southeastern europe

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...

Taksim Meydanı has been a focal point of political protest in Turkey for the best part of the last one hundred years. It has also seen its fair share of violence and destruction: the Kanlı Pazar (Bloody Sunday) of February 1969, the Kanlı 1 Mayıs (First of May massacre) of 1977 are the most well known such examples. Traditionally the location of choice for the celebration of the 1st of May for the Left, it was off limits this year as the May Day events were not allowed to take place there. As a result, small scale skirmishes between Left-wing activists and the police took place in the surrounding streets a month ago but the area was soon back to normality.  So, earlier last month, no one would have imagined that Taksim would once more become the arena of the violent events of the past few days. The few protesters that started gathering and organized a sit-in at the site of Gezi Park in the run-up to 26 May to protest against the destruction of Gezi Park and the rebuilding ...

English translation of an article originally published in  http://www.sydsvenskan.se/opinion/aktuella-fragor/tala-om-modeller/ IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR THE MIDDLE EAST: RETHINKING THE TURKISH AND NORDIC EXPERIENCES På Spaning Efter En Modell För Mellanöstern: … Av Turkiska Och Nordiska Erfarenheter Umut Ozkirimli är professor i samtida Turkietstudier och verksam vid Centrum för Mellanösternstudier vid Lunds universitet. Spyros A. Sofos är gästforskare vid Centrum för Mellanösternstudier vid Lunds universitet. The “Arab Spring” caught everybody off guard. Almost overnight, autocratic regimes have been toppled, social and ideological fissures have emerged, and conflict has become the order of the day, sometimes crashing hopes for freedom, democracy and dignity. But political change is like the Swedish winter, long and replete with challenges. Transition to democracy requires a national consensus and a new social contract based on respect for human rights,...

An extensive interview that covers virtually all one would like to know about today's Turkey by one of the best Turkish social scientists. Sociologist Ayhan Aktar: Polarization is among elite, not men in street Sociologist Ayhan Aktar says the division in Turkish politics is mostly in regards to the elite, not ordinary people, considering the tension in society in recent years when the country’s agenda has been full of weighty issues such as an ongoing investigation into a clandestine organization known as Ergenekon, the government’s efforts to settle the Kurdish issue and a hotly debated constitutional amendment package. Read more in Today's Zaman (3 May 2010)

Following a lawsuit filed by Chief Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya on November 16, 2007, the Turkish Constitutional Court has decided yesterday to shut down the Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party) due to the party’s alleged links with the  PKK. Following 9-hour deliberations on the fourth day of the case, Constitutional Court President Haşim Kılıç said that its members voted unanimously to close down the DTP as it became a focal point of acts against the indivisible integrity of the state . The result of this controversial decision is that, yet again, voices advocating human rights protection for Turkish Kurds are stifled, and the largest pro-Kurdish political force that had made considerable inroads in the Turkish political system by wining in nine provinces in the 2009 local elections is now seriously impaired. Thirty seven DTP members, including DTP Chairman Ahmet Türk and MP Aysel Tuğluk were banned from politics for five years. The rump pa...