This is an example of clicktivism, a term I only recently learned (again from my students). Clicktivism means feeling that you are politically active by forwarding something on Facebook or following a social media trend to express support or disapproval (like changing your picture to TC in Turkey– or as in the US recently when 2.7 million people changed their image to a red = to voice support for same sex marriage in a case being heard before the [U.S.!] Supreme Court).
Amnesty International is urging the Turkish government to use this crucial moment to act concretely to decriminalize dissent, at a time when a new constitution is being written where such issues are being debated and when promises have been made in this respect to the PKK in return for peace. A package of reforms called the [...]
In YaleGlobal, Mohammed Ayoob writes that the new deal for peace between Turkey’s government and PKK rebels to end more than thirty years of hostilities also has implications for the wider region, especially Iraq, Syria, and Iran. If Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can convince the various political factions in Turkey to go along with the [...]
Good news. I just learned that my book, Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks, will be translated into Turkish and published by the well-regarded Iletişim Press. There have been quite a few reviews, quite positive ones I’m gratified to report. Most recently, a review in Al Jazeera (in Arabic). I’m also giving a few talks, in [...]
There’s so much good news in a row that it’s giving me vertigo. First, the Turkish government and the PKK call for an end to their long, vicious war. Then Israel makes up with Turkey by apologizing for the Mavi Marmara incident. And now, oh the irony, the Turkish government has kindly offered the financially ruined [...]
The irony doesn’t escape me that the new constitution (a preliminary draft of which was leaked last week) appears to be being written primarily by a coalition of AKP and the Kurdish BDP (Peace and Democracy Party), with the internally divided CHP and the nationalist MHP on the margins. All four parties have a place [...]
Didem Aykel Collinsworth of the International Crisis Group reported on a recent Kurdish movement conference in Switzerland. What were the portends within the Kurdish activist community that recent talks between the Turkish government and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan would actually lead to peace after decades of violence? What was necessary for this to happen? Would [...]
In an unprecedented move after three decades of PKK insurgency and violent retaliation by the Turkish military that has killed more than 40,000 people, the Turkish government is talking to the PKK about peace. Official talks between the Turkish government and the PKK through its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan are proceeding despite what appear to be [...]
I deleted the most recent post because the dates were not current: Çelik resigned in September 2011.
The Turkish press is reporting that the suicide bomber who attacked the US embassy today has been officially identified as Ecevit Şanlı, 30, a member of the outlawed Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C, Devrimci Halk Kurtuluş Partisi-Cephesi). A Turkish security guard, Mustafa Akarsu, 36, was killed, as was the attacker, and a civilian, Didem Tuncay, 38, [...]