erkan
Erdal Eren, a high school kid, was one of the executeds…
Sept. 12: Military coup, violence, torture, executions and lost generations.
Yesterday was the 28th anniversary of a bloody military coup that took place on Sept. 12, 1980, the effects and vestiges of which still cast a dark cloud over Turkish politics.
Dark clouds stretch across the Houston skyline as Hurricane Ike approaches Houston, Texas September 12, 2008. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) It has been 3 years, I haven’t been to Houston but still feels like another home. Feels very familiar and so I am watching the live news in CNN..
Written by Amine on September 12, 2008 – 6:13 am –
As you may have been following through the DigiActive Twitter Feed, Moroccan blogger Mohammed Erraji was arrested last Friday, September 5th following the publication on the online news site Hespress.com of an article entitled “The King Encourages His Subject’s Dependency” (English) He was sentenced 72 hours later, in an expedited trial without assitance from a lawyer, to two years in jail and a fine of 5000MAD for “failure to uphold the respect due to the king”.
In a movement of solidarity reminiscent of the one which surrounded the campaign to help free Facebook prisonner Fouad Mourtada earlier this year, the Moroccan blogosphere was quick to mobilize and condemn the arrest. Various international organizations such as Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and IFEX also issued statements calling for his immediate release. On Thursday September 11th, citing procedural misteps, a court in the southern city of Agadir granted him bail and he has been “provisionally released” pending his appeal trial next Tuesday.
Faster than you can say “Larry Summers,” James Otteson was gone from Yeshiva University.
The former head of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, the intuition’s undergraduate college of liberal arts and sciences for men, resigned from his leadership position near the end of the spring semester after administrators at the university uncovered remarks viewed as sexist on his pseudonymous blog, Proportional Belief. One particularly controversial remark — which he revised — refered to “high-functioning women.” Now, following months of rumor concerning the nature of his resignation, Otteson has taken a year-long visiting professorship at Georgetown University, though he maintains a contract for a tenured full professorship with Yeshiva.
In a recent article in Insider Higher Education, " ‘Two Cultures’ Tension in Social Science" it was reported that
Key philanthropic and government programs offering grants for Ph.D. students appear to be excluding proposals for graduate students in sociology and political science, while favoring proposals from those in history, anthropology and a range of relatively small disciplines, such as art history and ethnomusicology, according to data released Friday. The analysis was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association and focused on programs to support field research or international research.
It is ironic. We know that Political Science is one of the disciplines that gets funded much. But they complain to get the last fragments of funding. In the political economy of academia, humanities and theoretical social sciences had lost their ground. They should be the one to complain. Besides,political science and sociology have become so quantitative that there is probably some need for qualitative assessments…
Professor Ayşe Soysal, a former rector of Boğaziçi University, said “academic freedom” is a distant idea for many Turkish universities and that this has left many researchers feeling restricted. “The main problem is that most of the universities in Turkey are still autocratic.
PM Erdoğan promised to open up new files by this weekend. As the deadline gets closer, no side seems to be backing off. Today Hürriyet’s chief editor, Ertuğrul Özkök replied back/threatened angrily in NTV channel. Once again I have to underline: This is not a case of freedom of speech. Only this media mogul’s own papers (and plus the staunchly Kemalist, Cumhuriyet) support their bosses at the moment…
What is Lighthouse e.V? Lighthouse e.V. was a Germany-based charity foundation that operated between March, 2001 and April, 2007. Its director Mehmet Gürhan, his successor Mehmet Taşkan and
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Did you know that the Turkish military sees postmodernism as a “threat” that should be fought against? We all learned that about a week ago when the new Commander of Land Forces, Gen. Işık Koşaner, made a speech which summarized all the enemies that the Turkish Armed Forces despise. These included the usual groups: “Separatists,” religious orders, and “unpatriotic” circles. But the latter included a new cadre of treacherous citizens: “the post-modernists.” The high-brow general openly stated: “The propaganda network that consists of a postmodern clique of some media, academics, finance circles and NGOs are working in order to weaken and disintegrate national unity and national values.” He also added that these “postmodern” traitors are “manipulated by global powers.”
Turkey’s main opposition parties were reluctant to read a key document detailing the country’s National Program, prepared by the government to present to the European Union. The program……
"Poll finds Europeans favor Obama over McCain in US
WASHINGTON: Despite some optimism in 12 European countries that Democrat Barack Obama could improve relations with Europe if elected president, most Europeans polled in a survey released Wednesday do not want closer ties with the United States.
Following Julian, where this blog stands: (!) hmmm, this was at a higher level before, as far as I remember.
Better luck next time, Ukraine.
One of these days the EU powers that be are going to realise that when you’ve got countries torn between a European and non-European identity, to keep on telling them “sorry, you’re not European enough yet” is just going to drive them into the other camp.
How much longer are the likes of Ukraine and Turkey going to put up with these repeated, very public rejections before heading off to the waiting embrace of Moscow or non-secular Islamism?
Growing migration is putting strains on rich and poor economies alike, according to the OECD.
Latest one: “national dads” Fathers of players act in the ad.
update: this time it was harder. spent all my afternoon. but don’t worry. i am free until December, until the next postponement… I will be on my way to the military office in Bahçelievler to postpone the mandatory duty for another 4 months. It is always stressful to do that. Turkish army does excuse us … Read more
When we set off for Yerevan on a scheduled midnight Armavia flight this Thursday, we saw something we had not seen since long ago on a flight between İstanbul and Yerevan. Instead of men and women carrying several bags, probably goods to be sold in Armenia, as is customary on these biweekly scheduled fights, there were a number of journalists from the Turkish press.
Social Democrats shake things up
COALITION governments often make for interesting bedfellows. The union between Germany’s Christan Democrats, the party of Angela Merkel, and the Social Democrats (SPD) should be more entertaining to watch after a weekend shake-up of the latter in which the current foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was chosen as the SPD’s candidate to face Mrs Merkel in national elections next year.
Next Wednesday, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland will switch on the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer particle accelerator that will create physical conditions that haven’t existed in the universe since the big bang. It all sounds totally awesome, unless you’re one of the very few people who think that the LHC will create a black hole that will expand to consume the planet. In World probably will not end next Wednesday
Accompanied by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Commission President José Manuel Barroso, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in Moscow today (8 September) before heading to Tbilisi this evening to discuss the implementation of the peace plan he brokered at the outbreak of the Russia-Georgia conflict a month ago.
I thought after yesterday’s speech Mr. Erdoğan would not talk back immediately, and i spent the day out without recognizing today’s speech until the evening. Well, Mr. Erdoğan gives "1 week" to correct the false news disseminated by Doğan group dailies. Mr. Doğan replied back in Kanal D to declare that his media will not be an obedient media in sum. I found Mr. Doğan a little bit scared. But only a little bit. He has a giant media empire, his journalists occupy many Press institutions, his daughter is the head of powerful businessman association, TUSIAD. Although he said last night "all state institutions belong to AKP, they can finish us easily, we know that things do not work like that. A leftist TV channel, Hayat TV was closed nearly all summer and no body could help that but DMG is not a small marginal media group and dynamics of politics is much more complicated. Never politically correct Mr. Erdoğan waited for more than 2 years to attack back, and only after the Constitutional Court case, he felt more secure to start the battle.
Mr. Erdoğan claimed that Mr. Doğan visited him and requested some privileges for the Hilton Hotel site located in near the super valuable Taksim square. (In tonight’s interview at Kanal D, Aydın Doğan said "of course, we always have requests from the government, we do lots of business and we have needs to discuss] When he was rejected, DMG dailies began to attack. DMG is known to request some sort of airwave rights for CNN Turk. That is also refused. After tens of TV channels, anti-trust laws do not allow him for more airwave but Mr. Doğan wants more basically. Anyway, we will see new files to be opened in the next few days. In the mean time, in today’s papers Abdullah Gül’s visit to Armeania and the "battle" news competed in headlines. DMG’s flagship Hürriyet replied back. Milliyet also. [circulation report of dailies are given in the end]
DMG’s newly acquired furiously anti-AKP Vatan columnists charged their weapons like the ones above: