Kamil Pasha

Nicholas Dynan at Global Post has done a lovely photo essay on a transsexual/transgender brothel in Istanbul that gives a compassionate look at one slice of life there. Prostitution is legal in Turkey, and sex workers receive permits and must regularly renew certificates of health. Transexuals, though, have long been harassed by police. The article says that despite prostitution being legal, the government has ceased issuing new permits for sex workers and brothels, leaving most of the industry illegal and often dangerous. Click here for the article and photo essay.

One jarring note: I find it a bit disturbing that the full name of one of the prostitutes is visible on her identity card as she holds it up. Even if the woman gave her permission to have that photo published, it is ethically questionable to publish it without obscuring her name, since it will likely endanger her. (UPDATE: the photographer asked Global Post to pull that image.)

Tags: Women // Add Comment »

This old shoe leather scrap of an idea keeps coming up again and again: The problem of banning headscarves from campus can be solved if the students simply tied their scarves differently! Here’s my response to this when the idea was debated two years ago. As I wrote in an Op-Ed for Zaman: Meaning is in our heads, not on our heads. (click here)

It’s back! This time via the highly respected scholar Sencer Ayata who headed up a CHP committee to look into how the headscarf ban problem can be solved. Tie the scarf differently!

In all fairness to Professor Ayata — I know him as a very smart liberal — I suspect this is a result of a decision by committee that takes into account the Realpolitik of present-day Turkey, that a removal of the ban will not be countenanced by the courts or the military (witness the reactions when this has been tried over the past two years — in 2008, the Constitutional Court almost brought down the government). So what to do? Tie the scarf differently to reveal some hair, as long as it’s kosher (the committee intends to get an Islamic OK). In effect, that might open up the university to some women willing to make this compromise. After all, some pious women have been wearing string caps, wigs, and other head paraphernalia in creative attempts to get around the ban, although that too ended up being banned in some colleges. So perhaps it IS the only possible practical solution right now. I suppose I shouldn’t scoff if I can’t come up with a better (practicable) solution. Women have a right to an education.

(The excerpt below is from a Today’s Zaman column by Ihsan Dagi. Click here, in English) (more…)

Tags: Headscarf Debate // 6 Comments »

Two Turkish movies have received excellent reviews (click here): Fatih Akin’s “Soul Kitchen” and Reha Erdem’s “Times and Winds” (“Beş Vakit”). After these great reviews, I want to run out and to watch them. Here’s what Joe Morgenstern says about “Soul Kitchen”:

So you could call “Soul Kitchen” a romance with sensational music, or a hymn to friendship with romantic resonances. Whatever you want to call it, the thing is bursting with life.

Tags: Culture // 3 Comments »

Update: There seems to be some backtracking in Iran on what was actually said and what was actually meant. (click here)

Now THIS is interesting. Turkey’s new friend, Iran, has just recognized the Armenian genocide. What will the AKP government do? (It’s also in the Turkish papers, although I didn’t see mention of it in the Islam-leaning Zaman, at least in the part of the paper viewable for non-subscribers.) (click here for news article excerpted below; here’s a more explicit account of what was said.)

Iran’s Vice President Hamid Baghaei’s statement again testifies to the fact Iranian current political establishment headed by the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recognizes the Armenian Genocide committed under Ottoman Empire in 1915, the MP from the Prosperous Party of Armenia (PAP) Aram Safaryan told NEWS.am.

Safaryan stressed according to the orientalist Emma Bekijanyan’s research, Iran’s society has been repeatedly raising the issue on the Armenian Genocide within the recent 18 years. “This means the Iranian nation accepts the historic truth and the Iranian Vice-President’s recent statement is based on public opinion and numerous studies of the Iranian scientists,” Safaryan said…

Tags: Armenians, Foreign Relations // 2 Comments »

Mustafa Akyol has a new article in Foreign Affairs. (click here; excerpt below; the title of this post is a line from the article). I find it generally on target, but too optimistic, in part because it sweeps under the carpet the illiberal effects of the conservative Muslim cultural steamroller, the lack of tolerance on all sides, and the enormous internal tension in Turkey only peripherally related to the Kurdish issue (that is the fuse, not the dynamite). For those who hate Akyol no matter what he writes and are incensed that I would even mention his name on this blog, don’t bother reading this or posting invectives.

Turkey’s real dichotomy has always been between its westernizers and its modernizers. Whereas the westernizers, led by Atatürk, sought to remodel Turkey into a fully European nation, emphasizing cultural westernization and secularization, the modernizers called for political and economic reform but insisted on preserving the traditional culture and religion at the same time.

After winning control of the country after World War I, the westernizers imposed a top-down cultural revolution and used their tight grip on power to transform Turkey, in the words of their own witty dictum, “for the people, in spite of the people.” They ordered citizens to wear Western clothing, such as the brimmed hat, and listen to Western music, such as opera, and they disbanded almost all religious institutions. But only a small part of the population embraced these radical changes, convincing the revolutionaries that democracy had to be abandoned in favor of benevolent authoritarianism.

The modernizers, on the other hand, championed democracy and favored reforming Turkey through economic development, calling for free trade and private enterprise. Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who came to power in 1950 in the country’s first free elections, soon became their icon. He halted the cultural revolution, eased the repression of religion, and presided over an economic boom — affording him three electoral victories in a row.

But his efforts ran afoul of the westernizers, and he was executed in 1961 by a pro-Atatürk junta. In the 1980s, the modernizers’ torch was picked up by Prime Minister (and later President) Turgut Özal, and more recently, it was picked up by the AKP, which has been in power since 2002….

Tags: Foreign Relations // 25 Comments »

A former high-ranking official in the Turkish military has broken a long-held silence over the government’s suspected involvement in extrajudicial killings, a move applauded by human rights activists.

The killings are believed to be a result of the government’s fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a rebel group. The killings, which rights activists estimate to be anywhere between 3,000 to 5,000 cases for the period between 1989 and 1996, when most of the executions took place, have long been a taboo subject. Accusing security forces of perpetrating such atrocities has been regarded as treasonous and could result in provoking intimidation or worse.

A military officer is now standing trial in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir for his alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings, while a former admiral has confirmed that the killings in the 1990s were part of an official, if secret, “state policy”…

Tags: Deep state/Ergenekon // 1 Comment »

Tags: Culture // 4 Comments »

A follow-up to my post of June 1 about the rash of girls committing suicides in the eastern city of Ağrı (click here). It seems that now the mayor of Diyadin district in Ağrı, Celal Tanrıverdi, has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the suicides of six girls in the district alone over the past two months. The problem appears to be widespread (see the news excerpt below about the province of Batman).

The southeastern province of Batman also sees a high rate of suicides, which occur there twice as often as the national average, a situation that was probed by the Prime Ministry’s Institute of Family Research. According to the investigation, 75 percent of victims in those incidents were women, most of them second wives. The report also showed that psychological, economic and social problems lay behind the high number of suicides.

According to a report prepared by the police and the gendarmerie, 191 people in Batman committed or attempted suicide in the last six years.

The suicides are just one aspect of a much greater problem —  the mistreatment of women that leads them to either submit, run away, or kill themselves. (Look under the category of women on this blog and you’ll find a hair-raising amount of evidence.)

There was another article in today’s Turkish news about a fifteen-year-old girl, Ş.G., from the eastern city of Diyarbakır found half-buried by a roadside,  strangled to death with a shoelace, her mouth taped shut. On the tape, they found her elder brother’s fingerprints. She had run away from home after her parents wanted to force her into a marriage. She left with a young man she thought she loved, but it didn’t work out and she returned home. The subsequent abuse caused her to run away again. She was raped and ended up for a while in a shelter. She tried her luck in Istanbul, but in the end boarded a bus for home. She was recognized on the bus by someone she knew, who forced her to work in a beer hall. And then she was dead. (click here, in Turkish) What were her choices? Clearly “home” was toxic, although she kept seeking shelter there. Submission to the unwanted marriage. Suicide.

Tags: Rights, Women // 1 Comment »

A very good article on Turkey by Yüksel Taşkın in MERIP (Middle East Report). (Click here)

Here’s an excerpt:

…Turkey’s positions have inspired many journalists and policy analysts to postulate that Turkey is pursuing an “Islamic” agenda that entails a deliberate distancing from the West….Such analyses misinterpret the AKP government’s objective, which is not to break with Turkey’s traditional cooperation with the US and EU but to increase Turkey’s relative autonomy vis-à-vis those powers…. (more…)

Tags: Foreign Relations, Kurds, Nationalism, Politics, Religion, State of the Nation // 2 Comments »

Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky spent part of his time in exile living in this seaside mansion on Büyükada, one of the islands just off the coast of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara. Price: 5 million Euros. Problem: Only the walls remain. After a fire in the 1930s, it was never fully restored. The city and the islands would like to turn it into a museum, but don’t have the money. (click here)

Tags: Culture, Foreign Relations // 2 Comments »