Deep state

For me, the arrest of Kemal Kerincsiz appeals to my imagination. He’s an ultra-nationalist lawyer, who is notorious for the lawsuits he started against writers and journalists like Orhan Pamuk, Elif Safak and Hrant Dink because they insulted ‘Turkishness’. Harmful cases in my opinion, because they provoked emotions that even led to murder.
And now Kerincsiz himself is behind bars. It …

Unwanted behaviour

Now that I have seen the youtube eeh, thing about Atatürk, I’m even more surprised about the blocking of youtube.com in Turkey last week. I can’t even call it a film really. There’s a picture of Atatürk, they gave him pink cheeks, red lips and some eye shadow, they make him say with a high female voice that he’s the …

Discussing Atatürk

We have to educate women as little as possible, he said. His friend agreed, and added that women should not only have no education, they also shouldn’t work or leave their village too much. Because once you educate women and once they start earning an income, it will be a threat to marriage. Now, these two guys were, for example, …

Armenians one year after the assassination of Hrant Dink

Many people will remember the enormous demonstrations after the assassination in Istanbul of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, exactly one year ago today. The fighting spirit that could be felt at the time amongst Turkish Armenians seems to have faded away now. The Armenian community, which became more visible because of Dink, has largely closed itself off again. Young people …

Law about ‘Turkishness’ is a diplomatic toy

Altering the ban on insulting ‘Turkishness’ will not help freedom of expression. It is better to get rid of Turkish taboos, says Fréderike Geerdink.

(published in daily newspaper De Volkskrant, opinion page ‘Forum’) 

The Turkish government is working on an amendment to article 301 of the Penal Code, the article that forbids insulting ‘Turkishness’. The European Union has been pressing for that …

Teamwork

My central heater wasn’t working properly. My landlord lives above me, which is useful in these sorts of situations. I heard him on the stairs in the hallway, asked him to come in and explained the problem. He would send somebody to fix it, he promised. And so he did, the very next day. And I witnessed in my home …

The first disaster

I had an interview with Sibil, a young Armenian Turk. She’s in ‘Hadig’, a group of young Armenian people who want to carry on Hrant Dink’s legacy. Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian journalist and founder of bilingual newspaper Agos, was murdered almost a year ago. One of Dink’s missions was to make the Armenian community in Turkey more visible. After …

Nice for diplomats

The European Union will be happy: finally Turkey will change article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code – at least the proposed change has been announced. Article 301 makes it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’, and many journalists, writers and publishers have been brought to court for violating this article – when in fact all they did was express their opinion. …

Bye-bye fresh air

What if they were to start by forbidding smoking outside instead of inside? Now that’s a good idea. That men poison each other in their houses or offices wouldn’t be a problem if everyone smoked. Outside, you come across a non-smoker now and then. Me, for example. Sometimes, even now when it’s cold in Istanbul, I sit outside on the …