A headmaster who decides that the teachers’ canteen will not serve food during Ramadan. Children who don’t fast during Ramadan being bullied at school by children who do. Official functions where no drinks are served. During Ramadan Turkey becomes visibly more religious. Especially when things like this happen in schools, government or municipality buildings or other state …
I don’t really cover sport as a journalist, but this weekend, sport is politics. President Gül will visit Armenia’s capital Yerevan to watch a world cup qualification match between Armenia and Turkey on Saturday. Armenian President Sarkisyan invited him, and how could …
‘Look at that!’, says S. ‘You don’t believe there are any nurses on board that ship, do you?’ No, I don’t believe so. I’m sitting on a terrace at the Bosporus with Dutch friend A. and her Turkish boyfriend S., while the American warship USS McFaul is passing by. At first Turkey didn’t allow the ship to …
Lots of criticism this week of the Labour Minister, who suggested that the Tuzla shipyards be closed or replaced in a bid to solve the safety problems endemic there. The immediate reason behind his ‘plan’ are three more deaths this week in Tuzla. What happened? A life boat needed to be tested. Officially the test …
Three newspapers, three headlines. Cumhuriyet, strong defender of the secular republic, says: “Fine for AKP” – and they write that this proves the Constitutional Court considers the AKP to really be a focal point of anti-secular activities. Zaman, religious and pro-AKP: “Closure rejected” – and on the bottom of the page a picture of a smiling and …
While the expected end of governing AK Party is getting closer and closer – the Constitutional Court will start discussing the closure case against the party on July 28 – the party’s leaders on the international scene act like it’s business as usual. Well, what else can they do? Very carefully, a tiny little beginning has been made …
Quite a fuss this week in the Netherlands about immigration laws. A judge ruled that it is not legal to ask non EU citizens to do a language and culture test before coming to the Netherlands to get married or to reunite with their family. The test has been common practice for some years now, …
Always something unexpected, that’s a good description of political developments in Turkey. At the beginning of the week, it seemed that the closure case against the ruling AK Party would be dominating the news, but it turned out totally differently: on Tuesday more then twenty people were arrested for suspected links with the Ergenekon gang, a shady …
This week, the closure case against the governing AK Party started. And I found out how it is possible for there to be Turks who call themselves democrats and at the same time support the closure of the AKP. Let me explain. The AKP won almost half of the votes in last year’s general election, so you could say the …
This week, Fethullah Gülen was elected most important intellectual in the world in an internetpoll organized by the US magazine “Foreign Policy” together with the British magazine “Prospect”. Who? Fethullah Gülen. He’s a Turk, but he lives in the USA. He leads the Gülen Movement, an Islamic path that preaches a modern interpretation of Islam and …
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