I don’t think you need a seismic detector anywhere in Turkey these days to determine if Mustafa Kamal Ataturk is not rolling over in his mausoleum in Ankara. The man who dragged Turkey so hard that the fez fell off and who de-scripted the calligraphically beautiful Ottoman language has been superseded by a leader no less contested, President and former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan is a polarizing figure, imposing his will in much the same way that military-backed leaders have done in Turkey’s past. And the comparisons between him and the old line of sultans is in the air these days. Calling formandatory learning of the old Ottoman script, no matter how appealing to academic Ottomanists, is suggestive of more than historical nostagia. Building a huge palace of some 1,150 rooms (there were only 1,001 nights in the Arabian Nights epic) at a cost of around 490 million euros ($615 million) and then deciding that it should be called a kulleye, with all the religious connotations this conjures in Turkey, is eyebrow-raising to say the least.

Is Twitter giving in to Turkish censorship?
Al-Monitor
In an email interview with Al-Monitor, Altiparmak, who teaches at Ankara University, indicated he and his colleague from Istanbul’s Bilgi University were determined to follow up on their warning. “Twitter’s transparency report confirms the points we …

1,150 policemen stand guard at Turkey’s presidential palace

In Turkey, Even Snow Can Be Tainted by Politics

After a snowball breaks his window, a shopkeeper is accused of killing the offender, and some say a speech by the president may have planted the seeds of the killing.

Reflections on responses to the Falk-Davutoglu interview

 

Turkey’s democratic future is dependent on a government and political opposition that foster national unity and a pluralist political culture and values of power sharing.

 

Funeral of Necmettin Erbakan. Myrat/Wikcommons. Some rights reserved.I appreciate the invitation by openDemocracy to submit my reflections on theRichard Falk interview and the responses that followed. Let me begin by saying that I am not a specialist on Turkey. That said, I have been going to Turkey since 1971, lectured, participated in conferences by a diverse group of organizations, co-authored and co-edited books and articles, and most recently co-authored the book, Islam and Democracy after the Arab Spring, in which Turkey is substantially covered, in press with OUP.

 

‘AKP’s presidential system will lead to one-man rule’

The government’s proposal for a presidential system is effectively one-man rule without the checks and balances of the US system, prominent legal scholar Ergun Özbudun tells the Hürriyet Daily News, adding that the AKP is distorting the facts to suggest that presidential systems are the most successful models around the world

All women over 15 victims of violence in Turkey, survey shows

All women in Turkey have said they were exposed to sexual or physical violence after they turned 15 years old, according to a survey