be committing a crime against democracy.

So, I really believe that the vote is not important in the big picture. What really important is the institutionalization of anti-Turkism, not only in Sarkozy's France, but on a larger scale.

Take the insistent efforts of the mass media to present a one-sided portrait of the 1915 events, which is painted by the nationalist Armenian diaspora.

As Fatih Çekirge, the editor-in-chief of Hürriyet's online edition, has pointed out today, a massive protest march in Paris is almost completely ignored by international news agencies. Almost 40,000 Turks from all over Europe had flocked in front of the French Senate on Saturday, but only AP posted a full story, although it was accompanied by dull photos.

Luckily, the world is not depended to the old gatekeepers now. The Turkish march was a trending topic on Twitter for the whole Saturday, for instance.

This is why I am optimistic, whatever the French Senate does.

In contrary to what the Armenian diaspora wants, we will have a more democratic debate, hearing the arguments of both sides.

It is not the 1920s anymore, when British "historians" were producing fake propaganda material against the Ottoman enemy to use the Ottoman Armenians as a leverage, preceding many more attempts of forgeries by Armenians.

Nor it is the 1970s, when Armenian terrorists were killing Turkish diplomats all over the world under French protection and nobody was aware, thanks to the hypocrisy of the Western European mass media.

Their lobby can't buy out freedom of speech anymore.

Neither now, nor in 2015.

In Turkey, an Organized Crime Can Only Be Committed Against the Government

2012-01-17T18:07:00.013+02:00

Recently, in Turkey...

Almost one hundred journalists, including globally famous ones like Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık, were arrested. Although, the indictment made it clear that most of them were being prosecuted solely because of their professional activities (the books or stories that they've written or drafted), they are being accused of being the members of a "criminal organization" that tried to topple the government.

Retired general Ilker Başbuğ, the former head of Turkey's armed forces, was arrested. The prosecution accused him of being the leader of a "criminal organization," which also tried to overthrow the government. Başbuğ was leading a military force with over 500.000 personnel until his retirement.

Aziz Yıldırım, the president of Turkey’s reigning football champions Fenerbahçe, was arrested in a dubious probe on match-fixing. The alleged crime defines him as the leader of a "criminal organization." Yıldırım was known as one of the leading defense contractors in Turkey, working with NATO, too. He is still widely supported by millions of Fenerbahçe fans.

There are scores of university students behind the prison bars, who were arrested while protesting the government for various reasons, such as yelling out for free education. Many of them are indicted for being members of criminal organizations and even terrorist ones.

* * *

Today, in Turkey...

A court in Istanbul has sentenced a man to life in prison for masterminding the killing of Hrant Dink, a leading Armenian-Turkish journalist, but cleared all 19 suspects in the five-year-old case, concluded that whole crime was a simple ultra-nationalist killing, unrelated to any kind of "criminal organization." "This ruling means a tradition was left untouched. The state tradition of political murders," unsatisfied Dink family announced today.

So, we have the whole picture now:

Hrant Dink is in a cemetery.

Nedim Şener, who has written a book about the intelligence failures before and after the Dink murder, is in a prison.

And there are no criminal organizations in Turkey, except the ones that critical journalists, retired generals, football club presidents and dissident students have established to topple the government!

...I hope none of those pseudo-intellectuals in Turkey, who call themselves liberals and have been supporting the AKP government as a promising democratic force since 2002, would be regarded as the friends of Dink anymore.

Because the latest verdict -as well as the big picture in today's Turkey as a prospective police state- is their product, too...

Two Deaths That Separate Turks and Greeks

2012-01-14T00:00:00.008+02:00

It was Friday the 13th and two important people died yesterday, as sad news echoed both in Turkey and Greece:

The first one was former Fenerbahçe footballer Lefter Küçükandonyadis, also known as “the Professor." Born in Istanbul in 1925 to a fisherman of Greek descent and a Turkish mother, Lefter was my idol, whom I could watch only from Betamax video tapes and imitated his moves in the street games that I played in my childhood. The legend that he created was one of reasons that made Fenerbahçe my favorite team, as he was so much loved. When some Turkish nationalists rioted in Istanbul after the British agitation in 1955 against Greeks to gain an upper-hand in Cyprus, scores of reasonable Turks (and not only Fenerbahçe fans) had flocked to Büyükada, where Lefter was living, to protect him and his property from the anti-Greek mob.

Lefter's death should have devastated everyone both in Turkey and Greece.

The second one was Rauf Denktaş, the founding president of the Turkish Cypriot state and "the courageous leader that guided his community out of those terrible years when Greek Cypriots were trying to annihilate Turkish presence from the island" decades ago. I must acknowledge Denktaş' success in this paramilitary defence and even though I had opposed his pro-partition stance decades after, during the Annan referandum, he is proven right also politically, as a two-state solution seems like the only way in Cyprus now.

An overwhelming majority of Turks mourn Denktaş' death today, while I presume that most Greeks were not that unhappy.

As these two titans are falling, their deaths that divide Turks and Greeks are defining the distinct nature of football and politics; two games that people play and two games that play with people.

One of the last words of Lefter was a support message for the current chairman of Fenerbahçe, who was arrested during a controversial investigation on match-fixing, which some see as another instance of political persecution by the Turkish government.

On the other hand, one of the last words of Denktaş was in the Greek language. "Tell them (the Greek Cypriot government) that Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is an independent state," he told his wife just before falling into a coma yesterday.

While a footballer unites two nations in sorrow, a politician -as another giant figure in history- still manages to divide them once again with his death. It is not his fault, though. It is just life and what kind of roles it casts us...

I am sure as hell that both of these extraordinary individuals are having great time together while travelling to the Heaven now, speaking maybe in Turkish, maybe in Greek. Does it really matter?

Who Did Photoshop President Gül's Photo?

2012-01-12T21:47:00.003+02:00

Two days after a curious photograph of President Abdullah Gül was tweeted by himself, Habertürk newspaper unraveled the mystery yesterday. Or maybe they deepened it...

Although the newspaper used a misleading headline in the story, the content of the article was enough to reveal that the shot was photoshopped. OK, Gül was really there on the lakeside in Bolu, but as there was an eyesore bench in one of the photos, his preferred pose was digitally moved to another shot of the same scene from a better angle, newspaper sources in Ankara explained.

Not all the questions are answered, though. After all, Gül had tweeted earlier in the same day that he was at home because the weather in Istanbul was bad and he would be sharing his latest photographs. So, who did photoshop that shot in such an amateurish way? Presidential photographers or Gül himself or somebody else?

I don't think that it's something so embarrassing. I hope that Gül explains it in full and satisfy our curiosity.

Rest in Peace: On Free Media and Its Discontents

2012-01-10T14:46:00.014+02:00

In a metropolitan shantytown where many Kurds who sympathize with the PKK reside...

... one Kurdish Istanbulian explained to the TIME Magazine that the modern residential complex just across the highway was a symbol of the Turkish state.

When Turkish soldiers die in combat against the PKK, "many of the Turks living there (in the modern residential complex) hang national flags from their balconies," says another resident in the mainly Kurdish shantytown.

In response, he continues, Kurdish protesters "sometimes throw stones or Molotov cocktails at their windows."

These words remind me of Serap Eser, who was killed near my home by a Molotov cocktail thrown by PKK sympathizers...

Rest in peace.

* * *

In Turkey's national parliament where the number of Kurdish members is close the number of Turkish members...

Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Leyla Zana has said “weapons are insurance for Kurds” as long as the Kurdish issue exists.

When Zana was imprisoned for giving support to a terrorist organization and inciting hatred and violence in the past, she was idolized by some European institutions.

Her latest words sound -once again- as if she is not a peace dove at all. Like many other BDP parliamentarians, she can't keep away from appearing as a Kurdish nationalist with a violent rhetoric that would be deemed illegal in any democracy.

But what about her European sponsors now?

Rest in peace.

* * *

In Denmark, where the drug-smuggling PKK keep laundering money and extorting "fees" from many Danish Kurds with threats, like they do in many other EU countries...

A court fined Roj TV, a Kurdish satellite channel, for broadcasting propaganda for the PKK, but did not withdraw its license.

Manouchehr Zonoozi, a former manager of Roj TV, was photographed when doing some journalism at a PKK training camp!

So, the current situation in Denmark is very interesting: The Danish authorities accept that the PKK is a terrorist organization and Roj TV is indeed its mouthpiece.

However, they still opted to let this Roj TV keep brainwashing Kurds through the satellite, inciting them, especially the poor and unemployed teenagers in metropolitan shantytowns like the TIME correspondent has recently visited in Istanbul.

Imagine if it could be possible for Al Qaeda and its media outlets in any Western country...

If the Danish government wouldn't revoke Roj TV's broadcasting license after this court decision, what would happen to the EU standards on so many levels?

Rest in peace.

* * *

In my own conscience...

I'm asking myself if I'm not contradicting with myself by calling for a ban on Roj TV.

After all, there are now 97 members of the news media in jail in Turkey and -like every self-respecting journalist should do- I've been campaigning for their release.

So why did I start to campaign for media censorship now, when it comes to Denmark?

No, there is no contradiction, I assured myself. Unlike several other free press campaigners, I don't discriminate between Turkish and Kurdish journalists who are arrested, although many of them are being accused by the government for having links to the PKK. In the Turkish prosecution process, the evidence against Kurdish journalists is not strong enough to prove a link similar to the one between the PKK and the Roj TV. None of them posed with PKK weapons, at least. It seems like they were arrested, only because they were criticizing the government.

Moreover, revoking the license of a TV station which has doubtlessly become a terrorist mouthpiece is not comparable to the mass arrests of dissident journalists. When it comes to Denmark, it should even be easier to understand it, as their former prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was the person who was in charge of NATO when they bombed the Libyan state television on July 30, because it was spreading pro-Gaddafi "terrorist propaganda," killing three journalists in the building.

Rest in peace.

The Curious Case of Abdullah Gül

2012-01-08T21:33:00.004+02:00

President Abdullah Gül was tweeting from his home today, posting some pictures which were taken in his recent trip to Bolu.

One of the photos was shot near a frozen lake, where a friend of Gül owns a villa across the shore.

I noticed the oddity in the photo only after reading a tweet from Koray Pekozkay, the photo editor of my newspaper. Gül's body was cut out below the waist, letting us see the frozen lake on the background. "It is probably photo-shopped," Koray concluded.

I'm still puzzled, though. If it is really photo-shopped, may somebody explain for God's sake, WHY?

Why Him? Why Now?

2012-01-06T21:17:00.010+02:00

Before being appointed as the Chief of the General Staff, Ilker Basbug was the target of a propaganda campaign initiated by some Islamist newspapers, which used a photo of him taken in front of the Western Wall, alleging with an openly antisemitic tone that he was actually a Jew.

The former head of Turkey's armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, was arrested on charges of trying to overthrow the government.

Followers of this blog know that I criticized Basbug and his threats, like I criticized the policies of our neoliberal/Islamist government, in the past.

However, I still find it hard to understand why they arrested him, as...

...Kenan Evren, a former head of Turkey's armed forces, had led the 1980 military coup. He is alive and free...

...Çevik Bir, the former number-two of Turkey's armed forces, had led the "post-modern coup" in 1997. He is alive and free...

And the most enigmatic one is Yasar Buyukanit, another former head of Turkey's armed forces, who had led a fierce anti-AKP campaign during his tenure from August 2006 to August 2008. He is alive and free now, after concluding his term with a 2.5 hours long secretive meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan...

I always prefer civilian power over military power, but I also know that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely, whether military or civilian, like they're painfully experiencing in Hungary now.

That's why I'm concerned about the way Turkey is going, after seeing how Basbug was arrested as if it was just show-business; as if it served the purpose of twisting the real news agenda again, like the latest refusal to release jailed journalists in Turkey and recent developments about the Uludere incident.

Movements Against State-Controlled Internet in Turkey

2012-01-03T23:27:00.005+02:00

A full month passed and I still think that I may have become "the first target of the new Internet filter, adopted by our democracy-loving government". I still can't access emrekizilkaya.com from my home computer, work computer, my 3G connection (three different ISPs in total). Neither most of my friends (excluding the ones who live abroad) can reach the domain. The worst part is getting lost in the Kafkaesque Turkish bureaucracy. No authority explains what's wrong. They just keep forwarding me to another authority. I guess my domain will expire before I would be able to reach it myself.

Meanwhile in Germany...

The 28th Chaos Communication Congress ended in Berliner Congress Center three days ago. Turkish experts made an informative presentation about "the movements against the state-controlled Internet in Turkey." To understand my fears, not only about my own domain, but the whole Turkish Internet, you can watch the video here:

Japanese Anime and Turkey

2012-01-02T12:26:00.004+02:00

My favorite anime artist is Hayao Miyazaki. I watched everything that he created. For me, he is not a 'cartoon' director, but the only ideologue that I can pay homage to.

As I also love Istanbul, I found joy in the news that Makoto Shikai, who was dubbed as "the new Miyazaki," has just produced a short anime that features some Istanbul scenes. This is actually an advertisement of Taisei, one of the construction companies that built the Marmaray tube tunnel in the Bosphorus:

Although I adore the Miyazaki-style feature-length anime movies, I dislike most of the popular series, like the Dragon Ball. The socio-cultural fabric and the political message of such shows are in contrast with the Miyazaki genre. As a form of art, Miyazaki's creations are a call for especially the adults to be responsible, peaceful and self-respecting. The other ones call especially the children to more consumption, violence and egoism. Miyazaki and his likes make art, the others make products.

Recently, the Turkish state television started to run a new cartoon series, Cille. It is basically 'the Turkish-made Japanese anime'. What I like in this show is the way that it breaks off from the popular 'pulp' animes and gets closer to the Miyazaki-style art. Cille still has some populist pollutants, but it is great to have a Turkish anime with thorough references to the Turkish mythology. After all, isn't it nice to watch the heroes drink Turkish tea and sleep on Turkish pillows in a 'Japanese' anime? It should really be substantial that it is already an academic subject of discussion now in Turkey...

Kurdish Smugglers Become Terrorists AFTER Being Killed?

2011-12-30T16:51:00.007+02:00

Thirty-five people were killed in a Turkish military air raid along the Iraqi border on the night of Dec. 28.

Firstly, the Turkish army announced that it opened an investigation about the attack on the border area, which was close to several bases of the PKK, a terrorist organization according to Ankara, Washington and Brussels.

Then, the AKP government declared that it was “an operational fault” and it was a large group of smugglers who were accidentally hit.

These are the facts. I'm still perplexed, though. Were they really smugglers? Didn't they know that it was only the PKK which kept infiltrating the border with such large groups to attack the Turkish border posts, defying the Turkish-American intelligence-sharing cooperation with the help of drones?

This question makes me think that there may be somebody behind the scenes, who tries to do something cloaked. The victims, these dewy-eyed teenagers, may have been used as a bait to create certain political and social conditions. These possibilities shouldn't be seen as a conspiracy theory, especially after witnessing what is happening today.

It is highly probable that the government informants inside the PKK gave wrong information about the latest "border infiltration," because -especially after the recent relocation of the U.S. drones in Iraq to the Incirlik base in Turkey- the air strikes against the PKK bases started to fatally impair the terrorist organization.

The Turkish authorities may have fallen for the trick. Now, the PKK is stepping up to the next phase to use the blunder to lobby for stopping the air strikes and harness popular support among the Kurdish people. Turkish journalist Serdar Akinan was in the funeral in Uludere today and he posted the following photo, showing that the coffins were draped in the flags of the PKK, which is calling for a Kurdish uprising now:

One may keep asking: If these victims were just smugglers, why are their coffins draped in the PKK flag now? Did they become PKK militants AFTER being killed?

Edit: It is reported that most of the victims are belonged to a Kurdish clan that is one of the backbones of the pro-government militia. Some say that the PKK were pointing this clan as a target, through Roj TV, calling them "traitors."

Listening to the 'Real' Egemen Bağış

2011-12-29T22:24:00.010+02:00

Egemen Bağış, Turkey's EU Minister, visited Hürriyet today.

With other newsroom editors, I also had the opportunity to ask a couple of questions, regarding the EU negotiations, as well as other foreign policy issues like the genocide denial law in France.

Bağış surprised me a lot. I was expecting to watch the seemingly shallow politician I know from the media... the one that recently rebuked French President Nicolas Sarkozy with a very rude Turkish expression, just before saying that his 'heels become higher as he lies,' like a dwarf Pinocchio.

At Hürriyet meeting, though, I found Bağış almost as a non-partisan expert, free of such a populist rhetoric, surely because it was a Q&A session not directed at a political audience, but conducted as an honest meeting during a visit of courtesy.

Bağış, who briefly worked at Hürriyet's New York office in the early 90s, drew an accurate picture of the relationship between the European Union and Turkey. In contrary to the public chutzpah of Turkey's current foreign policy, he hinted that the internal debate in the government is much more realistic. As an instance, he vigorously emphasized that, as Turks, we shouldn't be too proud of our standing, especially on the economic front. He said that he is well aware that Germany, for instance, will still have an economy three times bigger than Turkey, even if Ankara can reach its goals in 2023.

At the same time, Bağış was rationally optimistic about the future of Turkey-EU relations. He believes that it all boils down to the political possibilities, which may well be in Turkey's advantage. Sarkozy's demise in the 2012 presidential elections seems likely, although it is not guaranteed. The French President tries to make profit from Turkophobia to get the far-right votes, a politically safe method as it is perceived as "less racist," comparing to a wholesale Islamophobia. Thanks to this tactic, he may win the elections narrowly. But he should also be aware that this tactic, which worked in the previous elections, may already be outdated. He may need to find another "hat-trick" to win this time.

So, if Sarkozy loses, which is more probable, there may be a domino-effect in the EU, which may be concluded by Turkey's full membership. With Sarkozy's fall, the Greek Cypriots whom are abused by the anti-Turkish Central European lobby in the EU will be without their patron. Then, even Angela Merkel -who is currently not blocking any negotiation chapters with Turkey- may change her mind about Turkey's EU membership, when she will remain as the only powerful player of the anti-Turkish front. Merkel is more pragmatic and less ideological.

After talking an hour or so, I wished that we could hear the "real" Bağış more frequently. Of course, I understand that it is not possible. After all, this is Turkey, not a Scandinavian country, and this is the way that we're doing politics. And maybe this is why we are not living in an environment like the one in Scandinavia...

From Frustration To Celebration

2011-12-25T17:13:00.006+02:00

Isn't it ironic that the official website of Valérie Boyer, the sponsor of the latest anti-democratic bill in France, was being hacked twice today, as a southeastern Turkish city was celebrating the 90th anniversary of its liberation from the French occupation.

The city, which was occupied by France right after the World War I, was named Antep. The French force was mainly consisted of Armenian legionnaires, who massacred and insulted the population of this overwhelmingly Turkish city. The resistance kicked out the occupiers soon, triggering the Turkish Independence War on a national scale. After the Republic of Turkey was founded, the city was renamed as Gaziantep (Antep the War Veteran) by the Turkish parliament.

The first Turkish hacker who put a message on Boyer's website was mentioning this occupation and condemning the "hypocrisy" of the French parliament. "We know that the Armenians in Turkey are not ethnocentric hate-mongers like the diaspora Armenians. However, the real miserable are the French politicians who are violating the truth for sake of votes," the message was reading.

I should admit that I don't like politics at all. Sometimes I ask myself: Why are we accusing the French politicians while it is obvious that politics, itself, is about lies and manipulations? Then I shake myself and realize once again that the pursuit of truth may be tiresome, but it is good for our common conscious.

Anyway, let's forget the crises now: I would like to say "Merry Christmas" to my Christian friends and tell them that Turks will be so happy to host them next Christmas in Demre, the one and only home of Saint Nicholas, as a New York Times ad tells today:

Why Sarkozy is the Defected Silicon of European Politics

2011-12-23T12:12:00.010+02:00

The latest bill for the criminalization of the denial of the "Armenian genocide" in France is just like a French breast implant:

It seems hot at first, then -in chronological order- unnecessary, stupid and dangerous.

It is obvious that French President Nicolas Sarkozy planned to snatch some Armenian-French votes before his upcoming re-election bid. Meanwhile, he surely didn't want to anger Turkey at this crucial time, especially in relation to Ankara's key role in Syrian issues.

"I respect the convictions of our Turkish friends - it’s a grand country, a grand civilization - and they must respect ours," he said today.

As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has tweeted consequently, there is a paradox in Sarkozy's backtracking defense. If this bill is passed, France will be jailing people for their convictions. A Turkish -or a Japanese or a Rwandan- historian who would argue that the tragic events of 1915 shouldn't be called as a "genocide" would be fined and jailed in France.

In Turkey, however, there is no law which directly penalizes a person who suggests that these events were simply genocide. It is true that some nationalist prosecutors had used Article 301 of the Penal Code to try to do it in the past, but any far-reaching anti-terrorism law in any Western nation (like in the U.S.) can also be used to curb free speech, if you find a dumb enough prosecutor. (By the way, Article 301 has made it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish ethnicity, or Turkish government institutions and it should of course be abolished asap. But guess, who prepared it? Of course, European Union's favorite Turkish administration in history: The AKP government!)

The next time I will visit France, I will tell my French friends, if possible also through television or a newspaper, that we know that the terminology shouldn't be fetishized, but I don't believe that it can be called a genocide; what historically important was the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives were perished because of the failures of the Ottoman administration, whether they were ill-intended or not.

And I will say that we also know that Sarkozy doesn't represent the whole France. We are well aware that he is just after a few hundred thousand votes. We are smart enough to see that he is a defected piece of political silicon --soon or late, he'll be recalled or declared as a carcinogen.

However, we're still deeply offended. Especially, by the fact that the French parliament approved this bill that will curb free speech on a symbolic date for Turks: The day that Yılmaz Colpan, a Turkish diplomat in France, was killed by Armenian terrorists of ASALA in 1979. We didn't forget that France had declared ASALA as a terrorist organization, only after it started to kill French citizens, too.

When the bill has got the final approval, I will have no fear to violate this Middle Ages kind of law in France. After all, I am a journalist living in AKP's Turkey, which makes me a thousand times likelier to end up in jail for defending free speech...

The Crying Connection: North Korea vs. Iran

2011-12-22T00:16:00.001+02:00

You've probably have already seen the video that shows North Koreans weeping hysterically over the death of Kim Jong-il:

I've read almost everything from and outside of North Korea about the sincerity of the criers. I came to conclusion that almost all of them are really crying, which is even more tragic, I believe.

A few of them, though, seem like impostors. They probably over-acting when the camera is around. When I see such people who cry in a suspiciously exaggerated manner, I instantly recall the following video. It is probably shot in an Iranian mosque during a Shiite mourning ceremony and the fake-crier is possibly an Azeri man. Check it out and compare:

How Many Turkish Journalists Are Really Jailed? Simply, Sixty-Four.

2011-12-13T23:55:00.010+02:00

New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual prison census, which tracks cases of journalists jailed for their work globally.

The report alleges that Iran is the world’s worst jailer, with 42 journalists behind bars, while "imprisonments were also reported in the stable democracy of Turkey, which was holding eight journalists."

With this factually low figure about Turkey, CPJ has managed to outrage independent journalists all over the world and gave a weapon at the hands of the pro-government forces in Turkey, who are systematically undermining the media freedoms.

After all, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had found out that Turkey was holding 57 journalists in April 2011, including prominent reporters like Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık. More up-to-date reports by other independent observers like the ones by the Council of Europe or the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), as well as the Freedom For Journalists Platform (GÖP), an umbrella organization comprised of 94 national and local media associations in Turkey, revealed that the current figure is 64.

Following the huge reaction, CPJ posted a reply to its blog and stepped back to tell that there were "several tallies, but one conclusion on Turkish press freedom: Press freedom in Turkey is under assault."

Unfortunately, such a weak response doesn't fulfill the expectations of those who would like to hear a more precise clarification, because the pro-government media in Turkey is still using CPJ's unexpectedly wrong report as an evidence to prove that there are not so many arrested journalists in Turkey.

Without such a clarification, as Haluk Şahin, a prominent Turkish journalist and scholar, has recently tweeted, CPJ can now be renamed as "CHJ, Committee to Harm Journalists, especially the Turkish ones."

Moreover, some readers who reacted on the blog of CPJ imply that this New York-based organization is twisting the facts to adopt a similar line with the U.S. foreign policy. They allege that this is why they are highlighting the grave situation of Iranian journalists, while underrating the Turkish ones.

I don't want to believe in this conspiracy theory. Like Alison Bethel McKenzie, IPI's Executive Director, has recently written in a letter to the New York-based organization, "I hold CPJ, and the remarkable work it does in the defence of press freedom in enormously high regard. But, in this particular instance, I am unable to understand the reasoning or methodology behind the conclusion at which CPJ has arrived."

So, now CPJ should publish a full announcement, not a blog post, about Turkey, admitting that they did a poor job in the Turkish chapter in the report, where they referred only to one source, Bianet (and even this sole referral was misleading).

Finally, they should also explain why they relied on the figures given by the Turkish government to decide who were imprisoned because of journalism and who were not, while using a completely different methodology in Iran. Then, maybe, they can truthfully determine the world's worst jailer of journalists...

AKP's Hardest Nut to Crack: Fenerbahçe

2011-12-11T23:20:00.011+02:00

Turkey's governing AKP tamed the army, castrated the media and dominated the judiciary, but is it cracking against a football club? Fenerbahçe President Aziz Yıldırım, Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the club's best footballer Alex de Souza in the good old days...

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been governing the country since 2002, has finally "cracked," according to many observers.

With the "crack", a deep rift between the leading figures of the party is meant...

I am not sure if the current tension inside the party will have long-lasting effects, but the process is worth attention, indeed.

As Milliyet columnist Kadri Gürsel has cleverly pointed out today, the government has challenged the army and the media in recent years. Both of these challenges were concluded by the decisive victory of the government. The political role of the army as a guardian of the secular Republic was finished and the free media was transformed into a mouthpiece of the government.

After sharing the bounties from these two fronts, AKP recently turned its attention to another venture of billions of dollars: Football. Nonetheless, the match-fixing probe, which started in July and tended to be conducted through dubious legal methods similar to the ones used in Ergenekon case, seems like a harder nut to crack for the government.

After all, among the arrested is the president of Turkey’s reigning football champions Fenerbahçe, Aziz Yıldırım, who is also a very important businessman, operating in construction and the arms trade. Fenerbahçe is still behind Yıldırım, maintaining his innocence, as the club is threatened to be relegated because of allegations.

As the so-called Republic of Fenerbahçe, which traditionally boasts about having over 25 million passionate fans, threatened to vote against AKP in the next elections, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan backpedaled in a rarely seen move. The Turkish parliament came up with a surprising and unprecedented cross-party compromise and immediately ratified the legal arrangement to abolish the "disproportionately" heavy sentences for match-fixing.

However, President Abdullah Gül took another unexpected step to veto the bill last week, warning that it looked like it was tailor-made to save Aziz Yıldırım. Even more dramatically, Prime Minister Erdoğan stood by the bill and sent it back to the President, his long-standing comrade whom he had a Putin-Medvedev style relationship with. Legally, Gül has no option but to ratify the bill now.

The issue doesn't mean that AKP has been split. On the other hand, even some leading AKP figures admit that there is something wrong with the current situation. Is Gül playing for the leadership of the party while he is approaching the end of his term? Will Erdoğan insist to keep AKP as his one-man-company, even when there are speculations about his health?

Gül visited Erdoğan at his home today and I believe that only these two politicians can answer these questions now. Hence, other leading figures in the party should already be considering the prospective positions to take if the "crack" becomes apparent. I observe that only Bülent Arınç, the number-three of AKP, has given some clues so far, signalling that he would take the side of Gül against Erdoğan. But what about others? And how will millions of Fenerbahçe fans vote in the next elections?

As Arab Dictators Fall, It is Time for the West to Look in the Mirror

2011-12-11T19:08:00.009+02:00

Arab dictatorships keep falling down, because they exceeded critical mass.

As top-down systems, they started to contradict with the social reality too severely that this reality adapted them to new conditions forcefully.

The American and the Western authorities, just like the Russian and Chinese ones, may be too happy too early, though. Because there are similar contradictions in their systems, too.

Seemingly unconnected developments in recent days show that we all must stay on alert:

* The French parliament debates a bill, which would jail anyone who rejects that the tragic events of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey was a genocide, as Armenian nationalists claim. A Turkish Parliamentary delegation is holding talks in Paris in an attempt to prevent the passage of the proposed resolution that they argue that is against freedom of speech: An integral Western value.

* Even after it was accidentally revealed that it was an underground Neo-Nazi terror organization that killed eight Turks, not the Turkish mafia in Germany, the German government has difficulty to admit the problem. German authorities keep saying that they keep fighting "extremism" and "anti-semitism," as if the victims were not Turks who were killed by skinheads, but Jews who were killed by fanatic Christians. When will they name the recent racist trend as "anti-Turkism?" Didn't they take the lesson after the Nazi era?

* The Dutch senate debates a proposed ban on slaughtering animals without stunning them, a move that Muslim and Jewish groups say violates their religious rights. If the Netherlands does outlaw procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the second country after New Zealand to do so in recent years. It would join Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.

* Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Brevik, who confessed in his hundreds of pages long manifesto that he was among the ranks of a modern "crusaders" who strive to clean Europe from Muslims, is declared insane in a psychiatric assessment, which probably means that he won't be jailed.

* Meanwhile, in a German court (yes, a German one)... a psychologist said that an alleged Islamic extremist who has admitted killing two U.S. airmen at the Frankfurt airport earlier this year is mentally fit and can be held criminally responsible for his actions.

* Meanwhile, in a U.S. court... (yes, a U.S. one) an American private may get a death penalty for treason. Let's see if this alienated young man, who was once seen curled up in the fetal position in a meeting room, be declared insane or not... And let's don't forget: He is being accused of risking lives by leaking evidence about war crimes like the Collateral Murder video. He didn't massacre 77 civilians or killed two soldiers...

We should admit these contradictions between our practices and values, bravely face our problems and solve them for sake of humanity... Otherwise, the Protestor will get the whole world down...

It is Not the Turkish E.T, It is Homoti

2011-12-04T19:44:00.007+02:00

"Where the hell did this creepy bootleg E.T. footage come from?" a recent post on io9.com asks.

I'd like to answer this question:

This is Homoti, a movie starring Müjdat Gezen, a veteran Turkish comedian. It tells the story of an alien (Homoti) who fell down to Earth from a planet called Homo. The similarities with the legendary Turkish E.T. are obvious, but they are actually very different movies.

If you're interested in cult movies, you should know enough about the Turkish E.T. You should have also heard about other remakes of Hollywood blockbusters: the Turkish Star Trek, the Turkish Exorcist, the Turkish Wizard of Oz, etc. with all their absurdities and "unbelievable" visual effects.

I've had written about the Turkish Batman, but probably the most famous of these old grotesque flicks is the Turkish Star Wars. On the other hand, although it is generally mentioned in the list, the Turkish Dracula (aka Dracula in Istanbul) is actually of a different breed, as it is not just a kitsch copy, but a tasteful adaptation.

The Turkish E.T. is also on the list, while Homoti is not. Because this relatively new movie (produced in 1987) is deliberately funny, unlike the other ones. Müjdat Gezen emphasizes that they produced the movie for video as a joke with his friends and never distributed it. So it may be a cult now, but not in the way that the Turkish E.T. and the others from older times...

Am I the First Target of Turkey's Internet Filter

2011-12-03T22:34:00.008+02:00

I'm suspecting that I become the first target of the new "Internet filter," adopted by our democracy-loving government.

Despite all efforts, emrekizilkaya.com, which I directed to my about.me profile, cannot be accessed from Turkey at the moment. It can be accessed in any other country. Neither the domain name registrar, nor Turkish ISPs could help me solve the problem.

* * *

I was at the Turkish-Arab Media Forum in Istanbul a couple of days ago. I listened to my Egyptian, Tunisian and Libyan colleagues who excitedly lauded the democratic promises of the New Media and praised the Turkish model.

I liked most of them. I deeply appreciated some. But still, with both conclusions, several of them reminded me of Claude Levi-Strauss' words: "I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty."

No: Whatever the marketing campaigns tell you, the social media didn't have a crucial role in the Arab Spring. It seems that it only played a secondary role in Egypt.

And again, no: The current government in Turkey was actually not an ideal democratic model.

Maybe my Arab colleagues, whom I exchanged business cards with, are now reading these words.

And if they unsuccessfully tried to reach my blog through emrekizilkaya.com, they probably understood both of these realities.

All in all, in its current form, it seems that the Turkish government has got the potential to be even harsher against the media than those overthrown regimes.

Look: Even without facing a popular uprising, there are scores of Turkish journalists behind prison bars and Youtube is still banned. Imagine what would happen to the social media if this government faces dissent by masses, like in the Arab Spring countries...

And my personal website?

I promise, if our government gives emrekizilkaya.com back, I will be a good boy and forward it to the personal website of our tech-savvy Transportation Minister instead of my own...

EDIT: After the post, a couple of Twitter friends in Turkey told me that they can reach emrekizilkaya.com without any problem. I still can't reach it, like several of my friends and our technical department at my newspaper. Now I'm not sure about the reason. I'm waiting for a response from the domain registrar and the Turkish ISP. I don't think that this is normal, knowing the fact that Youtube could be reached in different parts of Turkey during the first days of the execution of the ban.

Erdoğan, the Best Spin Doctor Ever?

2011-11-29T23:54:00.001+02:00

Three days ago, Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan underwent a medical operation.

We, as the Turkish media, learned about it only yesterday.

And today, it is reported that the surgery was actually a serious one, as a part of Erdoğan's colon was removed with laparoscopy.

So...

We are getting updated about the health conditions of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez regularly, but not Erdoğan's.

Why?

Well, first of all, there are a lot of good journalists who are still arrested! I had written about Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık before. As he will complete 1000 days behind prison bars tomorrow, I should also mention Mustafa Balbay, who was recently elected as an MP for main opposition CHP. Ergün Poyraz, an author whom I can't describe as a journalist because of his very shoddy work, was arrested in July 2007 and still imprisoned without conviction!

Secondly, Erdoğan is one of the greatest politicians in recent history.

Yes, I really believe that he is better in shaping the public opinion than the modern masters like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, because he doesn't use a spin doctor. He is one of the best himself!

* * *

Erdoğan may not have announced the medical procedure three days ago, because changing the news agenda wouldn't be in his favor then. He had just started to stage "the Dersim apology" spectacle and it was going just as he planned.

For those who may not know, a decentralizing, feudal rebellion by some Alevi Kurdish tribes was suppressed by the Turkish government near Dersim in 1930s. Tens of thousands of Alevi Kurds were killed and thousands more forced into exile. The young Republic considered the rebellion as a deadly counter-revolutionary movement and crushed it violently. It was the interwar period when fascism was on the rise in the world, so the international public remained mostly silent.

Although I certainly believe that the Dersim massacre was an ethnocide that Turkey should have officially apologized long time ago, I'm also not fool enough to fall for Erdoğan's trick here.

Firstly, it is remarkable that Erdoğan has suddenly raised the issue. He came out of nowhere to put the blame on the CHP, even though the predecessors of Erdoğan's party (like Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes) were also in charge of state affairs during the one party rule of the Dersim decade.

This is why today's main opposition CHP, which is a lot different than 1930s ruling CHP, has just called on the government to release all documents from state archives that relate to the Dersim tragedy, a move that Erdoğan's government rejected in 2002.

When CHP, which is being led by an Alevi Kurd (Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu) now, began its counter-attack about Dersim, Erdoğan announced the medical operation, assuring that he was fine and just discharged from the hospital!

* * *

All in all, Erdoğan's apology is empty words, but it doesn't mean that it is not functional. The greatest magicians divert the attention of the audience to do the trick. Erdoğan keeps doing it all the time. If he suddenly raises an issue, one should look elsewhere.

Let's remember:

When Erdoğan announced that Turkish warships may start to escort Gaza flotillas, the Turkish government had silently accepted the NATO demand to establish a radar base in eastern Turkey. When the public was busy talking about Erdoğan's latest blow against Israel, the Israeli government was actually happy to have a NATO radar against Iran.

When Erdoğan slammed Germany to help the PKK, it was recently revealed that his government was carrying out secret negotiations with the terrorists. Turks are emotional and proud, especially when it comes to foreign intervention in life-and-death situations like the PKK terrorism, so almost everybody forgot about the negotiations and criticized Germany.

Erdoğan's Dersim apology should also be considered as one of his masterful political tactics. It was just a cheap cloak to hide the potentially unpopular bill which would allow certain young men to buy their way out of military service. For Erdoğan's low-income voter base, the latest bill could be considered unpatriotic. At the same time, the revenue that would be created with the bill could help the government to finance a significant portion of the huge budget deficit. This is why Erdoğan, who was talking bitterly in a nationalist tone against such bills just a year ago, did the trick again.

Tens of thousands of people who can pay 12,000 euro to legally dodge the draft still care about the upcoming bill, of course. However, the vast majority of the public is talking about Dersim now. And when Erdoğan will start using the additional income from the legal draft-dodgers to finance his new populist policies before the upcoming local elections, the same low-income voting base will surely be delighted.

Some international observers who may now naively presume that Turkey is beginning to face the dark chapters in its history should be ready to be disappointed, because Erdoğan's apology is not the beginning of anything but more of classical AKP politics.

* * *

So, Erdoğan sees that he was once again successful in reshaping the public opinion, reaching both of his goals of undermining the main opposition and changing the news agenda without losing anything. Then why should he have diverted the ongoing public debate when it was still in favor of him, because he just had a medical operation? Such news can wait...

After all, whenever we need it, our prime minister is giving us all the information himself, isn't he?

And why should we need journalists, anyway? To point out to such spins?

Nonsense.

Jail them all.

Hail to the spin doctor.

Assad is Almost Gone, But What About King Abdullah?

2011-11-27T22:27:00.015+02:00

In an unprecedented move against a fellow Arab nation, the Arab League approved economic sanctions on Syria to pressure Damascus to end its deadly suppression of an 8-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad. Turkey will follow the Arab League and announce its own sanctions tomorrow.

Even some leading opposition figures in Syria tend to underestimate the possible effects of the latest sanctions, calling them a "symbolic" step. I disagree with this conclusion. As Syrian economy is already struggling, if it would be further hit by similar steps from Turkey, I think that it would soon collapse (I'd even suggest the Arab League can even topple the Turkish government if it takes the same steps against Ankara today, considering the fact that the Turkish economy is at the mercy of the Gulf capital now).

The latest sanctions may mean that Assad's ouster can be realized without any military intervention by other states, which is good not only for the Syrian democrats, but the whole region, as well as Turkey. Although I despise the neo-interventionist tactics for regime change, I believe that the Arab League did the right thing at the right time.

So... if we're getting rid of a dictator like Assad, maybe it's time for the Arab League to move on even further:

Why don't we get rid of other oppressive, Middle-Ages-minded regimes like the one in Saudi Arabia?

Oh, of course, as the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has been propagating during recent days, the Saudi king and princes are "wise men", right? This should be why the United States opts for a quite diplomacy to drive the Saudi government towards the right way, while it is using a bit more "noisy" diplomacy for the Syrian government.

But what about when the Saudi royalty runs out of oil and money, key assets that Syria lacks, that make them shopaholics for American weapons?

Will King Abdullah be better off than Assad in the scales of history?

And will the writings of opinion leaders like Ignatius be erased from our memories then?

Will we also forget who were walking hand in hand just a short while ago?

All Turkish Coffee Addicts in London, Unite!

2011-11-25T15:51:00.009+02:00

Following my defense of Turkish coffee against Steve Jobs, I'm happy to learn that a Turkish coffee franchise has opened its first store abroad.

Kahve Dünyası (The Coffee World), has announced that it will serve a cup of Turkish coffee to each customer for free until New Year Day in its new store in London.

The same franchise owns a store in our office building, too, although I don't have time to visit it frequently. Neither they pay me for this blog post, even a free cup of coffee (doh!)...

All in all, I'm happy to promote Turkish coffee here, although I'm a bit perplexed at the same time.

Will franchising Turkish coffee be good for the future of this local taste or is the globalization of such products inevitably cause their standardization and even corruption?

You gotta taste the Turkish coffee in London to decide...

And don't forget: In the long run, we are all standardized.

Imprisoning Journalists In Christmas Turkey

2011-11-22T17:49:00.021+02:00

I first met Nedim Şener when he accepted the International Press Institute's (IPI) World Press Freedom Hero award last year in Vienna City Hall.

While I was still doing my obligatory military service in Cyprus on March, Şener was being arrested at his home in Istanbul.

With the first opportunity after I was back in Istanbul, I visited him at the Silivri Prison. Kadri Gürsel, a Milliyet columnist and another board member of the IPI's Turkish division, has written about this visit recently. Şener is accused of involvement in a plot to topple the government, but we had full confidence in him. In the end, the indictment also showed that he was on trial just because of his journalism which angered many power-holders.

I met Şener today, once again, this time in Istanbul's 16th High Criminal Court at the largest courthouse of Europe. After 265 days of detention, having lost almost 30 kilograms (66 pounds) -mostly not because of the bad treatment in prison, but psychological stress- this was the first time he faced a judge.

Meanwhile, the judges were facing an army of journalists: Not only the ones that they start to put on trial, but also the ones who came here to support their colleagues. There were scores of journalists in and -because of the limited space- outside of the courtroom. There were also lots of foreign observers and colleagues.

I watched the first trial with two MEPs by my side: Sajjad Karim, the first British Muslim elected to the European Parliament, and Barbara Matera from Italy. They were here as an ad hoc EP committee specially formed for this trial. The photo is badly blurred, but I still wrote a story for tomorrow's Hürriyet:

While chatting during a break, Mr. Karim reminded me that Turkey's President Abdullah Gül was being hosted by Queen Elizabeth II today. When speaking to Ms. Matera later on, I pointed out to the irony in the fact that these two MEPs were belonged to the Conservatives, like the AKP government which many criticized because of this trial nowadays.

When I visited the European Parliament in Brussels in 2009, I wanted to meet two MEPs for a couple of interviews: Ms. Matera and Christian Engström. I was lucky enough to find Mr. Engström in his office, but Ms. Matera was abroad then. After two years, I didn't go to Ms. Matera this time, but she arrived in the chair next to mine.

Journalist luck?

Not exactly. Neither Mr. Karim nor Ms. Matera was authorized to speak about the essentials of the case. They were just following it to prepare a report for the European Parliament. So I couldn't hear their opinion in full.

However, I liked Ms. Matera's assertiveness, especially when she was outraged as she realized that her adviser was left outside by the police, because the courtroom was already full. "Is this democratic? Is this legal?" I heard her shouting angrily.

"Welcome to Turkey, Ms. Matera" I whispered myself. I hope that they realized before writing their reports that we have been a multi-party democracy since 1950s, but we are neither the United States, nor North Korea. For decades, it was the military that threatened the democratization. Now, it is the civilian government, which kept hiding its fatally anti-democratic practices with seemingly democratic, but actually populist policies.

In this country, we jail scores of journalists, but treat them with the EU standards in our prisons.

We let anyone, whether a citizen or a foreigner, in our modern courtrooms, but the organization seems rather chaotic or even dictatorial sometimes.

We are a semi-democracy or a semi-autocracy.

What concerns us more is the trend: We're going towards a full-scale autocracy, if not a dictatorship, with the increasing number of trials like the one that we participated in today.

The result of today's session?

Some of the defendants petitioned for a recusation, refusing the chief judge who was photographed in the past at an iftar dinner with the police officials who helped in writing the indictment. The prosecutor who wrote the indictment was also photographed at the same dinner.

The defendants insisted that the chief judge must retreat himself as it was clear that he couldn't try the cause, on account of his supposed partiality. In any democracy with a sound legal system, a judge retreats himself after such an accusation, even if he is really not linked to the police or the prosecution anyway. As this is Turkey, the judge refused to retreat and forwarded the recusation to a higher court.

It means that Nedim Şener and other journalists, including other prominent ones like Ahmet Şık, will remain behind prison bars at least for another month without trial. We may expect that the attention of the media and foreign observers will diminish then, which may also mean that the imprisoned journalists will be tried by the same judges next year.

When I was leaving the courtroom, Ms. Matera was speaking to a defense attorney in shock. "The next trial will be held on December 26th. It's the day after Christmas! How will the Western observers and journalists visit Turkey again on that day?! Could they choose the date with ill intentions?" she asked.

"No, I'm sure nobody thought about the Christmas," the attorney assured her, "This is Turkey."

US Media Beat the Drums of War, Again

2011-11-21T12:55:00.005+02:00

For a journalist, it is really disturbing to follow the mainstream U.S. media nowadays. You shouldn't do it without questioning the motives.

The followers of this blog would know that I dislike the Iranian regime. However, reading these exclusive reports from the Washington Post and the Associated Press is still disturbing.

The Washington Post wants us to believe that the Obama administration has found the Iranian WMDs in Libya! If they keep searching, I'm sure that they can find Saddam Hussein's WMDs in Libya, too. Of course, if they'd like to white-wash Bush's occupation of Iraq...

Meanwhile, the Associated Press defends that there is a suspicious activity at an Iranian site that Western spy agencies suspected of secret work on nuclear weapons. Suspiciously, American officials is now suspecting that Tehran is trying to cover its tracks by removing any evidence of nuclear research and development, so international inspectors may not find anything there if they're allowed to visit the site soon!

It seems that these two media outlets have become the Pravda of the military-industrial complex of the corporate America...

Guys, you may be profiting from war-mongering, but I wouldn't do what you're doing now even if they give me billions of dollars.

Simply, you are a shame for journalism.

...Maybe I have become more of a peace activist, after finishing my obligatory military service recently...

Schengen Macht Frei

2011-11-19T23:47:00.002+02:00

I was in Israel for some interviews and now I am back.

Kader Sevinç, CHP's representative for the European Union, drew my attention to a song by Sarp Yeletaysi.

The main message of this protest song is: “Schengen is the name of the discriminatory and ill-designed visa regime of the European Union."

Indeed, when it's applied against Turks, Schengen visa regime is the perfect example how the EU leaders apply enslavement and discrimination while they suggest that they are for emancipation and equality.

Thanks to such democratic activism of young Turks like Sarp, I believe that the EU will be forced to end the current travesty soon.

Please listen to Sarp's song here and check the lyrics:

One – The applicant must submit documents in person

Two – The documents should be presented in this order – Jawohl Führer

Three – 2 Biometric passport-sized pictures newly taken

Four – Passport not more than – 10 years old – and valid for – at least – at least 6 months

Five – One x Schengen visa application form

Six – Copy of – hotel – reservation

Seven – Details of your flight itenary

Eight – Make sure to bring your civil registry

Nine – Travel Health Insurance

Ten – Birth certificate or national identity card

Elf – Employment Verification

Twelfe – Verification of time off during length of stay….stay…stay…stay…stay…stay…stay…

CHORUS

Schengen macht frei

If you don’t die

In the embassy

From frustration

Schengen macht frei

Grenzen aus Stahl

21st century

Democracy

Thirteen – List of authorized signatories –

Fourteen – Tax Registration Certificate of employer

Fifteen – Chamber of Commerce Registration not older than 6 months

Sixteen – Proof of income, recent payroll

Seventeen – Bank Statements – House deeds – Rental Contract – Title of Property

Eighteen – And Finally – Pay the processing fee – 60 Euros which is non – non-refundable

Wait-wait-wait-wait-in line-in line-just to get in-get in-to Clastrofobize

Cold faces-faces-behind the thick glass-thick glass-take your papers-papers-like you are a convict in their eyes

Questions-stupid questions-You’ll have to answer-answer-You ‘re a refugee-Alien-Illegal Immigrant

Approved or denied you wished you never applied-to go through this hell-in the name of Schengen Macht Frei

CHORUS

GUITAR SOLO

CHORUS

OUTRO (Instrumental)

When It's Heartbreaking to be Proven Right

2011-11-13T13:59:00.013+02:00

I'm not a cock of the walk. In fact, I don't like to boast, saying that I was proven right, especially when the results are so heartbreaking.

But there is such a pattern here recently, considering the previous assessments in this blog and the latest developments in Turkey and the world.

So I can't stop myself to remind:

ANTI-TURKISH TERROR IS GERMANY'S PROBLEM

* Since 2008, I have been warning that the deadly attacks against Turks in Germany pointed out a new trend in far-right violence. When I criticized the German politicians who tried to cover-up the racist crimes, several commentators accused me of over-reacting and even sensalionalism. However, it is revealed this week that a Neo-Nazi terror organizations killed eight Turks in seven years and I was proven right. Even Angela Merkel has admitted the "new" problem today.

BDP IS THE POLITICAL WING OF PKK

* Since its foundation in 2008, I've been suggesting that BDP, the Kurdish-led political party, cannot be a part of the solution, as it failed to break its connections to PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the U.S. A PKK militant armed with a bomb hijacked a Turkish ferry with more than 20 passengers this weekend and Turkish commandos killed him after a successful operation. Sebahat Tuncel (below), a BDP parliamentarian, participated in the funeral of the PKK militant today and criticized the Turkish security officials to shot him dead, as if the the of such a terrorist would be different in -let's say- the U.S. or France or Russia. Doesn't her irrational sympathy show me that I was right about BDP?

AKP IS PRIVITIZING THE DISASTERS, TOO

* Since 2006 when I started this blog, I've been critizing the AKP government in Turkey, which I defined as a neoliberal Islamist force. I lashed out at its neoliberal practices, more frequently than the Islamist ones. The latest earthquake in Van and its aftermath proved my case: 40 people, including two of my colleagues, died during an aftershock, because they were staying inside damaged buildings as AKP's governor had told that they were safe. Meanwhile, pro-government construction companies were already out in the field to redevelop the disaster area with luscious profits. So we learned why AKP doesn't prepare for the looming earthquake in Istanbul: Because they privatized the disasters, too! They may even be longing for the opportunity to rebuild the whole city as they wish -by the hand of their own companies!

ERGENEKON IS CREATING A NEW DEEP STATE FOR AUTOCRACY

* Since 2008, I've been writing that the Ergenekon case was once a promising investigation which may help to democratize the country, but it ended up as a weapon of the government with increasingly autocratic tendencies to keep a tight rein on the political opposition and the free media, as well as to create its own deep state. When they arrested Nedim Şener, a Press Freedom Hero, I was already proven right on the first point. Then, National Intelligence Organization (MIT) official Kaşif Kozinoğlu (below), who was arrested in March and scheduled to appear before court on Nov. 22, died after an "heart attack" in prison last night, proving my second point. The prison officials didn't send him to a hospital until a full hour passed! But what would this "dark" agent, who was in charge of overseas intelligence operations and in conflict with the new MIT chief Hakan Fidan, tell the court?

I sincerely wish that I was wrong on all of my analyses and conclusions, but unfortunately it sems that I was not.

What Else Are You Hiding From Us, Associated Press?

2011-11-08T23:51:00.006+02:00

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a liar" in a private conversation with U.S. President Obama.

If there were no Internet, we wouldn't know about it, though.

The French website Arret sur Images reported the story, which was eventually confirmed by various sources.

We also learned that "several French-speaking journalists, including one from The Associated Press, overheard the comments but did not initially report them because Sarkozy's office had asked the journalists not to turn on the headsets until the press conference began, and the comments were deemed private under French media traditions."

Can you believe this?

What kind of journalists are these?

Do they really think that they have the right as "information gatekeepers" to censor news stories as such?

And what did they hide from us in the past?

This is the way that governments shape the public opinion: By accrediting the "journalists" who would care for their "traditions."

This is the way that they manufacture consent.

And it is great to know that it is slowly ending as we're moving into the New Media Age where journalism is coming back at the service of the people, instead of certain circles and "traditions," thanks to the Internet.

Raping a Juvenile vs. Raping Journalism

2011-11-05T16:52:00.011+02:00

Turkey debates a court ruling about a rape case.

A Turkish appeals court reduced prison sentences for 26 men convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl, because the victim had given "consent".

I admit that those men deserve a harsher sentence and the case underlines some problems in Turkish law, but I don't agree with the public stance of the AKP government (again).

Murat Yetkin, the editor in chief of Hürriyet Daily News, has explained yesterday that the Turkish Penal Code was changed in 2004 as part of EU harmonization reforms. Under the new Turkish Penal Code’s article 103, the same man could be sentenced to at least 22.5 years each. However, the crime was committed before the reform, so the old law was used in accordance with a universal principal in law. This is what the difference would have been if the poor girl had been raped after the EU reforms.

So, the current laws are already modernized; it was the timing of the crime which was horribly unfortunate for the victim. Then why do AKP officials keep emphasizing that the case shows why they need to reform the judiciary urgently?

It seems that the administration, both President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, is using the case as an opportunity to further enthrall the judiciary to the executive power. (It is kind of ironic that AKP has been in power since 2002. And already, the judiciary is almost totally dominated by the executive branch of the government, which is in violation with separation of powers.)

If AKP is really sincere about a judiciary reform, then it should start by reforming laws that have not been reformed recently, even after pressure by the EU.

Example?

The laws that restrict freedom of speech, putting scores of journalists behind bars, including IPI's World Press Freedom Hero Nedim Şener...

AKP may be silent about these laws, as these laws are being used by the police and some prosecutors to suppress critical voices.

Simply, you can violate juveniles or journalists and get away with it in today's Turkey.

Sinan the Architect, According to Lorick

2011-11-02T17:00:00.005+02:00

Two Turkish scholars discovered the second depiction of Sinan, the greatest Ottoman architect, Atlas magazine reported in its latest issue. I scanned the drawing on the magazine page, as shown above (you can click to picture to enlarge).

It was not known in the past that the old man with a turban in the panoramic Istanbul drawing of Melchior Lorck was actually Sinan. Lorck had visited Istanbul in the 16th century and completed his Galata and Pera panorama in 1559. The work was not published until early 1900s. Now it is in Leiden University.

Turkish scholars believe that the old man is Sinan, because his hands were drawn disproportionally big. It is a feature used by the artists of the time to highlight important persons in the paintings.

Moreover, a closer look revealed that there was a compass, hanging down the turban of the old man. We know that Sinan used the compass as a metaphor for his life and works in his diaries. We also know that it was possible for artisans to carry a compass as their trademark in their turbans only by the permission of the Sultan.

Overall, the evidence is convincing and this should be Sinan, according to Lorick, in 1559.

Turkish Minister Broke the Internets!

2011-11-01T13:04:00.003+02:00

Turkey's Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım, whose ministerial responsibilities the Internet infrastructure, too, spoke about the Internets at a recent conference...

...and hilarity ensued.

He said:

"They have something that they call cloud computing, whatsoever. Now... Everybody puts something there... Then... Somebody takes something, if he needs it, whatever. That's how I understand this system. It may be something different, though. It seems that it is not something systematic. It is all hustle and bustle. Then anybody can take what he needs. This is information technology. If you think too much about it, you may go crazy. You should use it, take advantage of it, but don't think too much about it. Otherwise, you're in trouble. You shouldn't question its reason."

Here is the video of this "mystic" speech:

Bu video Adobe Flash Player'ın son sürümünü gerektirmektedir.

I was aware that Turkey was not being governed by tech-savvy politicians and bureaucrats.

However, I should admit that I was still not expecting that we were in such a deep trouble about it.

Maybe some of them will look into computer classes.

Yildirim's words perfectly shows why we failed in recent centuries: Because our culture transformed in a way to condemn or at least worry about innovation.

You can easily fight this mentality when only individuals are the problem. However, the situation is worse in Turkey, as the long-term presence of such individuals as influential policy-makers made it a systemic problem in politics and state institutions as well.

Take another example:

SGK, Turkey's state institution for social security, has recently announced that its online system would be stopped on October 30th for a full hour at midnight.

Why?

Because they completely turned off their computer servers to set the system clock back to adjust to the summertime switch!

When France Doesn't Kick Out PKK, PKK Kicks Out France

2011-10-31T13:05:00.002+02:00

If the French government keeps tolerating the activities of PKK, a terrorist organization according to Turkey, the EU and the United States, then the French people will soon face the violent problem that Turks have been trying to solve for a long time.

They may have finally recognized it after what happened in Paris yesterday.

Turkish citizens had gathered in Bastille Square to protest the recent terrorist attacks. Turks were chanting slogans like "Down with PKK" and "Turks and Kurds are brothers" when alleged PKK supporters attacked them with sticks and stones.

As fifteen people were being wounded and the French police were using tear gas, Turkish protestors were already traumatized by this terror attack in a European country. Unlike the armed group of PKK militants, there were several women and children among Turks.

Check out the video, produced by a proud PKK sympathizer:

Will Nicolas Sarkozy kick PKK militants out of the country, only when they start to burn the people and the business of France, just like they are doing it now in Turkey?

PKK's Suicide Mule

2011-10-29T17:45:00.005+03:00

Remember the Washington Post article on PKK, sympathetically portraying a terrorist as a protector of a bear cub who was a victim of Turkish jets?

Well, it seems that it was really a PKK show, as same terrorists proved today that they don't care about animals, just like they don't care about human life.

In Hakkari province, a mule was slowly walking towards a police station today. Police shot the mule, as its huge cargo was highly suspicious. Then they put a detonation fuse on the carcass and boom! It was revealed that the mule was loaded with A4 and C4 type of explosives. It seems that it was a coordinated attack by PKK, which also hit Bitlis province with a suicide bomber today, killing five policemen and three civilians.

Here is the video, giving a hint about the huge amount of explosives on the back of the mule, PKK's poor victim:

In Defense of Turkish Coffee... Against Steve Jobs!

2011-10-27T21:48:00.007+03:00

For me, the most interesting part of Steve Jobs' official biography is the part that he revealed where he discovered that the young people are globalized: In a Turkish bath!

Here is that part:

"An example of this magical thinking was (Steve Jobs') plan to build a luxurious yacht. Before his liver transplant, he and his family used to rent a boat for vacations, traveling to Mexico, the South Pacific, or the Mediterranean. On many of these cruises, Jobs got bored or began to hate the design of the boat, so they would cut the trip short and fly to Kona Village. But sometimes the cruise worked well.

'The best vacation I’ve ever been on was when we went down the coast of Italy, then to Athens—which is a pit, but the Parthenon is mind-blowing—and then to Ephesus in Turkey, where they have these ancient public lavatories in marble with a place in the middle for musicians to serenade.'

When they got to Istanbul, he hired a history professor to give his family a tour. At the end they went to a Turkish bath, where the professor’s lecture gave Jobs an insight about the globalization of youth:

'I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was made very different from anywhere else, and I realized, “So fucking what?” Which kids even in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kid in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now. When we’re making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that’s different from one young people elsewhere would want. We’re just one world now'."

* * *

I can't disagree more.

When I disagree, I don't only mean the perplexed vision of Steve Jobs, who considers the catastrophic invasion of heterogeneous local cultures by the homogenous uniformity and standardization of a global deculturization machine.

I also mean the coffee, man.

Many young people "give a shit" about Turkish coffee. I was grown up so, demanding my daily dosage of two cups of Turkish coffee every single day, because it's for -especially, but not only- the Turkish palate, certified by a thousand-year-old history of our culture.

Just like there are millions of Italians who "give a shit" about espresso. I even had an Italian friend, Salvatore, carrying his espresso machine wherever he goes.

And you don't need to be a Turk to enjoy Turkish coffee or an Italian to be addicted to espresso, but not Nescafe. After all, aren't people out there who can't do without Cuban cigars or Kentucy Fried Chicken?

To conclude, I'll summarize my view about Steve Jobs:

Let's face it, Apple fanboys. Steve Jobs was not an inventor. He didn't invent anything. He was just a great businessman who was one of the best ever in creating demand by improving old products with innovative ways.

Jobs' damning verdict about Turkish coffee is predictable in this regard. He had recently become one of the leading figures of the super-national capital, so this is normal that he black-washes the local for the sake of the global. He was one of those fat cats who advocate for the free circulation of commodities, but not persons.

I wish that Jobs could be defending the young people in the White House, instead of lobbying for corporations against President Barack Obama or declaring thermonuclear war against Google, which pissed off Jobs with Android, an open system which may potentially make many young people more productive, comparing to the closed system of Apple which encourages even more consumerism that is the reason behind the 'shit' that we're in now. The shit that was mainly a by-product of the ways that we didn't give a shit...

May God forgive your sins, Mr. Jobs.

Rest in peace.

PKK? OK, But Where Is Our 20 Billion Dollars?

2011-10-24T11:10:00.015+03:00

When the latest earthquake happened in Van province, twenty-two battalions (around 10.000 soldiers) of the Turkish army were out on the field for military operations against PKK militants.

Some of these battalions were inside northern Iraq to pursue PKK militants who killed 24 Turkish soldiers in Hakkari, south of Van city, on Oct. 19.

Just after the scale of the disaster in Van was clear, the Turkish army sent five battalions for relief operations, in and around Van.

However, PKK attacked in the Baskale district of Van last night. Four Turkish soldiers, who were participating in the relief operations were wounded by a PKK bomb.

The Van earthquake and the PKK activity in the region is being related in several stories in the Turkish media. It is shameful at this point IMHO, but it also has a factual accuracy, considering events like the one above.

After all, thousands of Kurds in the same region had filled the streets of Cizre, a town not very far from Van, on Sunday to mourn the death of a local "heroine", a PKK commander. "The P.K.K. is the community, and we are the community,” the crowd chanted, referring to a criminal gang which was designated as a terrorist organization internationally.

The linkage is still disgusting, as there are still bodies under the rubbles of the collapsed buildings, suffering or already deceased, whether they are Turks or Kurds. On the other hand, some reactions by the far-rightist Turks and hardcore PKK sympathizers especially in social media, makes it harder for the common sense to prevail.

For instance, "You were throwing stones to the police and shooting at soldiers, now you're asking for help," a Turkish TV presenter told and got a lot of negative reactions.

It is a fact that PKK has, not only attacking security forces in the region, but also systematically been burning or sabotaging heavy duty vehicles, like excavators which may have saved lives after the earthquake, suggesting that they are the symbols of the central government.

Even this doesn't change the fact that the remarks by the Turkish TV presenter were crude and unacceptable. Everything aside, how can be so sure that all those suffered from the earthquake supported the PKK. Even so, isn't it the responsibility for the state to care for its citizens even if they are criminals or terrorists?

Although the government response to the earthquake was better than the previous earthquakes, I agree that the PKK issue makes it harder for Ankara, as well as the local citizens, to cope with the disaster.

On the other hand, I still point the finger at -not the irresponsible and ignorant Turkish TV presenters or the PKK sympathizers who are as despisable but- the government for a totally different reason.

After the 1999 earthquake in Istanbul, the former government had adopted a temporary tax for an earthquake relief fund. The following AKP government turned it into a permanent tax. Now all Turkish citizens are still paying this additional tax under almost all categories, from property to cellphone bills.

The size of the earthquake relief fund has recently exceed 20 billion dollars, although we, ordinary citizens, don't see the money around.

Even if you have not taken online accounting classes, that is a lot of money to be accounted for.

So I'm asking the government now:

Where is this money? If it is being used to help Van now, why are you collecting donations for the aid from the private sector and citizens? If you won't use it now, when will you use it? Or did you already use it for paying the salaries of the public servants and/or covert vote-buying in the past?

The Spectator's Malevolent Neutrality

2011-10-21T21:05:00.004+03:00

When I wrote about the PKK's timing of the latest terror attacks, I said that many Turks believe in the "foreign hand" thesis, but I didn't reveal my own opinion.

I think that conspiracy theories are wrong, although it may be expected from the Syrian regime to use the PKK proactively as a leverage against Turkey nowadays. On the other hand, the latest attacks may not directly be the product of a third country, but PKK remains as the illegitimate son of various foreign states. The international media, like it has been regularly happening in the past, is just the extension of this indirect relationship.

The latest example has been given by Reuters. Just a few of hours after PKK militants, who probably crossed the Iraqi border hours before, attacked the Turkish army and police bases in southeast Turkey, killing 24 soldiers, Reuters published a sympathetic "analysis," arguing that "after 30 years of strife, Kurdish lives remain blighted." Was it really the time to put this article online? Could Reuters make a similar move by publishing an article, sympathetic to Taliban, right after 24 British soldiers were killed by Taliban militants ---in Britain?

What Reuters calls "strife" is simply the PKK terrorism which killed 30.000 people in 30 years. And when Reuters states that "lives remain blighted", it refrains to point out that conditions are same, or even worse, for many Turks, too.

Germany insists on "integration" and France on "national identity" at home and there are tens of political prisoners from Basque of Spain, while Turkey, as another nation-state, is being condemned for applying a single-language school curriculum (the speaking of Kurdish, as well as teaching it in private courses are free in Turkey and there are Kurdish language university programs). What would all the Kurdish children do when they were graduated from the primary school if they still couldn't speak Turkish? Isn't it a long-term recipe for secession?

It is ironic that the author of the Reuters article is Ibon Villelabeitia, presumably a Basque journalist. I'm not sure if he is fantasizing a parallelism between PKK and ETA, imagining of a victory for the former in Turkey... a victory that couldn't be achieved by the latter in Spain.

Such an anti-Turkish propaganda may really bear fruits in the long term, as it is still all quite on the Western front. The United States remains as the only sincere ally of Turkey against PKK terrorism, while Ankara can only hear words from the European Union. Their insincere rhetoric against PKK is still not supported by action. Several EU countries tend to support or at least ignore PKK's financial network in the EU, as long as the terrorists don't touch their own interests.

Spain has finished off ETA, thanks to the decisive support of France. As long as the EU lets PKK finance its operations there and the Kurdish officials in northern Iraq allows them to use Qandil mountains as a heaven and a springboard for its militants, Turkey cannot finish off PKK. Especially as the hypocrisy of the international media continue...

So it is not the "foreign hand..."

In Slavoj Zizek's terms, it is "the spectator's malevolent neutrality."

PKK's Timing and the 'Foreign Hand'

2011-10-19T10:00:00.010+03:00

PKK terrorists killed 24 Turkish soldiers and injured 18 in simultaneous attacks in southeast Turkey last night.

Turkish public is outraged and the reactions are getting harsher both against the government and the army. This is one of the bloodiest nights that I've ever witnessed in Turkey's decades-long war on separatist terrorism.

Ankara is on high alert. The first reaction of President Abdullah Gül is interesting. He began his remarks by saying that "the whole world must know that we will prevail in the war on terrorism."

This is an obvious reference to the "foreign hand" thesis. After Turkey's relations soured with Syria and Israel, there were several pieces in the media, suggesting that both of these countries may use PKK terrorism as a leverage. Of course, Iran, with its territories just a few hundreds kilometers away from where the PKK attacked last night, is another usual suspect, according to many Turks.

The timing of PKK's latest attack is especially significant, as it came on the same day that the Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu met the Syrian opposition officially for the first time and the Hamas prisoners who were exiled after the swap deal with Israel arrived in Ankara. Moreover, the Turkish parliament was about to begin debating the new constitution today.

Towards the End of the Sarkozienne Hypocrisy

2011-10-17T16:33:00.008+03:00

The French Socialist leader François Hollande's first act as presidential candidate was to attend today's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the police massacre of Algerians demonstrating in Paris.

It is predicted that Hollande will easily unseat President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 elections.

* * *

While visiting Georgia and Armenia a couple of weeks ago, Nicolas Sarkozy called on Turkey to recognize the Ottoman tragedy of 1915 as a genocide.

Consequently, several Algerians lashed out at Sarkozy, saying that he should "look in the mirror" and apologize for the Algerian genocide first.

* * *

Like Sarkozy, Hollande refers to the 1915 events as a genocide, too. He even puts its recognition as a precondition for Turkey's EU membership.

While it is even a harsher stance comparing to Sarkozy to snatch the French-Armenian votes, why don't Turks perceive Hollande as a hypocrite, while they keep hating Sarkozy?

Because of the fact that Hollande kept himself away from double-standards like the issue with the Algerian genocide?

Yes, but not only because of that, I believe...

* * *

To explain it, let's look at Sarkozy's stance on Turkey's EU candidacy. Sarkozy's main argument is the "fact" that Turkey is "geographically in Asia" and its population is "100 million".

Such rhetorical manipulation is still being made, as it is reported today that Henry Renault, the French Ambassador in Yerevan, said that the main reason of France's opposition to Turkey's EU membership is its geographical position.

Repeating this, especially in Yerevan, is so funny. Because the same Sarkozy, who visited Yerevan and criticized Turkey there because of the genocide issue, was heralding that Georgia and Armenia will one day become EU members.

So Armenia and Georgia is geographically in Europe, just like Cyprus, while Turkey is not?

(Some people who want to learn more about political issues like this look into online masters degree programs.)

* * *

After all, is Sarkozy a dumbass?

Or a despicable liar?

Non! But these question brings us to the conclusion:

Sarkozy's main argument against Turkey is actually not geographical.

The subtext is always Islamophobic, as he saws Christian-majority countries of Georgia, Armenia and Cyprus as European, although they are geographically in Asia, while he excludes the Muslim-majority Turkey with its biggest city largely in Europe.

This is why Turks don't hate Hollande, even when he angers them by manipulating the history for politicial means.

This is why it would be great for Turks to say goodbye to Sarkozy next year, as the Islamophobic hypocrisy in the EU will diminish significantly with his fall.

Turkish Journalist? Don't Report and the Problem is Solved

2011-10-15T16:02:00.010+03:00

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan's speech in Ankara today is full of interestingness.

Some may call some of his sayings as aphorisms, some others may call them gaffes.

Firstly, he explained the recent hikes in prices of luxury goods, including cigarettes and toilet paper (!), with the following words:

"If cigarettes are too expensive, don't smoke and the problem is solved. Alcohol? Drink less and the problem is solved. And instead of driving a Porsche, drive a Fiat or Volkswagen."

Then, he lashed out at the Kurdish deputies of BDP, who had recently tried to steal the piousness show from AKP by introducing a draft law to allow women with headscarves in the parliament.

"Are they really sincere? Can anyone who is a Zoroastrian like them be sincere on this subject?" Erdoğan asked, referring to the BDP deputies.

* * *

European Union’s 2011 progress report has recently alarmed that violations of press freedom in Turkey were serious, but I have a dream.

A fantasy, indeed.

I’d like to have a Borat-style interview with Erdoğan, arriving in the Prime Minister’s office with my Porsche and asking him about the arrested journalists, before revealing that I am a Zoroastrian.

As I would start to sip my champagne and smoke a cigar, I’m sure as hell that Erdoğan would answer my question quite comfortably:

“Are you still trying to be a journalist in Turkey? Well, don’t report anything and the problem is solved.”

"Chenquieh," I would reply.

Two Techno-Brains from Turkey: The Armenian Jobs and The Greek Lazaridis

2011-10-11T16:57:00.005+03:00

The world keeps talking about two technology companies:

1) Apple, because of the death of its co-founder, as well as the record-breaking pre-orders for its newest smartphone.

2) RIM, because of the failure of its worldwide service for Blackberry smartphones, as well as it's already declined prestige.

Two individuals who are right in the middle of the debate, Apple's Steve Jobs and RIM's Mike Lazaridis, are both related to Turkey, it is recently revealed.

1) Steve Jobs tells in his autobiography that his father was an Ottoman-Armenian from Malatya, who immigrated to the United States after the tragedies of 1915.

2) Mike Lazaridis was about to visit Turkey recently, but he refrained as he was considered a draft dodger here. After spending his childhood in Istanbul, his Turkish-Greek family had immigrated to Canada in 1967. A six-month-long military service is obligatory for university graduates in Turkey.

These two figures show that we produce a lot of great people in Turkey, but we struggle to keep them here.

And what about the people that we don't even know?

How much potential are we wasting away?

Guardians and Dissidents

2011-10-10T17:24:00.009+03:00

The system always nurtures its guardians, who are mostly ignorant, comparing to its dissidents.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a Hürriyet report about Nedim Şener, a Press Freedom Hero who was arrested last March with his investigative books as the only evidence at the hands of the prosecution.

According to the latest report, the prosecution tapped Şener's phone and included all the transcripts, whether relevant to the case or not, in the indictment. One of the transcripts is especially funny: Şener was sardonically praising his boss, Uğur Dündar, calling him the "Zeus" of the Turkish media.

The police officer who was secretly listening to this conversation was not familiar with the Greek mythology. He interpreted the word "Zeus" as "Deyyus" and put it into the transcript as such. Deyyus means "pander" in Turkish. Following his arrest, another police officer would ask Şener why he called Dündar a pander to his face.

From left to right: Uğur Dündar, Nedim Şener and Zeus

Several pundits insist that the Gulenist movement, a moderate Islamist brotherhood, is controlling the Turkish police now, but this is not about ideologies or partisanship.

As I said, the system nurtures ignorant guardians, whether it is a capitalist, communist or a third way system.

The tragic/comic story of Nedim Şener may be a blunder by the current establishment, but it reminded me of the past, when the Turkish police was controlled by the military administration of the Eighties, which may many can see as the anti-thesis of the AKP government now (although it's wrong, IMHO).

A well-known story tells that the police was raiding houses in 1980 to suppress leftist dissidents. In the apartment of a group of university students, there was a portrait of Karl Marx on the wall. The students were trembling, knowing that this was the end of the road. However, the police officer looked at the portrait and told the leftist students: "You should be ashamed of your cherub grandfather with his white beard of a wise man."

Karl Marx and his beard

The guardians never know about Zeus or Karl Marx.

The dissidents are not like that.

A couple of days ago, the International Golden Orange Film Festival opened in the southern city of Antalya with the presentation of awards.

Turkish actor Rutkay Aziz, who received the social responsibility in art award, gave a memorable speech, slamming the government without naming the names, but still.

He quoted Goethe at one point:

"The most dangerous situation of the world is when organized ignorance is in action."

As far as I know, Goethe had worded it in another way ("There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action"), but I believe that the Aziz version, with the emphasis on "organized," is even more suitable to define our time.

Because not only Turkey, but the whole world needs a system, where its guardians would be enlightened enough to know at least the names of Zeus and Karl Marx.

The dissidents can help out.

Rutkay Aziz with his award in Antalya

Curb Nationalism, So the Nation Comes Through

2011-10-01T22:42:00.009+03:00

Remember U.S. President Barack Obama's oath stumble? Turks are now debating a similar theme, but with an ethnic/ideological twist.

The Turkish Parliament opened today for the new legislative season with all parties on board.

Lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, took their oaths and formally ended a parliamentary boycott over colleagues who remain in jail.

The oath of Leyla Zana, one of BDP's thirty deputies in the parliament, was controversial, again. After all, she had caused outrage when she tried to take the oath in Kurdish in 1991.

As can be seen from the following video, Zana didn't take the oath in Kurdish this time, but she stumbled when she was reading the last part of the oath. It is not clear if she said that she took the oath in the face of the great "Turkish nation" or the great "nation of Turkey."

Leyla Zana taking oath

Several media outlets argued that Zana refrained from using the term "Turkish nation," opting to reword the text cynically to emphasize the presence of Turkey's Kurds as well.

The secretary of the Turkish parliament, however, concluded that Zana's oath was according to the rules set by the Constitution, as she actually uttered the words "Turkish nation," although stammeringly.

I can't really understand any parties of this debate...

...neither the Turkish nationalists who seem like they enjoy to force people to do something against their will and feelings...

...nor most of the BDP deputies, who claim to represent a leftist ideology (even the PKK was founded as a Marxist-Leninist party before being designated as an terrorist organization by several countries), but ended up as Kurdish nationalists as despicable as the Turkish ones.

And the solution?

This parliament will write the new constitution. It can solve both problems by a magical touch..

...by removing the unnecessary emphasis on Turkishness (which is a product of the 1980 coup d'etat, not Atatürk)...

...while still abiding by the principle that the Republic of Turkey is a nation-state, as a social, democratic and lawful entity.

If Germany -even the left- is insisting on integration and France doesn't refute their national identity, why should Turks transform their state into a de facto confederation with Kurds?

Moreover, this is not even an ethical question anymore:

After all, Kurds have their own nation-statelet in northern Iraq and it is quite rich and resourceful, aren't they?

I See That People

2011-09-30T10:21:00.004+03:00

Officials in a city in rural eastern Turkey, responding to an ancient local fear of being buried alive, have equipped the local morgue with the latest gadgetry in case any of the bodies stored there have been declared dead by mistake.

This is the solution for living people who were presumed dead.

But what about the dead people who are thought to be alive?

How can they be informed that they died long ago?

What kind of gadgetry do we need?

Is PKK Killing Babies or Not?

2011-09-27T18:24:00.006+03:00

This newborn baby has got no name yet.

He is in critical condition in a hospital in Batman province in Turkey.

Mizgin Doğru, the mother of the baby, was pregnant when she got shot by PKK militants during a clash between this terror organization and the Turkish police last night. Mizgin's three-year-old daughter were also killed by PKK bullets.

* * *

Just a few months ago, several Turkish pundits were writing that it was wrong to name Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, as a baby-killer.

They were suggesting that such a name-calling in the media hinders the peace process in the Kurdish issue.

Maybe they were right.

After all, Mizgin's son lives.

We can forget about his future, his dead mother and sister...

That's what the sympathizers of PKK keep doing...

That's what many Turkish politicians keep doing...

I can't.

Movies and the Soundtrack of Istanbul

2011-09-22T13:57:00.004+03:00

The Guardian started to publish an Istanbul City Guide this month.

The latest entries, Undomondo's soundtrack to Istanbul and 10 of the best films set in Istanbul, are worth to check.

The soundtrack offers beautiful Istanbul songs that I forgot to add to my latest playlist.

The Lunatic Train

2011-09-21T13:26:00.003+03:00

A true story from recent history can be a useful analogy for current affairs in the world:

In 1960s, 423 mental patients had escaped from an asylum in Elazığ, Turkey.

Mutemet Yazıcı, the chief physician and a renowned doctor of his time, ordered his staff to find a whistle and follow him.

The doctor was blowing the whistle while his staff were right behind him, chuffing like a train in Elazığ streets.

Yazıcı managed to pick up all the mental patients with his human train.

Moroever, when they were back in the asylum, they saw that the train consist of 612 people!

PKK at the Gates of Prime Ministry

2011-09-20T16:24:00.004+03:00

"A powerful bomb rocked the centre of Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday, killing three people and injuring at least 15, as immediate suspicion fell on Kurdish separatists," AFP reports.

It can be seen as a result of fighting PKK terror in Turkish way. Our government, who admits that they couldn't stop PKK piling up bombs in Turkish metropolises, is now unable to protect itself, too.

The location that the bomb has exploded in Ankara today is just 200 meters to Prime Minister's office. There are several ministries closer than 500 meters.

Edit: This is the failure of the Turkish government, but on second thought, one may ask if the explosions of stockpiled PKK bombs are somehow linked to the threats of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman or not. If Lieberman wants his name out of such conspiracy theories, he should publicly condemn PKK terrorism.

How to Fight the Terror in the Turkish Way

2011-09-15T21:54:00.004+03:00

A city bus stopped abruptly after a few passengers found a suspicious package near Sefaköy district in Istanbul today.

The driver checked the package and saw some cables in it.

He calmly took up the package and threw it outside of the bus, in front of a big shopping mall.

...and the package exploded.

The police explained that it was a blast bomb, presumably prepared by the PKK.

I've just read this story on Hürriyet's website. There are hilarious comments by the readers. Two of them are enough to summarize it all:

* Year 1996, London: They said that that there was a blast bomb in a bus. The police arrived in quickly and neutralized the bomb in five hours. Year 2011, Istanbul: A bus driver neutralized the bomb in twenty minutes by throwing it out. What an advanced society we Turks are!..

* PKK militants are hanging around, putting bombs, and this government is negotiating with the terrorists while they know it. Who will resign and when? Will they still be playing three monkeys after real PKK bombs begin to explode in cities, following the imminent start of a cross-border operation in Iraq by the Turkish army?

Negotiating with a Gun to the Head

2011-09-13T21:08:00.009+03:00

A PKK-affiliate website has released an almost 50-minute long voice recording that reveals secret talks between the representatives of the Turkish government and the PKK, a terrorist organization according to Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.

It is said that the tape was recorded in Oslo and the Turkish government was represented by Hakan Fidan, the undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Fidan explains in the tape that he directly represents Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan.

In the same day that the Turkish government warns that it may launch a cross-border land offensive against PKK militants in northern Iraq, the leak is perceived an an attempt by the terrorist organization to change the course.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan had earlier told that "the state may negotiate with the PKK, but not the government" and those who allege that AKP talked to the terrorist organization were "ignoble if they can't prove it." His aide Bülent Arınç had also claimed that the government is not "that rascal."

The tape disproves these strong statements, but I don't believe that many Turks would be furious at the government because of the contents of this tape. However, I still can point out several details in the tape that should make any Turkish citizen concerned. Some of them are:

1) Political negotiation is an art by itself and I am not an expert. But I still think that Fidan's assistant shouldn't have addressed to the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan as "the leadership," a term which is exclusively used by the members of the PKK, when talking to the representatives of this terrorist organization. (Fidan's assistant also refers to him as "Mister," but it is not that grave.)

2) There is a foreign voice in the tape. He's got British accent. It is said that it belongs to the representative of a third country. If there is such a foreign interlocutor, why didn't they tell us before? OK, this is a secret negotiation, but secrecy to this extent is incompatible with democracy and transparency. As an instance, the White House had publicly announced or leaked to the media almost all details of the talks between their representatives and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

3) And the most horrifying part of the tape... The PKK representative says that "their forces" are everywhere in Turkey. "We know it, you stuffed our metropolises with explosives," Fidan's assistant replies. "Forget about them," the PKK representative continues, "We should proceed with these negotiations." And Fidan's assistant says that "it will still be harder to proceed while seeing them (bombs)."

So the Turkish government is simply negotiating as a hostage to terrorism. The PKK, which was virtually defeated when the AKP government came to power, is once again strong enough to threaten Turkish cities and civilians, and our government is just talking to them.

So, ten years ago, I was completely safe. Now there may be a PKK bomb next door in my apartment and my government is negotiating with the people who put that bomb, instead of taking the European way -putting them to prison- or at least the good, old American way -remember the funeral of Osama Bin Laden, organized by Barack Obama?

Shortly, the leaked tape is a proof of the absolute failure of the anti-terror policies of the AKP governments in the last decade.

The Forgotten September 10

2011-09-11T15:54:00.011+03:00

On September 11, 2001, a 22-year-old student was killed by a suicide bomber.

That terror attack was not in New York, but Istanbul.

The victim was Amanda Rigg, an Australian who came here to learn Turkish.

One day ago, a suicide bomber had exploded himself in Taksim district, instantly killing two policemen and injuring twenty people. Seven of them were seriously injured civilians, including Amanda. She passed away the next day, around afternoon, almost at the same time with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York.

With the 9/11 attacks in New York, the 9/10 attacks in Istanbul were forgotten. On September 12, 2001, all Turkish newspapers were full of stories about New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Amanda the Istanbulian were out of news bulletins in just a day, like her loss wouldn't be commemorated in public ceremonies after a decade, unlike the victims of 9/11.

Amanda's murderers were belonged to DHKP-C, a Marxist-Leninist organization similar to PKK, and they were being protected by several EU countries -especially Belgium- before Amanda died, like it would be after her death.

Although both of them are internationally designated as terrorist organizations, many people outside Turkey tend to see DHKP-C and PKK militants as freedom fighters, emphasizing that they generally attack military targets.

While the Australian government provided support to the families of the victims of the Bali bombings and London terrorist attacks, Amanda's family said they received nothing.

Amanda Rigg

"Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Islamic militancy remains a global threat against which the world must unite," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today.

And he added: "That Al Qaeda attack on the United States marked the peak of a wave of terrorist attacks, which nevertheless continued in Madrid, London, Bali and Mumbai."

Is this the full list?

On November 15 and November 20, 2003, four truck bombs which were sent by Al Qaida had killed 57 and injured 700 in downtown Istanbul.

Netanyahu didn't mention the Istanbul attacks, even though six Jews who were praying in synagogues were among the victims.

All of them were forgotten, like Amanda.

Istanbul, 2003

It is a cliché, but terrorism has really no religion and no ethnicity.

Each life is sacred and all of them, especially those like Amanda that we sacrificed too soon, should be blessed.

In order to do it, the hypocrisy and the double-standards on terrorism especially in western Europe and the United States must come to an end.

Then, mournful people can come closer to understanding each other's loss and start pushing their politicians to work together to drain the swamp, instead of looking for mosquitoes of different breeds.

So today, I remember not only the victims of the 9/11, but also those of the 9/10, with respect and reflection.

Lieberman May Become the New Qaddafi of the Middle East

2011-09-09T23:28:00.006+03:00

If the Turkish government is acting irrationally nowadays, then the Israeli government -or at least a key part of it- is sheer crazy.

Right after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the far-rightist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman decided to arm the PKK, a terrorist organization according to the US, EU and Turkey.

Erdoğan's aggressive policy package was dubbed as "Plan C" and Lieberman's response is called "the plan to punish Turkey."

Ynet News is full of hateful comments against Turkey and Turks, but there are sane people, too. Oliver from Australia is one of them, who writes:

"Israel don't be stupid. You are not a simple country. You are only giving more fuel to Turkey. You know very well that giving political support to a political arm of a terrorist organisation is different to physically providing weapons to an internationally recognised terror organisation such as the PKK. You also know very well that this will never be allowed by the EU or NATO as it forms a pretext for other countries supporting the IRA and ETA."

The most terrifying aspect of this crisis is the difference in public opinion: When I check the readers' comments on the websites of Israeli newspapers, I observe more racists and bigots, comparing to the Turkish ones. I don't believe that this is a reflection of the difference between Turks and Israelis. The ratio of the racists and bigots in the society should be roughly the same for any country in the world, including Turkey and Israel.

It just shows that racists and bigots are more insolent in Israel nowadays, because of the obvious decay in Israeli democracy. Such a decay was made possible only by the widening gap between rich and poor in Israel, as well as the unstoppable rise of the far-right politicians, whose main constituencies are illegal settlements.

This is why there are lots of people in Israel who can comfortably praise the boldness of Lieberman, heralding him as the new prime minister of Israel. A potential prime minister who openly plans to arm an internationally-recognized terror organization.

It seems that Arab Spring is bringing democracy to Arabs, but taking it away from Israelis, who may be recycling the likes of Mubarak and Qaddafi in their own government soon.

Turkey's New Zero Neighbors Policy

2011-09-08T22:16:00.006+03:00

We are certainly living in interesting times.

The Turkish government, which has been advocating its grand strategy of "zero problems with all neighbors," has almost managed to come to the verge of war with all of them in less than a year.

Instead of "zero problems with all neighbors," we may soon have "zero neighbors with lots of problems of our own."

The situation is so tense that Reuters even compared the Turkish and Israeli navies and they have a point:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has just announced that Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He also said that Turkey had taken steps to stop Israel from unilaterally exploiting natural resources from the eastern Mediterranean, a move which will also alarm the Greek Cypriot navy.

In the same interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Erdogan threatened Syrian leader Bashar Assad, too, warning that those leaders who maintain their rule by blood will eventually be ousted by blood. Following the unrest in Syria, Turkey had gradually been deteriorating its warm relations with Damascus, ultimately to the point to start planning a Turkish buffer zone in Syrian territory.

As if these are not enough, the Turkish government has recently irked Iran as well, by putting the radar station of the future NATO missile shield in southeast Turkey. The Iranian government warned Turkey today, saying that the plan would create tension and lead to "complicated consequences."

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds are protesting Turkey for bombing their northern territories and a cash-strapped Greece is digging a 120 km. anti-tank trench along the joint land border with Turkey...

No need to mention the awful situation of Turkey-Armenia relations, following the failure of the protocols that would normalize the relations between these two countries, but may potentially destroy the warm ties between Ankara and Baku.

Of course, if there are such ties... as, WikiLeaks has recently revealed that Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, complained about the "Islamist expansionism" of Turkey behind closed doors.

Israel, Syria, Iran, Greece, Cyprus, Azerbaijan... So, only two neighbors left: Bulgaria and Georgia. I fear that the Turkish government will be as creative as ever to drive us to the verge of war between these two lovely neighbors as well.

Georgia may seem as a particularly suitable enemy, as shown by the amazing performance of its army against Russians. Prime Minister Erdoğan may start escalating the tension by reminding Georgians about that war...

And then:

One more step towards zero neighbors!

PS: Obviously, this is a tongue-in-cheek critique of Turkey's current foreign policy. I don't really believe that the Turkish government will take the risks of waging a war against any of these countries. Those who want to learn more about international relations and politics maylook into accredited online masters programs via www.GuidetoOnlineSchools.com.

Justifying Blockades

2011-09-06T19:31:00.006+03:00

Last week, Turkey announced that the Israeli ambassador Gaby Levy was being expelled and all bilateral military agreements were suspended as it angrily rejected the findings of a United Nations probe into the deadly flotilla raid.

Today, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan refused to back down in the row, accusing Israel of behaving like a "spoilt child" and threatening to visit the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

I believe that this is a badly managed crisis. The Palmer report was not a total catastrophe for Turkey, but Ankara presented it as if it was, maybe because they really wanted to use it as an excuse to further deteriorate the bilateral relations, which may be a strategic choice (it should also be noted that such a choice contradicts with Turkey's grand strategy of 'zero problem with neighbors.')

However, just one section of the Palmer report is negative, not only for Turkey, but for the whole international community, and this fact cannot be changed with presentations and postures. The Wall Street Journal has summarized it:

"One such accusation from the Turks is that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is illegal because blockades can only be legally imposed on another state, and Israel has never recognized Palestine as a state. The Palmer report dismisses that legal legerdemain, noting that 'Hamas is the de facto political and administrative authority in Gaza,' that 'it is Hamas that is firing projectiles into Israel or permitting others to do so,' that 'law does not operate in a political vacuum' and thus 'Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza.'"

With such a clause, the UN commission opens the doors of the hell. Now any state can put a blockade on any region by announcing that there is a de facto political and administrative authority in that region.

This is really dangerous and setting a wrong precedent for international justice.

Setting Up An Example

2011-09-06T19:31:00.002+03:00

Today, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan refused to back down in the row, accusing Israel of behaving like a "spoilt child" and threatening to visit the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

However, just one section of the Palmer report is negative, not only for Turkey, but for the whole international community. The Wall Street Journal has summarized it:

This is really dangerous and setting a wrong precedent for international justice.

Journalism and WikiLeaks

2011-09-04T21:25:00.009+03:00

First of all, I must admit that the Guardian has always been my favorite newspaper in the world and WikiLeaks is one of the best sources in the New Media that I'm using as a journalist.

However, both of these media outlets lost a bit of their dignity and credibility with their latest quarrel on Cablegate2:

Firstly, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the Guardian journalist David Leigh of disclosing the password to the entire, unredacted cache of 250,000 cables in his book. Then the Guardian defended its editor and put the blame on Assange in return. And finally, by alleging that it was through Leigh's password that outsiders were able to access and circulate the files, WikiLeaks did the same and unleashed it all after a popular vote on the website.

As a matter of fact, The Guardian reiterates that Assange had told that it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. Anyway, the British newspaper was wrong to publish this password in a book without verifying that the password was really changed. So the Guardian breached its contract for collaboration with WikiLeaks and this is just the smaller picture.

The big picture, on the other hand, is that the whole parody has put the final nail on the coffin of a trans-generational media cooperation. Traditional mass media and the New Media is just not compatible. They can't work together in the long run. A rogue whistle-blower can't be the natural part of the establishment, while still remaining himself.

And there is almost a consensus:

The release of the unedited texts of all the cables without removing the names of vulnerable people in repressive countries, including activists, academics and journalists, who might face reprisals for speaking candidly to American diplomats, is deemed as wrong. As the Wall Street Journal has put it, "expect many more covers blown, careers ruined, and lives placed in jeopardy before all this is over."

Such a consensus is emphasized in the common declaration of the mass-media collaborators of WikiLeaks today, namely the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel and El Pais.

It is really a consensus, but the fact is that it is the consensus of the mass media, not the New Media, not the news outlets of the Web 2.0. For the traditional media, politics is still strictly categorized as national and international. Just looking at the founders and the first financiers of WikiLeaks, from China to Scandinavia, would be enough to see that this is not the way it is for the the New Media.

On almost every occasion that I cover a story abroad with journalists from different countries, say, in the World Trade Organization summits in Geneva, I get surprised by the attitude of the majority of my colleagues. The questions that some of them ask during interviews and press conferences are intrinsically from a national -and most of the time, nationalist- perspective. "Why are you giving us such an headache over palm oil trade? Start bugging Malaysians, too," one Indonesian colleague had once scolded at Pascal Lamy, as if he was an ambassador, not a journalist. (Even the Indonesian ambassador wouldn't be so pointlessly blunt, though.)

On such occasions, I try to remain as a silent observer. I always try to refrain from putting myself in a similar situation. Of course, as I am also a part of the traditional media, even I may have fallen into the trap of thinking and behaving as if I'm an ambassador, instead of a journalist. Journalists of the New Media are not in such a inner struggle. Because their organizations are a part of the Internet without borders, the national interests of a certain state should not be an issue for them.

This is why it is normal that newspapers like the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel and El Pais condemn the unredacted release of all U.S. cables. Behind a veil of humanitarian reasons, some may even try to protect the integrity of the U.S. Department of State by keeping the guarantee of the anonymity of the local sources of U.S. diplomats around the world. (And I know what a sloppy job they have been doing so far, while deleting almost all the American/Western European names in the cables while keeping the Turkish ones among many others.)

But this is not New Journalism. The journalists of our day just don't linked to national interests, because they are the part of a supranational communication network. With such a creed, these rogue journalists may even force us, the traditional journalists, to reflect on our professional values and principles again. So we can remember that

...the ultimate duty of a journalist is to provide the people with the information, by remaining free and self-governing.

The responsibility of the effects of uncovering such a truth is a different subject. If it's about the Cablegate2, then the U.S. Department of State should be held to account for any kind of future damage, not WikiLeaks. After all, they were the ones who must have secured the cables and avoided any leaks. It is under the freedom of expression for a journalist to publish a diplomatic cable that -through any process- ended up in the public domain that we call the Internet.

The American officials or the officials of other countries naturally pursue the leakers for violating their national laws if their sovereignty can really apply, but the journalists should always be for truth vs. falsehood, justice vs. injustice, law vs. order, democracy vs. everything else.

Finally, I hope that both the Guardian and WikiLeaks realize their mistakes, so that I keep reading the former as my favorite newspaper and using the latter as one of my online sources, although I know that we can't put them in the same basket.

A Musical Cure

2011-08-29T17:18:00.005+03:00

Music therapy was a common method in Ottoman medicine, which had a holistic approach. The Guardian has published a cool article on the modern example of this technique, being applied in Istanbul now. As a fan of Turkish classical music, I especially liked the way that the Guardian let us listen to the related melodies.

Rediscovering Atatürk

2011-08-28T23:18:00.004+03:00

In the past, I had summarized the way I saw Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, with a few posts here:

...A modernising autocrat, who used the justified violence of a revolutionary state to establish a nation with humanist sentiments. In spite of all the efforts by various parties to abuse and capitalize him, he is still loved like a father by millions of Turks, who are not brainwashed idiots, but enlightened masses with sincere feelings...

Austin Bay, who recently published a book called "Atatürk: Lessons in Leadership From the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire" in the United States, has written an interesting article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, filling most of the gaps in my previous posts about Atatürk.

The article, "Arab Spring demands echo ideals of Ataturk," puts the Turkish leader of 1920s/1930s into a contemporary, international context.

Simply, the article shows that the founder of Turkey is still inspiring for the region, formerly known as the Ottoman Empire, as he was the one to lay grounds for the first democracy of the Middle East.

Everyone in the world, especially in the United States and the Western Europe, should read this article to see that Atatürk is not an idol that should be broken.

For Turkey and the world, he was an idea.

He was the ideal.

Still, he is.

Chilean Camila vs. Turkish Camila

2011-08-27T09:18:00.002+03:00

Camila Vallejo is a student in Chile. Her call for better and cheaper education has seen student protests transform into a two-day nationwide shutdown. The 23-year-old spearheads an uprising that shakes the presidency of the billionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera. She is being protected by the police anyway, as she is receiving death threats. The beautiful Comandante Camila is a global star now:

Berna Yılmaz is a student in Turkey. 12 months ago, the 20-year-old participated in a protest during a visit by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan where she carried a banner, reading "We want free education." Police immediately arrested Berna and she is still behind bars, spent a full year of her life while waiting for a court decision among murderers and thieves. Almost nobody in Turkey seems like caring about Berna, probably except her parents. This may be why there are no photos of Berna to post here.

Camila is from Chile.

Berna is from Turkey.

On What I Was Wrong and Why I Am Right

2011-08-26T21:27:00.005+03:00

Mehmet Arslan, the managing editor of Hurriyet's sports section, has explained me in a newsroom meeting today that I was wrong when accusing UEFA of a double-standard in ousting Fenerbahçe football club from the 2011/12 UEFA Champions League over an ongoing match-fixing probe.

He told me that UEFA's hands were tied when AC Milan were convicted of match-fixing and had still managed to get away with it with an additional title in Champions League. However, the top football body of Europe had modified the regulations right afterwards to keep such a scandal repeat in the future.

This explanation may disprove the double-standard allegation, but there are still important questions to be asked. Mehmet Arslan has given a successful example of sports journalism today, as Hürriyet published UEFA's letter to the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) for the first time. As the Board of Fenerbahçe has pointed out today, the letter shows that TFF has misled the UEFA to think that this match-fixing probe was just about Fenerbahçe, although it was actually targeting almost all Super League clubs.

"But the only arrested president is Fenerbahçe's," some may suggest. Then TFF should have given UEFA more insight about the Turkish judiciary, including the fact that fifty-four percent of criminal cases in Turkey, including the ones that go through prolonged arrests, result with the acquittal of the suspect.

This is why I think that I'm still right in believing that it was wrong to ban Fenerbahçe from Europe, if it wouldn't be relegated from the Turkish Super League immediately. After all, you can't have a club clean enough to play in the top national league, while being not clean enough to play in the top continental league. So if there is a double-standard, it is more of TFF's than of UEFA's.

An UEFA Double-Standard: Invading the Republic of Fenerbahçe

2011-08-25T18:59:00.006+03:00

The talk of the day in Turkey is the ouster of Fenerbahçe football club from the 2011/12 UEFA Champions League over an ongoing match-fixing probe.

It is basically an UEFA action:

The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) had previously decided that Fenerbahçe wouldn't be relegated from the Turkish Super League until the criminal investigation would be completed and there would be enough evidence proving the guilt of the club. No evidence is not public yet, as the investigation remains confidential.

However, an UEFA representative visited Istanbul and warned the TFF to send Trabzonspor instead of Fenerbahçe by relying on the media coverage of the match-fixing probe. Although many allegations that were published by the media were already disproved, TFF quickly stepped back and did what UEFA said.

I believe that it is a ridiculous double-standard by UEFA and it is a shameful cowardice by the TFF. There are two reasons:

1) Even if Fenerbahçe is guilty, it is not proven yet. With exactly same conditions in the past, UEFA had let AC Milan and Porto to play in the Champions League, while match-fixing investigations against them were still going on. Moreover, AC Milan won the Champions League in 2002, although it was found guilty in match-fixing scandal and its points in Serie A were taken back in the same year.

2) The second double standard is UEFA's choice to replace Fenerbahçe. It is its rival Trabzonspor, which is also accused in the match-fixing scandal. Moreover, its president is on trial now with a ban on leaving the country. (Update: Abracadabra! A court annulled the ban today, so that he can watch away games, too!)

It seems that UEFA's "zero tolerance" policy against match-fixing is really complicated. They tolerate match-fixing by football giants and football dwarfs, but they can't even wait for an investigation to be concluded when it is a normal football club. The result may be the total collapse of the Turkish football, as Fenerbahçe has just announced that it would apply to be relegated, an action that may lead many Turkish clubs to go bankrupt because of the steep fall in broadcast revenues.

Personal Note: I'm a supporter of Fenerbahçe and I wrote about it in the past, including when I posted about its unique place in Turkish football as more of a republic, than a club.

Running With Sledgehammers

2011-08-24T18:09:00.006+03:00

There is an interesting polemic going on:

The Times of London has recently published an article about the Sledgehammer case, the case against the Turkish generals who were accused of plotting a coup. Alexander Christie-Miller, the author of the article, revealed that "doctored evidence" was at the heart of the case.

Then Etyen Mahcupyan, one of the pro-government liberals of Turkey, bashed at The Times and compared Christie-Miller to Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik in his column in Today’s Zaman.

Apart from his reductio ad Breivikum accusation, Mahcupyan was blaming the Economist, too, which recently published articles to criticize certain actions of the AKP government, like unjustified the arrest of several journalists.

Finally, Alexander Christie-Miller has replied to Mahcupyan's accusations a couple of days ago. "There is clear evidence, from independent sources, that elements of the Sledgehammer coup plot have been doctored. Specifically, the CD containing most of the incriminating evidence in the trial was manipulated, apparently to augment the case against the defendants," he wrote.

The full text of his response can be read here.

Qaddafi's End: Good Outcome, Bad Method

2011-08-22T11:12:00.011+03:00

I am happy that the Libyans finally got rid of Moammar Qaddafi. However, I still agree with US Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, who wrote for the Guardian and said:

"The leading donor nations of NATO - the US, France and Great Britain - have been free to prosecute war under the cloak of this faceless, bureaucratic, alphabet security agency, now multinational war machine, which can violate UN resolutions and kill innocent civilians with impunity. War crimes trials are only for losers. The prospective conquerors, the Western powers and their rebel proxies, will then expect to be able to assert control over Libya's vast oil and natural gas reserves."

What even worse will be, in my opinion, the consequential perception of the NATO intervention in Libya, which may set up a wrong example against international law:

Violating a UN Security Council resolution by bombing a particular side of a civil war (7,459 air strikes against Qaddafi targets, including TV stations) and still stating that the Alliance doesn't take sides as it just protects civilians may not be legitimate, but who cares, it works!

Libya is a victory, but it is a victory of arms against the international law. I prefer victories of wit in compliance with the international law.

Somalia Is Not About Politics

2011-08-19T12:56:00.008+03:00

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan visited Somalia's capital Mogadishu to draw international attention to the famine sweeping across the Horn of Africa nation, threatening to kill hundreds of thousands of children.

As he unveiled extensive measures to this African country, AFP emphasized in its report that this was the first visit by a major leader in nearly two decades to witness the devastation in the Somali capital.

"Now Istanbul is the most popular name for newborn girls in Somalia," Erdoğan also said.

* * *

It seems that the Turkish opposition is also united in helping Somalia. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party CHP, announced that he would also go to Somalia on August 30, the first day of the Ramadan feast.

Some fringe figures in the opposition may have alleged that the governing AKP tried to manipulate the public opinion to raise money for the party through donations to Somalia. They also claimed that the AKP government's mobilization in Somalia targeted a new market for the Turkish construction sector.

I believe that they may really be right: Some authorities could really steal some of the donations (as it had happened with the Refah government and the aid to Bosnia). Some businessmen who are close to the government can really be even richer soon, thanks to the contracts in Somalia.

But who cares? As long as even one Somali child is saved from death... As long as even one Somali family is fed for one day... Who does care?

This is not a partisan issue. Let's donate to Somalia. Let's show that humanity is above politics.

Istanbul Songs

2011-08-18T20:41:00.006+03:00

Apart from politics, one of the main themes of this blog has been Istanbul. So I'm getting back to that theme, which I neglected a bit, with an Istanbul Songs playlist on YouTube, also showcasing the new musical emphasis of the aforementioned website.

I put the list a Turkish song and then a song in another language. Other than this concern, the list is arranged in random order (Of course, it had to start with They Might Be Giants). I hope you'll enjoy:

Bomb The Terrorist TV in Libya, But Protect the One In Denmark

2011-08-15T19:25:00.014+03:00

The long-awaited court case against Kurdish satellite TV station Roj TV has started and will determine whether the station can continue broadcasting out of Denmark.

According to the Danish prosecution, Roj TV is acting as a mouthpiece for the separatist group Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) – considered a terrorist organisation by the US, UK, EU and Turkey. Roj TV is being charged under Danish anti-terror legislation for promoting terrorist activities.

Flashback:

The Turkish government has been lobbying Denmark to revoke Roj TV's broadcasting license for several years, with the decision by Denmark to press ahead revealed as being a reward for supporting the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO Secretary General in 2009.

Until his nomination for NATO, Rasmussen had been defending Roj TV by emphasizing press freedom. When Turkey let Rasmussen be the new NATO secretary general after initially vetoed his nomination, the Danish government suddenly changed his stance and started to prosecute Roj TV swiftly.

* * *

Flash-forward to a couple of weeks ago:

NATO bombed the Libyan television headquarters in Tripoli early on July 30. "Three of our colleges were murdered and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists," Khaled Basilia of Al-Jamahiriya television had said.

Earlier, NATO in Brussels announced it had carried out precision strikes on three Libyan television transmitters to silence "terror broadcasts" by Moamer Kadhafi’s regime.

"A few hours ago, NATO conducted a precision air strike that disabled three ground-based Libyan state TV satellite transmission dishes in Tripoli... with the intent of degrading Kadhafi’s use of satellite television as a means to intimidate the Libyan people and incite acts of violence against them," a statement said.

So Rasmussen's NATO could bomb a Libyan TV, but Rasmussen's Denmark couldn't legally ban PKK's TV, although there are no doubts that both of these stations incite acts of violence, whether you call it terror or not.

Ironically, the Libyan government is still considered as a legitimate entity according to international law, like they were when several European leaders were in line to shake hands with Moamer Kadhafi just a year ago.

The PKK, on the other hand, is a terrorist organisation according to the vast majority of the international public.

* * *

Such stories reveal that political relativity is universal. Freedoms and rights are essential neither in the West, nor the Middle East nor anywhere else in today's world. As British Prime Minister David Cameron's latest suggestion to curb Facebook and other social media platforms has also demonstrated, it depends on conditions:

Any political leader of any modern state can be a tyrant like Moamer Kadhafi, when the conditions are met and when the price is paid. And with similar terms, democratic leaders like Barack Obama or Nicholas Sarkozy may still line up to shake hands with tyrants like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, the leader of probably the most oppressive, the most brutal internationally-legitimate regime in the world, who may indeed be hanged or prosecuted one day .

So don't fall for their principles and ideals.

Don't fall for the spectacle.

Who Are Financing Turkey? When Will They Stop?

2011-08-13T21:40:00.011+03:00

There is something strange with Turkey's economic performance nowadays: It's better than it supposed to be.

I had written in the past that the current AKP government was the product of the 2001 economic crisis. Turkey's political landscape had changed with the first election after that crisis, as all parties in the previous parliament were punished by the voters harshly.

The leaders of AKP, the next generation Islamist party that swept to an election victory, made the best decision then, by agreeing to follow up the recovery recipe formulated by the economists of the previous government, namely, the technocrats around Kemal Derviş, a social democratic former head of the United Nations Development Programme who returned to his native country to "rescue" the Turkish economy.

AKP's non-partisan, pragmatic approach had helped them bear the fruits of the outstanding economic growth in recent years. The fruits were obviously their votes that were continuously increasing with each election.

The program which was created by the team of Derviş has come to its end. Now the new program is up to AKP's own economic team, consisted of officials who are not as half capable as Derviş.

Strangely, though, there are some serious signs of a possible crash, especially about currency, but Turkey's economy is still up and running. It's in better shape than most of the eurozone countries.

How?

Michael Rubin, an American Middle East expert, writes today that the answer is three words: Foreign direct investment. Rubin points out to "billions of dollars from Persian Gulf states and financiers (which) had flooded into Turkey illegally and appeared to be funding the ruling Islamist party and the pet projects of its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan."

I guess that Rubin is right, but as a right-wing opinion-maker in America, he willfully ignores how the transnational finance capital -which was led by the corporate America, hence the White House- has been supporting AKP. There is no indication to convince us that this support had been cut or decreased at any point, including the days of crises between Turkey and Israel.

So my prediction didn't change: AKP didn't face a real challenge yet. In Turkish politics, the one and only challenge is a devastating economic crisis. Such crises have been the only key events to topple governments in the past, excluding military coups.

The day that the transnational finance capital will put a hex on Turkey, AKP's invincible image will be destroyed by up-to-date public surveys. Then, as the hot money flow will also stop, the populist policies that maintain the popular support for AKP will also cease to exist, which will mean a huge drop in the number of votes in the following elections.

To conclude, I must stress out that I may oppose most of AKP's policies, especially the neo-liberal ones, but I don't look forward to the total economic collapse of my country just to get rid of this government. This position can be interpreted as a lesson for the American right, too.

Of course, I have a much more leftist approach, comparing to i.e Tea Party in America, but I do believe that the peoples of the world, the individuals who want to live in a more egalitarian, more democratic, more just, more transparent globe, should unite, whether they are right-wing or left-wing, against the ills of the transnational finance capital which -I believe- drove us to this point: The edge of the cliff that falls down to an abyss.

Those drivers should be held to account.

Our Fellow Americans

2011-08-11T20:51:00.003+03:00

It's encouraging to see that the constructive forces in our society are being mobilized as efficiently as the destructive ones. And it seems that America is again way ahead of our Old Continent with its ability to transform itself in a progressive way.

As a recent example, Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) initiated a new campaign, called My Fellow American, to get rid of "the climate of suspicion" towards American Muslims which compromises the great values that America was founded upon. UPF's Elizabeth Potter has just shared the following video with me:

More Turkish Heroes in Britain

2011-08-09T12:49:00.003+03:00

The anarchy in the UK is another international news story with Turks at its center, thanks God, under a positive light again.

The Turkish community in London protected their shops and their neighbors by chasing away the looters.

As James Crabtree observed, this should be the redefinition of British Prime Minister David Cameron's Big Society.

On a more abstract level, what's happening in Britain may show how Turks become an indigenous social force in Europe and why the EU desperately needs Turks now: For a better integrated, dynamically enhanced, more secure union with Turkey's full membership. A bigger European society...

Why Nagazaki Was a Bigger Failure of Human Nature Than Hiroshima?

2011-08-08T20:49:00.006+03:00

Tomorrow is the 66th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Nagazaki, Japan.

Believing that America's use of nuclear weapons against Japanese civilians was one of the most horrible atrocities ever committed in history, I didn't post about it anything on August 6th, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

Not that I think Nagazaki was a more serious crime against humanity -these are equally terrible atrocities , like bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, but I still feel that there was something much more wrong in Nagazaki; that's why I post this now.

What do I mean?

Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite American writer, tells:

"I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima."

I try to understand the political decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and I can partly do so. There must have been an excitement for the possibility to end the war by using a weapon that was produced after discovering the ultimate scientific truth. The American political leadership might have thought that more civilians would die if they wouldn't use the nuclear weapon in Hiroshima. And the pilot who flew the bomb was surely unaware of its exact effects, as it has never been used over a city before.

This is why I just can't comprehend the Nagazaki bombing. Although it was almost guaranteed that Japan would surrender after seeing the destruction in Hiroshima, the American leadership still didn't hesitate to use the second bomb on another civilian target. They had all the reconnaissance photos from Hiroshima, so they should have understood the scale of this crime against humanity, but it didn't stop them. The American pilot who dropped the second bomb over Nagazaki should have had the horrible feedback from Hiroshima. Then why? Then how?

What I will never understand is this. And unfortunately, the Nuremberg Tribunals were set to hold the losers of the war to account, not also some winners who also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Charter establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was signed on August 8, 1945; three months after the German surrender, two days after the first nuclear weapon was used in Hiroshima and one day prior to a nuclear weapon being used on Nagasaki. Today is its 66th anniversary.

An Ottoman Party Song

2011-08-06T20:19:00.003+03:00

I don't why but I always listen to a Turkish classical music song especially when it is Ramadan. Actually, it must have been the favorite song of Ottoman party-goers a few centuries ago, so I wanted to share it here.

The name of the song is "Dök Zülfünü Meydane Gel" (Open Up Your Hair, Come to the City Center). It was composed by Tanburi Mustafa Çavuş, an Ottoman musician from the 18th century. The lyrics are written by Asik Hifzi, an Ottoman poet who lived in the 19th century. The maqam of the song is Hisarbuselik. The singer in this video is Eylem Atmaca.

Here is the video and the English translation of the lyrics:

Open up your hair, come to the city center!

Ride your horse, come for wisdom and philosophy!

Bring your instrument, too, come to make music!

Nightingales are yours, the rose garden is yours, oh dear!

I'm in love with you for such a long time

My heart is ready for you, oh dear!

You answered my question by calling me "Mister!"

You burned my bosom with your fire.

If I had a thousand lives, I would have desired you in all of them.

Nightingales are yours, the rose garden is yours, oh dear!

I'm in love with you for such a long time

My heart is ready for you, oh dear!

The Moral of a Fable: Omar's Modest Meal

2011-08-05T21:41:00.006+03:00

Exactly four years ago, I had posted an anecdote from one of the greatest Muslims ever lived, Omar ibn al-Khattab, about one's responsibility towards his/her neighbors. In this Ramadan day, it would be a timely deed to mention another anecdote from the life of the same person:

Witnessing the famine in Madina, Omar had ordered his aides to slaughter his camel and distribute the meat to starving people. They did it, but they also saved the best part of the animal for Omar's taste. When Omar saw the meat in his plate, he rebuked at his aides with ultimate anger, saying: "I told you to distribute it to the poor but you saved the best part for me? Take this plate away and distribute ALL to the people who really need it."

Then he returned his modest table, recited basmala and started to eat his regular meal in peace: A piece of barley bread with some olive oil...

Don't Put Breivik Into Arkham Asylum

2011-08-04T00:17:00.002+03:00

Reading the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Christian-supremacist terrorist from Norway, is a truly shocking experience for anyone who has got a bit of mercy and compassion in his/her heart.

After overcoming this shock, now I read stuff to comprehend the nature of Breivik's psychopathy, just like the Norwegian psychiatrists who will soon give a verdict on his sanity which would be crucial for his trial next year.

Considering his admission that he planned and executed the double-massacre just to advertise his Islamophobic/anti-multicultural ideology in his manifesto, I believe that he was a bit like the Joker in Batman series.

Many people may superficially think that the Joker is just insane, but most scientists disprove this conclusion. Like Breivik, the Joker acts and reacts to events with complete control, hence he's causally and morally responsible from his actions as he commits crime by knowing what's wrong and right in our society. What Breivik and Joker do may be called crazy, but neither of them are legally insane.

In Batman and Philosophy, an expert sounds like he is describing Breivik's motive on Utoya island:

"One example is his attitude toward people: simply put, he often treats them as objects rather than as persons. The Joker didn't blink at shooting Barbara Gordon through her spine and stripping her bare. He wasn't 'out to get her.' He simply had made up his mind that he wanted to prove a point, and she was a useful object to help him make that point, no more or less meaningful to him than the amusement ride he later used for the same purpose. That's a classic psychotic attitude."

Of course, if you had asked Breivik, he would probably answer that he was more like Batman, not the Joker. In Batman and Philosophy again, a psychologist calls Batman a "social fascist" because of his effort to reorder society in his own image. But let's don't be too much post-modern here: Moral relativity must have a limit. We know that it is bad to kill a child and it is good to save him. Like Breivik, the Joker is the killer in such a situation, while Batman is the savior.

Hence, this explanation would probably not satisfy Breivik himself, as his aggression -which is as defensive as the historical Crusades against Muslims in his own terms- should be based on a wounded narcissism. His narcissism is being wounded because of the immigration wave that transforms his indigenous society into a multicultural one where his identity would be facing a more intense competition in social, economic and cultural levels.

Finally, a more in-dept reading about Breivik's repressed libido -as seen in his manifesto-, the double-standards in his perception, his intense anger and rage, his obvious desire to be a celebrity as an ideologue, his narcissistic grandiosity at a similar level with Adolf Hitler, the fact that he is just a representative of a certain kind of group narcissism (extremist conservatism) and his efforts to devalue and demonize the opposing group (Muslims, multiculturalists and Marxists) may be beneficiary.

Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness answers most of these questions. Hoping that I don't infringe any copyright laws, I quote a long passage here while I insist: "Don't put Breivik into Arkham Asylum as he will surely remain as dangerous as now when he'll be free again!"

Aggression and Narcissism

Somalia Starves. Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia...

2011-08-03T13:46:00.003+03:00

Somalia, a mostly-Muslim country, is the scene of the most horrifying, ongoing tragedy nowadays, as "tens of thousands of people fleeing the world's worst hunger crisis, the result of the worst drought in the region in 60 years."

A few hundred millions of dollars worth food aid may save thousands of lives in Somalia at least until winter, but it seems that the international community doesn't really care about it.

* * *

By the way... It is Ramadan, the holy month of the Islamic calendar which should direct Muslims to even more charity. As Wikipedia notes:

"According to tradition, Ramadan is a particularly blessed time to give in charity, as the reward is 70 times greater than any other time of the year. For that reason, Muslims will spend more in charity (sadaqa), and many will pay their zakat during Ramadan, to receive the blessings (reward). In many Muslim countries, it is not uncommon to see people giving food to the poor and the homeless, and to even see large public areas for the poor to come and break their fast."

* * *

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia took a key step forward in its plan to build the world's tallest tower and outdo Gulf neighbor Dubai, which inaugurated its own record-breaking skyscraper less than two years ago. Kingdom Holding Co., the investment firm headed by billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, said it signed a 4.2 billion riyal ($1.2 billion) deal with the Saudi Binladen Group to build Kingdom Tower on the outskirts of the Red Sea city of Jiddah. Soaring two-thirds of a mile high, it will have a Four Seasons hotel, serviced apartments, luxury condominiums and offices, encompassing, in all, about 5.4 million square.

In greed and pretentiousness, Saudi Arabia and Dubai is not alone in the Muslim world. For instance, many local administrations in Turkey spent millions of dollars to organize large fast-breaking dinners for citizens who mostly don't need free food. Moreover, a Turkish company has just started to build a mosque in Istanbul. Connected to a hotel complex, its English-language name hints that it is a posh commercial center, instead of a humble place to worship: Mega Center Caprice Gold Mosque!

* * *

In Koran, God orders His subjects 'to compete in charity' and stay away from wastefulness and extravagance. The short-lived civilization which was established by Prophet Mohammad, especially under his multicultural, even democratic rule in Madina, was just in this way. If Prophet Mohammad had met the Saudi royalty or the Turkish 'Islamic' businessmen today, he would probably condemn them as munafiqs.

It may be especially true for the Saudis, as they waste away billions as the absolute rulers of their 'Islamic' state during the ongoing tragedy in their neighbor Somalia. Before it's too late, Saudi royalty must stop this wastefulness and remember at least two advices by Prophet Mohammad:

He had said that it was not right for a Muslim to sleep with a full stomach after having had a good meal but let his neighbor starve.

He had also advised his friend Abu Dharr that he would better leave Arabia when they start to have buildings higher than two stories.

Too Many Turks

2011-07-31T23:34:00.004+03:00

Is it just selective perception of a foreign news editor or do I see too many Turks around nowadays?

A fire in Britain and the hero is a Turk...

A Norwegian terrorist plans a massacre and his writings show that his nemesis is the Turk. Morever, one of his victims is Turkish...

And today...

A ship sinks in Russia and one of the survivors is a Turk.

And then we learn that they were celebrating the birthday of another Turk on-board.

Too many Turks in the world!

In Turkey, the Government and the Army Undermine the Democracy Hand in Hand

2011-07-30T13:07:00.012+03:00

While I criticized the fact that we, Turks, don't know when to resign, I actually didn't mean this. Maybe I should have also written that there is something else that we can't comprehend: Generally speaking, like resignation, compromise is also not something shameful.

In fact, compromise is an integral part of a democracy with checks and balances, as American people can appreciate it especially in these days that the Congress is debating the debt limit.

As we see in the United States, a democracy without compromise may be self-destructive. It may even trigger the collapse of the whole system: An Armageddon or an Apocalypse may be given way...

The latest crisis in Turkey, which was triggered when entire top military command resigned yesterday in a row with the government over generals jailed for an alleged coup plot, is also a crisis about compromise.

The Turkish army don't understand that they need to compromise, not to quit, in order to maintain their role in a unique Muslim-majority democracy where they can indeed remain as a part of checks and balances system. I don't believe that it's a good tactical move on their behalf, either.

Neither the Turkish government is for compromise. Claudia Roth, co-leader of the German Green Party, has just witnessed it personally, as she was not allowed by the Turkish government to visit the journalist Ahmet Şık, who is imprisoned for a book that he couldn't publish, for a crime that he is still not indicted, almost exactly like the generals in prison. According to Roth, the scandalous thing was not the denial of her request to visit Şık, but the "show-off" stance of the Turkish government on the issue.

This "show-off" stance is a characteristic of a significant part of the Turkish government. As a matter of fact, you can't have a concessional approach with such a stance. Hence, with such a core quality, you can't be a true democrat.

All in all, Turkey is not moving to right direction with so many autocratic politicians and killjoy military commanders who are mano-a-mano in undermining the democratic checks and balances system. And the EU observers are so misguided as usual. European Parliament's Turkey rapporteur Ria Oomen-Ruijten said yesterday that Turkey was getting more democratic day by day. Almost a joke.

So... Autocrats beat killjoys while jokers watch! Perfect scene for a maturing democracy, right?

Shouldn't Some Norway Authorities Be Resigning Now?

2011-07-26T11:56:00.007+03:00

Recently, I had criticized a negative aspect our culture: Authorities in Turkey never resign even when something awful happens in their responsibility. I had praised the Greek Cypriot authorities then, because they instantly resigned after a disaster.

It seems that the Norwegians authorities are more like the Turkish ones, not the Greek Cypriot.

I think that the performance of the Norwegian authorities before, during and after the latest terror attacks were just terrible. Der Spiegel has summarized it today:

* The Norwegian police and intelligence agencies couldn't spot the Christian-supremacist terrorist preemptively while he kept shopping for guns and bomb-making materials.

* The terrorist has parked his car bomb in front of the office of the Prime Minister and the headquarters of the biggest tabloid newspaper of Norway; the police couldn't notice it.

* After the bomb attack, they focused on it too much that they ignored the telephone calls from the victims in Utoya island, who were being killed by the terrorist.

* They arrived near the island after a full hour. As if it is not enough, they wasted 16 more minutes to reach the island with a private boat, because their own boat was broken down.

* After all the massacres, they miscounted the bodies. The number of death decreased by twenty after four days. Moreover, they still couldn't release the name of the victims.

And after all this fiasco, the Minister of Justice congratulated the police for their "fantastic" work, while emphasizing that some police officers interrupted their holidays because of these attacks!

Sorry for the hardworking members of the Norwegian police force, but if I were the King of Norway, I would definitely order an independent inquiry on this fiasco. The terrorist may have even collaborated with someone inside the government, especially the police force, because it's hard to explain such a blunder with naivete.

A Muslim-Hater vs. An Armenian-Hater

2011-07-25T10:49:00.015+03:00

Anders Behring Breivik, the Christian-supremacist terrorist in Norway, cannot get more than 21 years of prison sentence. It means that the accused could be imprisoned just 82 days per killing (A spooky coincidence: He had prepared the terror attacks in 82 days).

Breivik, justifies to partition Turkey between Greece and Armenia because of the Turkish atrocities against these Christian peoples in the past. While he offers such a punishment for modern Turks because of the so-called Armenian genocide, he comfortably supports the Bosnian Muslim genocide by the Serbs.

* * *

As Breivik trial started today, a Turkish nationalist who was convicted to kill a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist, was sentenced to over 22 years in prison. The court condemned Ogün Samast to life in prison, but reduced the sentence to 21-and-a-half years since he was still a minor at the time of the 2007 murder. His victim was defending the Armenian genocide thesis.

Sadly, Breivik and Samast may both be released on parole in 10 years.

I'd like to see them behind bars until the end of their lives; but there will still be an imbalance in justice even then. Maybe they should have been both sent to Texas, Breivik's favorite American state, for the punishment for their crimes. There, they execute poor people without good lawyers even when there is a lack of evidence, but here in Europe, we can't even imprison nationalist murderers for life.

Anyway, such a punishment will only be a consolation, especially for the relatives of the victims; but how can we root out the Islamist, Christian or any other kind of identity-terrorism? What can we do to dry up the swamp in our backyard, instead of hunting mosquitoes around?

A Portrait of a Murderer as a Politician

2011-07-24T19:52:00.009+03:00

Anders Behring Breivik, the Christian-supremacist terrorist in Norway, wrote that he had "the privilege of experiencing" Turkey, although it is clear that he hates Turks.

When you watch his pre-massacre video and read his 1,500-page book, you can easily see that Turks -the main Muslim threat for Europe in his view, are his greatest ideological enemy. He summarized the Turkish history from the Seljuks in 1071 until the current investigation on the Ergenekon.

Maybe, the tragedy of Norwegians should teach all Europe that Anders Behring Breivik is the product of too few multiculturalism, not too much of it.

This is why he -in the words of the Norwegian police- came out of nowhere in Norway, not -say- in Britain.

If we keep up with our current policies, Breivik, with his crusader rhetoric, will be coined as the martyr of a less underground, more openly violent extreme right, which may indeed be on the rise in the future. Breivik will get what he wants when he will have the opportunity for more propaganda during his trial. (Morever, according to the Norwegian laws, he'll be free around 53 years of age even if he got the maximum sentence. Remember Hitler and Mein Kampf!)

Social policies to stop this dangerous trend is the job of European governments and peoples. I can only suggest something about our of their common foreign policy items: An urgent approval of Turkey's EU membership -or an ultimate rejection- might be the part of the solution, not the problem. Like Breivik says, it's all or nothing. Let's do it before he is convicted!

Wilders As a Terrorist Idol, Atatürk and Mohammad As Their Anti-Christ

2011-07-23T19:38:00.017+03:00

Here is Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian who was arrested and charged for the coordinated terrorist attacks in his country.

Here is his political idol, the racist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whom he called as the leader of the only “true” party of conservatives.

Here is where the Wilders-style xenophobia can drive the world to when it has got the minimum conditions, such as economic difficulties and a troubled personality, same traits with the Al Qaida suicide bombers.

And ignorance... An integral part of the terrorist mind. You should be as ignorant as Breivik to think that conservatism may justify the massacre of kids or Bin Laden to think that Islam encourages violence.

And there is an interesting proof of Breivik's utter ignorance. In one of his online writings, he warns about the demographic decline of the indigineous European population and tells the following words: "A nightmare scenario as I see it is if multiculturalism creates an Atatürk in western Europe."

It seems that the bloody killer knows neither about multiculturalism nor Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. I wish he knew that not Wilders' nor Bin Laden's, but Atatürk's political ideology and the religious way of the true Islam were the ways forward, not only in the 7th century when Mohammad transformed a primitive local society into a progressive global one or in the 1920s when Atatürk saved his nation from the imperialist occupation of several great powers, but especially in our world where our very souls are already occupied and violated.

A Vague Explanation From the U.S. Department of State

2011-07-18T17:31:00.003+03:00

I had written a post to tell that I didn't understand what U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meant in Istanbul while she linked the war against the PKK terrorism with the withdrawal of the American forces in Iraq.

The U.S. Department of State didn't answer my e-mail, but an unnamed senior official presented a vague explanation about the subject during a background briefing in Athens yesterday. In my opinion, it's almost as vague as Clinton's statement, but here is that part:

QUESTION: On the PKK, was there any kind of specific steps that Turkey wanted the United States to take? I mean, after that last kind of doubt a few years ago, you had kind of stepped up intelligence through a series of asks. I’m just wondering. And she kind of made some comments yesterday about Iraq and (inaudible), and I’m just wondering if there’s any there in terms of –

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: No, there’s not a particular ask that we’re focused on. She did note – I mean, there’s a new context in that the United States either won’t have any or won’t have a similar number of troops in Iraq, where dealing with the PKK has been an issue. So the context is changing and our strategic presence is changing, and that raises the question for the two sides of how to continue to be successful in the fight against the PKK. But it was more, as I say, the fact that this just happened, it is – I mean, the Turks acknowledge that from their own point of view, as important as the Libya Contact Group was, Turkish public in the past few days has been focused on this because it’s such a big deal. And she just wanted to know that – she wanted them to know that we totally stand with them on this fight against the PKK.

Istanbul Delight: Best Eateries of the City

2011-07-17T19:16:00.003+03:00

The headline story of the Washington Post's Sunday extra is about a 'calorie-laden tour of Turkish delights' in Istanbul.

You should read the whole piece, but here is the shortlist of the recommended Istanbul eateries in a more suitable order:

* Ciya Sofrasi (for the whole Turkish cuisine)

* Bereket Restaurant (for kebabs)

* Siirt Seref Buryan (for buryan kebab)

* Kahraman Restaurant (for fish and especially turbot)

* Vefa Bozacisi (for boza)

* Tatlici Safa (for desserts)

* Altan Sekerleme (for confectionary)

* Mandabatmaz (for Turkish coffee)

What Did Clinton Mean?

2011-07-16T16:17:00.011+03:00

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at a coffee house event in Istanbul today.

The highlights of the Q&A session were the reiterated American support for the Turkish fight against PKK, as well as Clinton's critical comments about media freedoms in Turkey.

I'm curious about a certain, widely ignored remark of Clinton, though. While talking about the witdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Clinton uttered the following words:

"And those forces were, in partnership with the Turkish government, to make sure whatever possible to support the Turkish government’s efforts against the PKK (sic)."

Here is the CNN Turk interview (She's answering the aforementioned PKK question around the 46th minute).

So what did she actually mean?

Is the United States administration in talks with the Turkish government about the possibility to use the American ground forces against the PKK militants in northern Iraq? Was Clinton about to reveal it, but decided not to do so in the last second?

I've sent an email to the U.S. Department of State, asking for a clarification. I'll share it here if they answer.

Why Don't We Resign

2011-07-15T16:36:00.006+03:00

Thirteen Turkish soldiers were killed and seven wounded in an ambush by PKK.

I'm not going to waste time by condemning PKK terrorism which threatens my own life, too, as I, like many other people, have done it so many times before and it just didn't change anything.

Neither I will analyze the latest moves of the AKP government on the Kurdish issue nor will I talk about the links between PKK terrorists and DTP politicians.

Turkish Armed Forces announced that the soldiers were chasing a group of terrorists. The grenades which were used by the terrorists caused the forest around the soldiers to catch fire. The soldiers were killed by this fire.

Then, Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin summarized the latest terror attack with the following cold remarks today: "The cause of the fire is not important. The forest has just burned. A fire might be caused by a bomb, rocket, gas or whatever. In the end, it burned. An investigation on the cause would have no meaning."

Now this is the army and the government that we have. Simply, both suck in public relations, if not in administration in general. What kind of statements are these?

Following the latest explosion of a munition storage in Cyprus, the Defence Minister and the Army Chief resigned. And the Greek Cypriots, who proved that they are much more reflexive as humans, announced that they won't stop protesting until President Christofias will resign.

Shame on our ministers and army commanders. Shame on our culture that makes resignations impossible.

Back to the EU Track?

2011-07-12T15:21:00.007+03:00

What should be said about Turkey's foreign policy under the new AKP government?

In my Turkish-language column on Hürriyet's website, I've recently written about the possible relationship between seemingly unrelated events like the Arab Spring and the political sex scandals in Turkey. They are related, I suggested, because in today's world, everything is related, thanks to the almost-fully-globalized business and communication networks. In such a world, the flap of a butterfly's wings in the Gulf of Mexico can set off a tornado in the Middle East, just like a Twitter-triggered popular unrest in Iran can lead to higher gas prices in the United States.

When we have the globalized business and communication network on one hand and the economic failure of many eurozone countries on the other, we can easily presume that the rising posture of Turkey, thanks to its relative success in economy policies, will effect the EU as well. For instance, the decline of Greece may mean a significant reduction in Turkey's defence budget, canalizing those national funds to other sectors like R&D. In such conditions, Turkey's import-export ratio may be built in a better way, resulting with even a stronger posture.

I believe that when we analyze the Arab Spring, we shouldn't rely on the Turkey-as-a-role-model-pattern. Ankara is really being presented as a role model, especially by the international mass media, but the current relationship between Turkey and the Arab world is more of an interaction. As the Arab countries are being democratized towards the Turkish path, meanwhile, Turkey is sliding towards a more authoritarian political climate.

Democracy defends itself, I believe. Just like we are seeing in Britain, where the system suddenly started to turn against Rupert Murdoch, the monopolizing media mogul, only after he was on the verge of buying BskyB. Similarly, in Turkey, there may be a balancing invisible hand in politics, even inside the AKP government. I relate this presumption to their newly-declared political program.

AKP's program, which is still being debated in the national parliament, is interesting, because it emphasizes the importance of the accession process in a rather overdone tone. It underlines the target of being a full EU member. Sedat Ergin, a leading columnist of Hürriyet, wrote about the program in detail today. It seemed to me that he was also surprised that the EU matter was at the top of AKP's agenda.

There are reasons to be suspicious, though. The negotiation process is de facto frozen now as even Hungary, a pro-Turkish EU country, couldn't open one negotiation chapter in her presidency. The double-standards of the EU is another reason for Turkey to be fed up. So some may say that AKP knows that nothing will happen with the EU, that's why they feel comfortable to put it in their agenda in that exaggerated manner.

I guess that it's unfair. I feel that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is quite decided about the EU this time. He probably sees that it is the best time for Turkey to throttle for the full membership. He probably calculates that one of the pillars of the anti-Turkish lobby in the EU, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is about to leave. Turkey's recent openings for Brussels in the Cyprus issue can also be considered as a sincere effort to solve the problem before the Greek Cypriots took the EU presidency next summer.

Interestingly, Turkey's EU agenda is actually linked to the Syrian problem. It is clear now that Turkey is spearheading the Western inverventionism in Syria, as it is allegedly doing in Central Asia. If an Assad-free Syria can be created quickly, Ankara, with its even greater influence, can decisively concentrate on the EU. And if the conjuncture is suitable (Dominique Strauss-Kahn instead of Sarkozy as the French President?), then Turkey can miraculously be regarded on the track for a full membership again. The side-effects of such a development will surely be less authoritarianism in Turkey.

So this is why I see the world as fully interconnected. And even the political sex scandals in Turkey or New York, are affecting the international politics, whether we like it or not.

Politics is Either Plagiarism or Revolution

2011-07-07T20:08:00.004+03:00

Previously, it had been revealed that most parts of the book entitled "Business Administration," which was written by Prime Ministry Undersecretary Prof. Omer Dincer in 1995, were plagiarized.

Prof. Dincer had admitted his mistake and apologized.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced his cabinet. Omer Dincer is appointed as the Minister of Education.

Perfect choice for that position, isn't it?

Official: The Dutch Force Was Responsible In Srebrenica Genocide

2011-07-05T16:21:00.008+03:00

The Dutch state is responsible for the deaths of three Muslim men after the fall of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war, a Dutch appeals court ruled today, opening the door to compensation claims.

It's a landmark ruling, because it will set up a legal precedent which will make the families of thousands of Srebrenica victims be able to sue the state of the Netherlands for cowardly handing over those civilians to the Bosnian Serb army in the U.N. "safe area."

If you ask me, this is not enough. The Dutch commanders of the U.N. peacekeeping force should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, as they had virtually set up a modern-day Vichy government in Srebrenica, then. After all, collaboration with genociders is almost as despicable as genocide...

Then, only maybe then, the bloodiest stain on the history of the U.N. peacekeepers will be washed away. Because the power of justice should not be available only against incontestible villains like Al-Bashir or Gaddafi... International justice not only for Sudan, but also for the Netherlands... Because we don't need no state of exceptions anymore...

What Have the DSK Case, the Ergenekon and the Turkish Football Op Common?

2011-07-04T11:30:00.008+03:00

When commenting about the scandal that surrounds Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the New York Times criticized the "Punish first, figure out what happened later" state of American justice today.

"And the Turkish justice," I would add.

It is especially true for the never-ending Ergenekon case.

And now Turkey is being shaken by the huge match-fixing investigation, which kicked-off yesterday by a wave of arrests, including the president of Fenerbahçe, the latest champion of Turkey's premier football league.

Interestingly, the match-fixing investigation was initiated by the prosecutor who also conducted the Ergenekon case.

We'll see if the latest investigation will also "punish first, figure out what happened later" or become Turkey's much-needed clean-hands operation on football.

Two Muslims and a Jew

2011-07-03T19:08:00.005+03:00

There was an interesting story on Mail Online yesterday.

It was about a heroic woman who rescued a baby from a burning building after hearing his desperate mother's screams.

I've managed to contact the woman who turned out to be a Turk, as her name had obviously suggested. Our interview was published in Hürriyet today.

I'm sure that Nazar Melis had told the same things to Mail Online, but somehow their story didn't mention an interesting detail about the extraordinary rescue. According to this detail, when Nazar Melis entered the building in flames to save the Somalian Muslim boy, an orthodox Jew helped her. Nazar told me that his help was crucial, especially during the first aid procedure. She labels it as fate, predestination.

I don't believe in inter-religious dialogue on a political level, but I do love to witness it in daily life. Well done, guys!

No Comment

2011-07-01T16:56:00.001+03:00

The European Union didn't open even one chapter for a whole year in the negotiations with Turkey.

This is a record.

Meanwhile, Crotia finished the negotiation process by closing the last four chapters. It means that Crotia will be a full member of the EU on July 1, 2013.

Turkey had started the negotiations with the EU on October 2005, the same date with Croatia.

Military Doublespeak

2011-06-28T10:37:00.003+03:00

Doublespeak is the universal language of our time.

General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that President Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan was “aggressive.”

What a nice wording to showcase military Doublespeak.

A Timely Summary of Turkish Islamism

2011-06-27T20:45:00.008+03:00

Last week, I was in Rhodiapolis, an almost 3000-year-old Lycian city near Antalya, Turkey. Its ancient theater (above), which was restored following a long work, was the stage to a classical music concert after a millennium-long silence. In today's Hürriyet, I've reported about this historical activity and the latest work in Rhodiapolis.

Here, I would like to tell something about the conversation that I had with the mayor of Kumluca, the closest municipal administration to Rhodiapolis. Husamettin Cetinkaya, who gave enormous support to the restoration, told me something (it was on the record, but we couldn't publish his remarks as the physical space on our Culture page was limited). Cetinkaya, a member of the governing AKP, told me the following words:

"When I was a child, we were referring to the ruins of Rhodiapolis as 'gavuristanlik' (the land of the Giaour). The ancient city was forgotten for a long time. In the year 2000, a forest fire revealed it to us again. As the mayor, firstly I saw it as a possible source of tourism revenue, so I passionately started to lobby for a restoration project. Then, I become a part of the excavation, so I realized that history was more important than money. Now, above bare rationalism, I'm attached to Rhodiapolis with my heart, too."

So the mayor from an Islamist party mobilizes his local administration to rebuild pagan temples, just for sake of additional tourism revenues at first, and then, by really falling in love with Anatolian history...

It's an interesting summary of Turkish Islamism, which is a form of neo-liberalism with a neo-Islamist outlook.

Meanwhile, I've read one of the best analyses of aforementioned phenomenon. I've discovered the author very late, but it's better late than never. Even though I have several objections to his piece, I still strongly recommend you to read two articles by Cihan Tuğal, right after reading a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, which was about the increasing numbers of rural-urban migrants and the democratic leaders that they are creating. After all, these "urban outsiders" are the core of AKP's voter base.

First article by Tuğal describes the neo-liberal overtones of Islamism in Turkey by revealing its Americanized nature and by demonstrating that it started to pacify the masses as soon as it is the new hegemonic power. The article is four years old, but it is still relevant today as can be seen from the fact that its prophetic conclusion is being confirmed by the Arab Spring today.

The second article by Tuğal is more directly related to the aforesaid Los Angeles Times piece. It tells about "the greening of Istanbul." The last phrases of the article are interesting: "Millions of Istanbul’s squatters have put their faith in the AKP’s Islamically embellished paradise of speculation. It remains to be seen whether this formula will weather harsher economic times."

In my opinion, with this conclusion, the second article of Tuğal corrects a mistake in the first article. After all, AKP doesn't really represent the export-oriented Turkish companies, even though it appears so. It represents the debt-driven, speculative nature of neo-liberalism. And the real test about its political strength will be when Turkey faces the next economic crisis as soon as the flow of foreign investment stops, independently of another global economic crisis or a domestic political one.

Al Jazeera is the Arabic CNN

2011-06-25T23:12:00.004+03:00

"Don't be afraid to tell the truth," Mustafa Kemal Atatürk says.

These are the words that I believe in.

So I don't mind if I break more hearts in the international media, whether of the West or the East.

My conscience doesn't know about networking.

And this time it is Al Jazeera.

I don't know if you follow their Libya coverage recently.

If you did so, you've probably noticed that Al Jazeera is the Arabic CNN.

And that is a derogatory remark.

All the warmongering, all the blessings of weapon technologies, all the misleading stories, all the disinformation just remind me of CNN and the Iraq wars. It's all about legitimizing illegal military interventions. It's all about imperialism in a new form.

Considering the recent reports that Qatar, the sponsor of Al Jazeera, is arming the Libyan rebels, their biased coverage of Libya leader Gaddafi and the events surrounding him is now understandable.

As a journalist who try to remain free and independent against all odds, I am yelling desperately:

"Down with Gaddafi... and Al Jazeera!"