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February 28, 2009
Turkish Islam According To Adam Smith
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
We Turks hotly debate the role of religion in public life all the time. But our frame of reference hardly goes beyond a few cliches that have been planted in our minds by the official ideology, education system, and other national narratives. That's why it would be a good idea to raise our heads a bit and look at other sources which bring different perspectives to the same question.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:54 PM | Comments (4)
February 27, 2009
Speaking Kurdish In The Turkish Parliament
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
The leader of the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, Ahmet Türk, shocked the country the other day, by speaking Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament. At a session with his parliamentary group, he reminded that Feb. 21 is celebrated as "International Mother Tongue Day," and then uttered words in his own mother tongue.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:13 PM | Comments (3)
February 22, 2009
Welcome To Kurdistan (Not 'North Iraq')
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
The Abant Platform, which holds frequent conferences at which Turkish intellectuals convene to discuss timely issues, was in northern Iraq last week. I was among the nearly one hundred names that were supposed to fly from Istanbul to Arbil for this significant meeting, but a last minute change of plans destined me rather to Washington. Yet I have been carefully reading what Abant participants have been writing about their experience in Iraqi Kurdistan -- a country whose very name is a big bone of contention in Turkey.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:11 PM | Comments (3)
February 21, 2009
The Islamic Spider, The Conspiracy and Me
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
I really don't want to get personal in my columns, but my column neighbor Burak Bekdil sometimes gives me no choice. So, please pardon me for the he-said-I-said part of this article. The latter part, I hope, will give you some perspective of the deeper problem.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:16 PM | Comments (13)
February 14, 2009
Anti-Semitism in Turkey: Myths and Facts (II)
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
During the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, three different solutions were devised by statesmen and intellectuals in order to save the sinking boat: Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism.
The first one was also the earliest, which started with the Reform Edict of 1839. It was a reaction to the winds of modern nationalism that started to influence the Christian nations of the empire such as the Greeks, Serbs, or Bulgarians. "If we emphasize the equality and civil rights of all our citizens," the Ottoman elite thought, "then we can keep them from revolting against us."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 2:15 AM | Comments (7)
February 12, 2009
Anti-Semitism In Turkey: Myths and Facts (I)
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
My column neighbor Burak Bekdil was writing about anti-Semitism in Turkey yesterday. And he was presenting not just a stance against this wicked trend, but also a blame he carefully put on one specific camp in Turkey. He, as you would have expected if you read him regularly, was accusing the "Islamists." He wrote:
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:29 AM | Comments (2)
February 8, 2009
From Ban On Kurdish To Kurdish TV
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
In 1982, a very bizarre punishment was given to a Turkish politician Serafettin Elci by "Turkish justice." He was sentenced to serve four years and seven months in prison for a single sentence that he uttered. His crime was not to insult Turkishness, the Turkish military, or even Ataturk. His only crime was to say, "there are Kurds in Turkey and I am a Kurd."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 5:11 PM | Comments (2)
February 5, 2009
Is Tayyip Erdoğan The New Nasser?
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
Last Thursday night, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan suddenly became the focus of all the news channels in the country. The reason was that he had stormed the diplomatic scene at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos by accusing Israeli President Shimon Peres for "killing people," and reminding the biblical commandment, "Thou shall not kill."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 1:47 PM | Comments (10)
February 2, 2009
The Political Language of Turkey
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Western policy makers or analysts, and especially American ones, need to keep something in mind about Turkey which they often fail to see: The political language of this country is different from theirs. Here, emotions play a bigger role and political leaders hardly do the deliberation on "wording" that is a crucial matter in their own political culture.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 6:24 PM | Comments (5)
