Category Archives: Texts

Ottawa Gezi Platform: illustrated message of solidarity with ODTU Resistance

Firuz - ODTU

We stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in Oslo, Berlin, New York, London, Boston, Goteborg, Metz, Paris, Amsterdam, Dresden, and Frankfurt to offer this symbolic act of tree planting to ODTU faculty and students in Ankara. We stand by OTDU’s right to follow through all political and legal means of dissent and appeal as outlined by the decision of [...] → Read the full article…

ODTÜ Statement from the Student Collectives

ODTU

The Student Collectives published a statement about the insidious assault against the ODTÜ (Middle East Technical University) on the last day of the religious festival, after midnight: This assault is not only against the trees in the ODTÜ campus but also against the University itself! We are going to resist all over Turkey! The aggressors who assaulted the ODTÜ by [...] → Read the full article…

Public Seminar: Michael Hardt on Continuity and Leadership – An Interview After the Talk Turkey Conference

Michael Hardt at the Occupy Solidarity and Global Consequences panel  and here in an interview after the conference, argues that since 2011— different from previous “nomadic” global movements—these new protests have been rooted in territory, demand a new definition of publicity and commons beyond the false “public/private” separation. Furthermore, with their “multitude” form, these occupations and encampments have provided a [...] → Read the full article…

Jadaliyya: Gezi Resistance, Police Violence, and Turkey’s Accession to the European Union — Elif Babül

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Various governmental agencies that continue to plan, execute, and maintain impunity for violence have been receiving training on “good governance” from their peers in EU countries since at least 2004. Given that history, is it not time to look more deeply into the structure of “advanced liberal democracies” and their national security doctrines that lie at the heart of the [...] → Read the full article…

Amnesty International Report: Gezi Park Protests – Brutal Denial of the Right to Peaceful Assembly in Turkey

In a major report issued today, Amnesty International has given compelling and comprehensive documentation of Gezi events, providing detailed evidence of Turkish authorities suppression of freedom of assembly and expression. At least eight thousand injured, at least five confirmed deaths (with strong evidence linking at least three of these deaths to police abuse), many thousands detained. As this powerful video [...] → Read the full article…

The Guardian: Erdoğan’s split personality, the reformer v the tyrant – Ian Traynor

Recep Tayyip Erdogan'

The Turkish prime minister revealed the iron fist in his velvet glove this summer, but of which is his true character built? All summer long, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been in a very bad mood. The public squares and parks of Istanbul and several other Turkish cities were taken over by protesters he angrily dismissed as “riff-raff”, turning the full [...] → Read the full article…

The Independent: How Turkey blew its chance to lead this troubled region

p36cockburnAFPGETTY

By Patrick Cockburn World View: The country could have enhanced its influence and saved a lot of lives. It did the exact opposite Whatever happened to the idea that Turkey was the coming power in the Middle East, with its surging economy and stable democracy under a mildly Islamic government which might be the model for Arab states as they [...] → Read the full article…

Al-Monitor: Is Syria War Additional Spark To Alevi Protests in Turkey? – Cengiz Çandar

Anti-government Alevi protesters shout slogans during a demonstration in Istanbul

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…

Judith Butler’s Istanbul Lecture: “Freedom of Assembly, or Who are ‘the People’?”

Butler

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…

Al Monitor: Are Protests on the Rise Again in Turkey? – Orhan Kemal Cengiz

TURKEY-POLITICS-UNREST

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…