Last night, (an advisor of) president Gül said the Syrian refugees in Turkey are not refugees, but guests in Turkey, and that they can come and go as they please. I just couldn’t believe my ears. The last thing Turkey does to refugees coming in, is treating them as guests. Yes, for now, Turkey is building the Syrians a (plastic) …
Exciting elections last Sunday, very exciting. I’m not gonna keep you posted here about the general results or the implications of that, because others did that already and I don’t have much to add to what Aengus Collins writes. Let me focus on an update about people I wrote about during and before the elections.
* On …
Like in every Turkish election rally, there was a sea of flags. This time, last Saturday, they were the red flags of the CHP, the Republican People’s Party, and blue flags with the portrait of the party’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. CHP supporters waved their flags to the rhythm of the music played. Stimulating election songs, and songs by artists of …
Weekly The Economist advises Turks to vote for the biggest opposition party CHP in the 12 June elections, because the bigger the CHP vote, the smaller the majority of the ruling AKP party. And the AKP has to be kept under a two thirds majority, according to The Economist, because with a two thirds majority the …
Why publishing in Turkish made me cry
I got so happy when huge Turkish language news portal HaberX asked me to publish some of my blog posts on their site. I want to reach as many people as possible with my writing, so publishing on a site with 80,000 visitors per day, in a language that I don’t yet publish in, is wonderful. …
Once again a discussion broke out about internet freedom. The cause of the uproar is the plan of Turkish authorities to introduce a system for internet filtering. Starting August 22, there will be four packages internet users can subscribe to: children, family, domestic and standard. Standard will be the normal setting and it provides Turkish internet users with the internet …
What got into the High Election Board?
Now, the Kurdish candidates who were banned from running in the elections at the beginning of the week have been ‘rehabilitated’: they are allowed to run, after the High Election Board discussed the matter again. Did they change their minds because of the intense protests in Istanbul and in the south east of the country? Was there an error in …
Boring elections coming up! Or not?
We already know who’s going to win the elections in June. The latest poll even predicts a 46% victory for governing AKP – that’s hardly a loss compared to the previous elections in 2007. Opposition party CHP is growing and would get 25% of the votes if elections were held now (an increase of about 5% compared to 2007), and …
Anybody who thinks the increase in the killings of women will vanish as soon as the AKP is no longer governing Turkey, should really very quickly wake up. One, because that’s not going to happen any time soon (they will probably win the coming elections). Two, because it is a dangerous form of denial of the complexity and seriousness of …
Turkey confusing terrorists and journalists
Now and then I publish guest blog posts on this website, written by Turkish journalists. The second guest blog post is written by Ayla Albayrak, who is …
Recent Comments