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December 29, 2007
Reflections On The Devolution In France
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Chou En-Lai, the late prime minister of communist China, was once asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He declined to comment, and explained, “It's too early to tell.”
That was in the early 1960s. Perhaps today it is a little bit less early to comment on whether the French Revolution really was a good idea. That seminal event – which inspired not just the French but also many other revolutionaries in many countries all around the world, including Turkey – has borne some notable fruits by which we might judge their political roots.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:39 AM | Comments (9)
December 27, 2007
Kemalist Science and Its Perpetual Motion Machine
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Cautionary note: The country, events and characters in this piece are all real. I am not kidding at all.
Is it possible to build a machine that will work forever without having any energy input? Many mechanics were fascinated by that idea during the Middle Ages, well into the 19th century. But at last, thanks to the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics, the zeal for such a "perpetual motion machine" died out. The scientific community decided that it was impossible to build such a marvelous device — at least in the universe we live in.
But wait a minute... Perhaps the scientists got it wrong. Maybe they did not employ the correct principles that would allow for the creation of a perpetual motion machine. They, particularly, did not take into account the most important guiding light that the Turkish nation has ever seen.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:03 AM | Comments (9)
December 26, 2007
The (Dis)united Colors of Northern Iraq
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
If you are driving in or around Kirkuk, you have to watch around for American troops. If you see them coming in their giant armored hummers, you have to stop your car and wait silently until they pass. This is exactly what Yusuf Ziyauddin, 47, a Turkmen who works as an engineer in Kirkuk's oil industry, did two weeks ago when a convoy of Uncle Sam's humvees showed up on the other side of Kirkuk's main highway. After waiting for the end of their parade, he expressed his personal disillusion with the American dream. “I used to love Hollywood movies before 2003,” he said, “now I can't stand them.”
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2007
The Kurds' Postponed Rendezvous With History
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
The most well kept spot in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil is probably “Freedom Park,” which looks like a green oasis amid the otherwise dusty and rusty streets.
Freedom Park is home to a sizeable pool, a play garden, and, most important of all, the “Freedom Monument” which praises the memory of “98 patriots who gave their lives for the freedom of Kurdistan.” These “martyrs” were members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani respectively. They all died on Feb. 1, 2004, when two suicide bombers joined the religious feast celebrations in the parties' headquarters, and, as their definition implies, blew themselves up together with dozens of others around.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:29 AM | Comments (8)
December 20, 2007
The Secularization of an Islamic Feast
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
It is often said that we owe our weekends to the Israelites. Before they started to refrain from work on the Sabbath some 3500 years ago, human societies did not have the tradition of a weekly resting day. Then came the 10 Commandments of Moses. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God,” it decreed. “You shall not do any work.”
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:06 AM | Comments (2)
Why Turks Love Conspiracy Theories (II)
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Are you on Facebook? I am. It is not just a good social networking Web site used to catch up with friends and classmates, but it is also a good source to feed my personal and amateurish "paranoia watch" project. The groups created on Facebook by its Turkish users give a sense of the psychology among some of them who are impressively Internet-savvy yet desperately out of touch with reality.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:48 AM | Comments (8)
December 15, 2007
Why Turks Love Conspiracy Theories (I)
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Anybody who spends time in Turkey will notice that conspiracy theories are amazingly popular here. Many Turks believe that there are so many evil powers in the world, and in our own society that perpetually play tricks in order to weaken our country. Mapping out these imagined plots is a sort of national pastime.
Since a belief in conspiracies is deeply embedded in culture, politicians use them very often. Most political leaders, or pundits, blame foreign powers or internal enemies for our problems. Even whey they are caught by paparazzis during inappropriate meetings with their secretaries, they confidently accuse their rivals to have designed that conspiracy. It is always someone else who must be guilty.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 12:16 PM | Comments (3)
December 13, 2007
Eastern Kemalists, Too, Do Not Understand Turkey
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
In last weekend's edition of the Turkish Daily News, fellow columnist Orhan Kemal Cengiz had a brilliant piece titled “Western Kemalists do not understand Turkey.” His main point was that “Western Kemalists,” who are “huge fans of Atatürk and the ‘revolution' he and his friends brought about in our country” fail to get Turkey right. They, for example, unquestioningly buy into the creation myth of Republican Turkey — that the pre-Republican (i.e., Ottoman) period was an age of “darkness.” By showing several examples, Mr. Cengiz argued otherwise. “After 80 years of the establishment of the Republic,” he wrote, “it is really difficult to say that, in terms of mentality, we are more advanced than the Ottomans.”
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:13 AM | Comments (1)
December 8, 2007
Muslims Love Their Children, Too
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Music has not saved the world, as some pot smoking flower-powerists used to believe it would in the 1960s. Yet musicians have occasionally uttered words of wisdom that might have helped us calm our hypes. Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known by his stage name Sting, once gave one such message of restraint. In one of his greatest songs, “The Russians,” released very timely in 1985, Sting sang the following:
“In Europe and America,
There is a growing feeling of hysteria,
Conditioned to respond to all the threats,
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets.
Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you,
[But] I don't subscribe to this point of view,
It would be such an ignorant thing to do,
If the Russians love their children, too.”
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 12:32 PM | Comments (11)
December 6, 2007
Dawkins' 'Delusion' Should Be Free
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist evangelist. In his numerous books, the Oxford zoologist argues that modern science, and in particular the Darwinian theory of evolution, has disproved God. He is a gifted writer, and his recent volume, The God Delusion, has become a global bestseller. Some call him “the Harry Potter of non-fiction.”
More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:05 AM | Comments (6)
December 2, 2007
Secular Apartheid at Work
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
"Injustice anywhere," said Martin Luther King, "is a threat to justice everywhere." Therefore the world should learn and care about the story of Tevhide Kütük, the 17-year-old Turkish schoolgirl who just became the latest victim of Turkey's self-styled apartheid.
It all started several months ago in Kozan, a municipality in the southern city of Adana. The young and bright Tevhide, a student of the state-sponsored quasi-religious "Imam-Hatip" schools, heard about the essay contest that the Education Ministry launched to celebrate the annual Teacher's Day. She wrote a fine piece on the virtues of teaching, and submitted it to the organizing committee. Soon the jury decided that she was the best writer among all the other students in her hometown, and thus she deserved to win the award, which was a very modest present by all standards, but a very inspiring reward for a modest teenager.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:17 PM | Comments (10)
