In a recent interview (click here), journalist and author Taha Akyol made the important point that the trial of the 1980 coup generals now occurring obscures the overall “authoritarian and conflict-based nature” of Turkey’s political system, both in the time before the coup and now and in so doing absolves those whose violence created the [...]
The landmark trial over the 1980 coup opened yesterday in the absence of the two ailing defendants, coup leader Kenan Evren and then air force commander Tahsin Şahinkaya, as some intervening lawyers demanded that the pair be brought to court in a cage… Evren, 94, Chief of General Staff during the coup and President until 1989 [...]
Turkey might have a young population, but the country’s youth are largely insular and ignorant, posing problems if the nation wants to run a globally competitive, knowledge-based economy, leading sociologist Nilüfer Narlı says. Internet penetration is low, while many young people don’t know a second language, she says. (click here for more)
Hugh Pope, taking the long view of the AKP’s aims, successes and failures in the Cairo Review (click here). Excerpt, a summing up: …Turkey and the AKP are riding high in international opinion. The energetic reforms of the AKP’s’s first years in office have, after a time lag, succeeded in changing the minds of Westerners [...]
How do you prove to the Turkish military that you’re gay? Excerpt from the BBC article (click here): ”They asked me when I first had anal intercourse, oral sex, what sort of toys I played with as a child.” Ahmet, a young man in his 20s, told officials he was gay at the first opportunity [...]
This article by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker about Erdoğan and the Deep State has been causing a lot of chin-wagging, with people e-mailing me and asking whether it was true. True enough, I say, although we can’t be certain of the details. You can read it for yourself here.
An article in the pro-Islamic Today’s Zaman criticized the AKP government’s recent move in parliament to grant MIT (Turkey’s CIA) officials immunity from prosecution unless approved by the prime minister. (See my posts on this below.) The newspaper then examines who else is immune from prosecution. It seems a whole lot of people are! (click [...]
The MIT (Turkey’s CIA) Istanbul regional chairman has been removed from office and replaced. This is a post in line for moving up to MIT Deputy Undersecretary. The MIT Undersecretary, deputy undersecretary, and former undersecretary were all called to give statements as subjects of an investigation into support for PKK-related terrorist groups (see my previous [...]
The orgy of arrests continues with over a hundred new people hauled in across the country, accused of being active in the Kurdish Communities Union, which lawmakers believe is the civil/urban wing of the armed Kurdish separatist group PKK, and of giving armed or logistical support to the PKK. Rounded up this time were predominantly [...]
The rector of Kütahya Dumlupınar University has removed the statues of a lion and eagle that graced the university entrance because people kept complaining that it reminded them of the Armenian coat of arms. The sculptor, Atanas Karaçoban, who teaches at Gazi University, said he was shocked and pointed out the irony that on the [...]