It’s exactly a month ago today that youtube.com was again closed in Turkey. Previous closures usually didn’t last so long, and this time it’s even a ‘double closure’: when you try to open the site, you now get two notifications of court orders banning youtube. On the other hand, all the wordpressblogs are …
Busy times for weekly comic magazine Leman. In court, that is. Last week finally an old case against them came to an end. The High Court did not convict Leman, for the same reason as a lower court last year rejected Erdogan’s complaint regarding a cover on which Erdogan was shown as a tick: the cartoon …
A dead end street called Republic
It’s hilarious sometimes what strict secularists and pious Muslims can fight over. The first group is faithfully represented by daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, which excels in finding proof of how religious Muslims are slowly turning Turkey into a non-secular state. As its most recent evidence it reports how, in a neighbourhood where some religious people were in charge, …
No, Joost Lagendijk, Dutch Europarliamentarian and chairman of the EU Turkey Commission, did not call opposition party CHP ‘a disaster’, nor did he say that ‘European social-democrats are ashamed of the CHP’, a party that has its roots in social democracy. That’s how Turkish media quote him, incorrectly. But his criticism of the CHP was nevertheless harsh. The CHP pays …
I was in the Netherlands for a few days. One of the reasons: I needed a special sticker in my passport, which could only be obtained from the Turkish consolate in Rotterdam. Well, no point in fighting bureaucracy, so I took a plane and went. In my bag a pile of letters from media I work for and a letter …
At their protest they carry a portrait of Safiye Ayla. She passed away ten years ago, ninety years old, but in her young years she was Atatürks favorite singer. She became successful also because of her performances on TRT, the Turkish state broadcaster. The portrait says everything about the unrest that has built up at TRT and …
I surprised myself by getting very, very happy yesterday night around seven, when a news site announced:” Izmir kazandi!” (Izmir has won!). Izmir, so the site said, had been elected to organize EXPO 2015, beating Milan. Somehow, I felt so happy for Turkey. Especially on this day, when in the afternoon such bad news emerged: the Constitutional Court has decided …
Tulips, narcissuses and violets
I would like to write something about flowers in Istanbul. About how I walked in a cemetery where spring had burst forth and the graves were loaded with tulips and narcissuses. About a competition held by the Istanbul municipality, in which a hundred residents can win 300 liras by giving lots of love, care and attention to a tulip …
The newspaper “Cumhuriyet” has a new TV spot to boost the sales of their daily. You see a young, modern Turkish woman getting covered in black Islamist chador. Then you hear her saying with a male voice: “It’s me who decides on what to wear, of course”. A voice-over says: “Women of the republic are vanishing. Stand up and defend …
I’m getting ready for the most exciting International Women’s Day for years, or actually, in my life. I thought I would be reporting on some demonstration somewhere, but over the last few weeks, this plan has changed. At the request of Press Now, an organization that promotes an independent press in different countries, I will give a three day journalism …
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