Öcalan obstructs Turkish government plan on Kurdish question
ISTANBUL – Ten years after his arrest, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan still has a strong influence on how Turkey handles the Kurdish question. Even though Turkish media on Thursday praise the AKP government for declaring the Kurdish question will be solved by democratic means, the more concrete and far-reaching measures expected were not announced. The possible reason: Kurdish politicians, who …
No change in the law was needed for quite a big change that was made in Turkey’s education system: the YÖK (Higher Education Board) decided that graduates from normal high schools and vocational high schools have the same chance of entering a university based on their scores in the ÖSS (on which I wrote a blog recently). Previously, …
The Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands has almost ended his posting, which started in 2007. Dutch foreign affairs minister Verhagen paid him a farewell visit and twittered about it: ‘Had farewell talk with Turkish ambassador about the need for further reforms in his country’. I’ve thought it so many times before, and again it came to mind: Is …
She takes a coffee mug out of my cupboard, reaches for a bottle of cleaning stuff, then points to all the cups and glasses and says something about a smell. I have absolutely no clue of what she is saying. Does she want to spray all my cups and glasses with this cleaning stuff to make them smell nice? She …
Turkey gets ready for smoking ban
ISTANBUL – Turkey is getting ready for a general smoking ban in public places, including restaurants, bars and tea houses, starting Sunday. According to a poll ninety percent of the population supports the ban, but in the hospitality sector there are complaints that jobs will be lost, as well as traditions.
Ismet Nebi Dökmecier points at a portrait of his …
This week the newspapers are full of young guys, and now and then a young girl, with their hands up in the sky: they got good results in their ÖSS. That’s an exam at the end of the school year, which determines whether you are smart enough for university and, if so, for which university. The guys with their hands …
My love is working in a big carpet shop as a salesman, and how interesting it is to get an insight into how it works there. Well, for the customer it’s not always so funny, but then again, he’s not always aware of what’s going on. Take for example a customer called Robert Boş. It’s an imaginary name for a …
The trouble in north western China is a big news item in Turkey. Of course it is bound to be, since the Uighurs are a Turkish people, just like Turkmens, like Uzbeks, Kazaks and Azeris, to name just a few. It struck me that the newspaper Hürriyet predicted the trouble a few days before it started: President Gül had just …
For the last one and a half years I have been a regular contributor to the most important news agency in the Netherlands, ANP. People assume I work for them more or less fulltime and send in several stories a week. That is not the case, so maybe I should explain what it means to work as a …
Üsküdar for beginners (3): market and second-hand stuff
The problem with tourists is that they often want to ‘go somewhere’, whereas I usually prefer just to wander around in the streets. But actually, in Üsküdar you can get stuck on busy streets, not knowing where to turn left or right to find somewhere nice. So I’ll direct you to somewhere specific, where you can just wander around: the …
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