Unless appropriate measures are taken and an exit is found quickly, Turkey is going to be facing developments that will be at least as formidable to handle as its Kurdish issue. The almost instantaneous spillover of incidents at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University to Antakya [historical city of Antioch] near the Syrian border, the death of 23-year-old Ahmet Arikan on [...] → Read the full article…
Watch Professor Judith Butler’s lecture, “Freedom of Assembly, or ‘Who are the People?’” held on September 15, 2013 in Istanbul at Boğaziçi University. Judith Butler’s lecture was a collaboration of Columbia Global Centers | Turkey, the 13th Istanbul Biennial and Boğaziçi University. About the Talk The freedom of assembly is a basic right, but how is it to be understood? [...] → Read the full article…
The demonstrations that broke out across Turkey earlier this year after the police clampdown on an environmentalist protest at Istanbul’s Gezi Park came as a major sociopolitical quake for the country. The first tsunami after the big tremor is beginning to rise as street clashes spread again across Turkey over the Sept. 10 death of a 22-year-old protester in Hatay province. A [...] → Read the full article…
The promotional video the Turkish government showed the I.O.C. for Istanbul’s Olympic bid depicted cappuccino-drinking young executives, out jogging, flirting and having fun – exactly those Turks who had rallied to save Gezi Park and were pleased to see Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Olympics pitch turned down. The government seems unable to deal with dissent from this freer-thinking urban professional class other [...] → Read the full article…
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University. Recently, Begum Adalet, Defne Over, Onur Ozgode and Semih Salihoglu interviewed Professor Benhabib about Gezi Park protests, their significance within the wider pattern of cosmopolitan, contentious politics emerging alongside neoliberal global capitalism and their impact on the future of Turkish politics. Gezi Park protests, June 15, 2013 A recent [...] → Read the full article…
I was born and raised in Ankara. But when I think of Ankara the first thing that comes to my mind is not Kuğulu Park, nor Bestekar Street or Kızılay and Atakule… It is our garden with the ivy covered fences. “To write is easy, you sit before the typewriter and bleed,” says Ernest Hemingway to another writer, Martha Gellhorne, [...] → Read the full article…
This year’s protests have less to do with ideology and specific grievances than a new architecture of protest…from-the-networks-to-the-streets flow is one of the most notable patterns of these revolts. These types of protests transcend the traditional format of demonstrations – and build, in the words of Spanish thinker Javier Toret, “a mutant network system with moving boundaries, hybrid, cyborg, a [...] → Read the full article…
By Semih Idiz With Ankara acting as one of the principal cheerleaders for a military strike against Syria, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing Turkey’s participation in any military coalition, increasingly concerned Turks, unaware of what exactly the Turkish contribution will be, are bracing themselves for all possible consequences from a US-led operation against the Syrian regime. Damascus’ chilling [...] → Read the full article…
The response of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to this summer’s protest movement in Turkey made clear his worsening authoritarianism. Yet his AKP party was founded on inclusivity and pragmatic compromise. As Turks struggled to grasp the impact of this summer’s protests in Istanbul and other cities across the country, Yeşim Arat, professor of political science at Bogazici University, pointed [...] → Read the full article…
Erdogan’s Islamist government accused of exploiting religious divisions in Antakya, long renowned for its ethnic diversity By Constanze Letsche – ANTAKYA Nearly a quarter of the 2 million people who have fled the crisis in Syria – some 460,000 – have made their way into Turkey, the UN high commission for refugees announcedon Tuesday. While many find themselves at the [...] → Read the full article…