‘There are people’, I read in the statement by the organizers of a Twitter protest, ‘who are not afraid to say they don’t approve of the way the country is being managed by the Prime Minister.’ An intriguing sentence.
Let me tell you first what the protest was about. Yesterday during the day and even more so from 9pm on, many …
The economic power of the army
Six hundred. The Turkish army is running at least that number of companies. Covering banking and health insurance, car production, construction, and well, you name it and probably the Turkish army is earning money from it. Earning so much money that the army’s holding company, called Oyak, is (depending on your criteria) one the top 3 or 5 biggest companies …
Increased security measures in Turkish tourist areas
ISTANBUL – In tourist areas of Turkey extra security measures are being taken against attacks by Kurdish separatist movement PKK, according to several Turkish media on Friday. That is one of the outcomes of deliberations between the Turkish government and the army on Thursday. Exactly which measures will be taken has not been revealed.
The security measures are being intensified after …
A new and strong Kurdish initiative
It’s getting out of hand again in Turkey’s south-east: this weekend a total of 12 soldiers died. That’s more than fifty soldiers killed since the end of April. Over the last four months, 130 PKK fighters have been killed – according to the Turkish army, so let’s call that ‘unconfirmed’.
Opposition leaders try to take advantage of the anger among Turks …
In Turkey, circumcision of women is not really an issue. It’s not even really a topic for women’s organisations, which are focussing on problems that are widespread here, like honour killings, domestic violence, girls not sent to school by their parents, and for example the position of women in the labour market and in politics. This is because female genital …
I lasted one month in the sports school in a basement in downtown Üsküdar, the Istanbul district where I live. It smelled of sweat, it was noisy with bad music, and most of all: it was not in the open air. You can run on the street too, right?
So I bought running shoes, running socks and a new sports bra, …
Turkey investigates Israel-PKK ties
ISTANBUL –Turkish intelligence services are investigating whether there is a connection between the Israeli attack on the aid convoy to Gaza and a PKK attack on a Turkish marine base on the Mediterranean Sea a few hours earlier. Speculation about a link is rising in the Turkish press.
Newspapers have been printing articles about a possible connection between the two events …
Girl imitates suicide and dies
ISTANBUL – In the Turkish city of Istanbul an 8 year old girl died Friday night while trying to imitate a suicide scene from a TV series. She was standing on her bed with her mother’s headscarf around her neck and the heating pipe, and slipped. This was reported on the website of daily paper Radikal …
Of course, news-wise it is a technical story: several Google services, like ‘earth’, ‘analytics’ and ‘chrome’, are inaccessible in Turkey because of a technical game between Google and the Turkish telecom authorities. Let me tell you in short what happened. YouTube, owned by Google, is banned in Turkey (and some other countries), and Google changed certain settings to try to …
I admit it: since the attack on the aid flotilla heading for Gaza, I’ve been puzzled what to write about it. Usually, I have to let things sink in a little bit before I can formulate an opinion, a way of looking at things, an analysis of what’s going on. But this time, it’s hard.
Not only because of the complexity …
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