This is a second effort to comment on the recent protest in Turkey. This 'second take' is informed by having had the opportunity to talk over the past couple of days to a number of people in Istanbul with diverse opinions on the situation . In an article I wrote back in 2007 on the events of the summer of that year in Turkey, I had tried to develop a reasoning that countered the way in which the military-bureaucratic establishment in Turkey framed Islamism in general, and the AKP in particular, as the ‘Other’, as an outsider to the Turkish body politic that threatened to destroy the achievements of the secular, modernizing forces that had built the Republic. I was arguing then it is evident that, contrary to the attempted simplification of the current political situation into one characterized by the irreconcilable conflict between a monolithic and fundamentalist Islamist camp bent on introducing Şeriat (sharia law) and Turkey’s secular for...
from triglav to caucasus
Commentary on the political and cultural developments in Southeastern Europe