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September 30, 2008
A Mosque Reform On The Way?
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Turkey's official religious institution, the Directorate of Religious Affairs, took a bold step two years ago by launching a project cleansing the Islamic tradition from misogyny. What the institution did was to employ a team of religious scholars to prepare a new collection of hadiths (the deeds and sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad), and remove the degrading remarks against women, which represent not the original message of Islam but the male-dominated culture of the past. With that project, the Directorate, which is called Diyanet İşleri Başkanlğı" or simply Diyanet in Turkish, had shown that it was not just open-minded but also brave.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 1:55 PM | Comments (25)
September 25, 2008
Turkey Is Getting More Secular, Not Religious
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Mainstream Turkish media loves to be alarmist about the creeping Islamization of Turkey. Especially since the conservative AKP (Justice and Development Party) came to power in 2002, fear mongering about the shariah imposers has become the main theme of the secularist press. Some fear that we will soon become another Iran. Others worry that we will turn into another Malaysia (which doesn't sound too bad, actually). Even the non-delusional secularists, which make up a tiny minority, are deeply concerned about the rise of Islam.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:52 AM | Comments (29)
September 20, 2008
Let's Get Over With This Crusade-Phobia
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
The most tragic-comic news story of this week came from the central Anatolian town of Kayseri. A film crew was shooting a documentary about the medieval past of the town, and they decided to use the city's ancient castle as a stage. But when they put a Crusader's banner, a white plate with a red cross, on the walls, all hell broke loose. Dozens of Kayserians gathered under the castle to protest against the irritating banner. This is Turkey, one man yelled angrily, and we want only the Turkish flag.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 2:47 PM | Comments (1)
September 18, 2008
The Obstacles to Islamo-Liberalism
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
BANGKOK – Instead of this, I was actually planning to write a column titled “One Night in Bangkok,” with some inspiration from that awesome song from the '80s. There is indeed a lot to speculate on in this mind-boggling city – from its infamous massage parlors, to exotic Buddhist temples, to super-size malls.
But, well, Turkey never lets me go away. Nor does my witty and articulate column neighbor Burak Bekdil. Yesterday, in these pages, he came up with a proposal/ultimatum to me, rejecting the term “Islamo-liberalism,” which I had used while referring to the AKP, and suggesting that we together test its existence. He gave me “one week” to respond.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:12 AM | Comments (23)
September 13, 2008
The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Globalization
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
BRUSSELS -Turkey's Kemalo-nationalists, who think that globalization is a heinous conspiracy against the Turkish nation-state, would be absolutely horrified if they were here these days: The capital of Europe is hosting a global event which not only asserts the inevitable progress of globalization, but also celebrates the rise of "inter-dependence." For those Turks who are obsessed with their country's "full independence" and "untouched sovereignty," this, I am sure, will sound like the voice of evil. Yet it is simply the echo of reality.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 4:50 PM | Comments (1)
September 11, 2008
AKP, Corruption and Exploitation of Religion
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Since last weekend Turkey is in the middle of a nasty war of words. It started on Saturday when Prime Minister Erdoğan, with an angry tone, accused Aydın Doğan, the owner of many media outlets in this country including the one you are reading now, for using his newspapers for libel. In return, Mr. Doğan said that there was no libel, and his papers such as Hürriyet, Milliyet or Vatan, were merely reporting the indictment of a court case in Germany. The case is against the conservative Turkish charity called “Deniz Feneri” (Light House), who allegedly collected money from Turkish workers for humanitarian causes, but used some of it funds some companies. And these companies, the story goes, are “close to Prime Minister Erdoğan. Erdoğan, in return, says that the Doğan Media Group is reporting these allegations unfairly because it is biased against his government.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 1:54 PM | Comments (8)
September 7, 2008
‘İftar’ to The Left, Beer to The Right
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
If you want to get a glimpse of Turkey’s diversity by spending just an hour on the streets of Istanbul, do what I did the other day. Take a public boat (“vapur”) ride to Kadıköy, and when you get off, walk straight ahead to enter the “çarşı,” or marketplace. You will come across dozens of narrow streets that are full of all sorts of little shops and restaurants and which are toured by people from all walks of life. Young girls in miniskirts, maxi-skirts or headscarves are strolling nearby males that vary from thick-moustache-and-big-belly tough guys to backpacker expats. And while believers at iftar tables anxiously wait for the sunset in order to utter “In the name of God” and start to eat, others sip huge glasses of beer and roll dice.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 1:43 PM | Comments (10)
Yet Another Threat to The Turkish Republic: Postmodernism
[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.”
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 1:36 PM | Comments (8)
September 4, 2008
Usual Suspects Oppose Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
I have been on vacation for a while and when I returned I found Turkey as busy as ever. I also noticed something interesting about the Turkish political scenery: It has managed to create an odd blend of a mind-boggling dynamism and a never-changing status quo. When you stop reading Turkish papers for two weeks, and then start looking at them again, you come across totally new topics and debates. But the positions taken on these issues by the political actors hardly change. You can almost always see the same people taking similar positions on a multitude of ever-shifting political issues.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:51 AM | Comments (1)
