Peodair Leihy
East and West- new ways to look at our neighbours [13 Feb, 2012 01:00 AM]
How come Asia always has to rise? How many more headlines do we need about rising East and rising dragons, rising tigers, rising economies and rising powers? It seems journalists, and even academics moonlighting as journalists, can’t help themselves. Asia just rises.
In a way it’s understandable. Not only is Asia the clear engine of what growth the global economy can muster, the concept of Asia is historically intertwined with rising.
Etymologically speaking, orient comes from ”rise” - the sun rises in the east. Actually, east also comes from the idea of rising; it’s from the same root as ”yeast”. If you go back far enough, the word ”Asia” can be traced to the Akkadian for rising, used in what is now Iraq thousands of years ago; the word was borrowed by the Greeks and applied to anything east of them.
Turkishtime
Interview with Ara Güler [December 2002, reprinted at mymerhaba.com]
The following is the interview with famous Turkish photographer Ara Güler published in December 2002 issue of the Turkishtime. (Ara Güler - Photo: Turkishtime).
What is it that’s important about me
The walls are covered with signed autographs of people whom we see the pictures of in encyclopedias, books up to the ceiling, boxes on the floor; all are full of “historic works”. Whether we would call Ara Güler a photograph artist or a photo-journalist, that part is complicated, but it is certain that the more than half a century he spent behind the visor, accredits him as one of the best in the world in his line of work. The “100 Faces from Turkish literature” exhibition to be open at Yapı Kredi Cultural Center until December 28 is a pretext… In fear of being disrespectful or that something will happen that will enrage him, we asked our questions as if making “kamikaze” dives; he embarrassed us all.
Do you like being interviewed?
Are we on record? Actually, I don’t like it much because throughout my life I’ve interviewed others, now you’re cross-examining me. Anyway…
Hürriyet, PARIS
First Europe, then Turkey, says Sarkozy [December/13/2011]
AFP photo
France’s stance toward Ankara’s prospective EU membership has not changed despite the contrasting economic fortunes of the crisis-hit union and a dynamic Turkey, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said.
“You know, my reservations have not changed. Even if we raised these reservations, in the situation of crisis, I do not think it would ease the task of Europe,” Sarkozy said in an interview French daily Le Monde published yesterday.
“We just welcomed Croatia. The opening in Serbia is a perspective. First let’s unite the European family before asking questions about those outside of Europe,” Sarkozy said, reiterating his view that Turkey was not a European country.
“The European Union is primarily for the European continent. To my knowledge, our Turkish friends – [a] great power, great nation – are mainly in Asia Minor,” he said.
SADIE NICHOLAS
Binge drinking, rapes, squalid deaths: a former Club 18-30 insider reveals the horrific truth about Britons abroad 13th August 2008
My heart sank as I read the e-mail report in my inbox: a young man holidaying with friends in the notorious resort of Magaluf in Majorca had jumped, drunk, from his fourth-floor hotel balcony, aiming for the pool below.
Only he had missed and hit the concrete next to the water. His body was shattered, and Spanish medics believed he might be paralysed for the rest of his life.
It was excruciating to read the detail of the incident, of how he’d been discovered bleeding and groaning on the ground, and it was only too clear that he was lucky to escape with his life.
Perverse as it may seem, in the following months I learned that he was indeed one of the more fortunate victims of the culture of binge-drinking which has swamped resorts across Europe - much of it driven by young Britons intent on drinking themselves into oblivion.
Innocent fun: But for other youngsters a holiday in the sun can spiral out of control
Yesterday, a shocking new report from the Foreign Office laid bare the extent of British holidaymakers’ misbehaviour abroad. There has been a huge rise in arrests - in Spain they’ve increased by a third - and the report concluded: “Many arrests are due to behaviour caused by excessive drinking.”
Shocking as it may sound, the truth is that in many cases a prison cell is infinitely preferable to a slab in the morgue, which is what awaits those who lose all sense of inhibition - and pay for it with their lives.
How do I know? Well, when I heard about that “balcony jumper” who survived, I was nine months into what would eventually become two years as manager of the Press office for Thomas Cook, which owns the notorious Club 18-30 company, one of the UK’s biggest tour operators.
![via ragdoll: Caricature Map of Europe 1914 [darwinist vs. clanker]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_krue8zaNkB1qz4te9o1_250.jpg)
Murad Ahmed
Macho society under scrutiny as despair drives young men to ‘honourable death’ [January 5, 2008]
North London’s Turkish population has been stunned by a series of suicides that followed a pattern
Orhan Kaya and Can Onel were the first to kill themselves. The two friends, aged 24 and 19, hanged themselves at the same spot in the same church graveyard in Hackney, within weeks of each other in the summer.
Since then, seven more have followed suit. The latest is Murat Yaldir, 23, found hanged last week by the owner of the takeaway he worked for. Almost all the suicides have taken place in the heart of Britain’s Turkish community in North and East London.
The grim statistics show that Turkish and Kurdish men are now the ethnic groups most vulnerable to suicide in this country. Taking into account the recent cluster of suicides, they are about seven times more likely to commit suicide than South Asians, the next most susceptible group. The present suicide rate among Turkish men is double the national average.
The nine Turkish suicides in the past half-year come from the estimated 50,000 Turkish citizens, or Turkish-born people, in the country.
The Turkish community, which is struggling to understand the causes, fears that there will be more. Grappling for answers, some locals whisper about the possibility of a suicide cult. But health professionals and community workers have come to a more mundane yet equally disturbing conclusion. They point to a lethal cocktail of factors that push these men over the edge: isolation from their families; a failure to integrate into British life; and, most worryingly of all, a macho culture among the youth that glamorises the deaths of these men.
Veli Yadilcgi, a community worker in the area, said: “It’s related to the concept of honour that Turkish men have, one of the slogans which they base their lives on. One of the things I’ve heard said is, ‘This is an honourable death’.”
Though their individual stories differ, the deaths of these men follow a similar pattern. Most are young, aged between 19 and 27. All were born abroad. Most of the men were of Kurdish ethnicity and part of a family of political refugees. Also, most died by hanging, showing a violent determination to end their lives. British suicides usually choose less brutal methods.
Friends, family and community leaders who came into contact with them say that these men were stuck between cultures, feeling that they were neither English nor Turkish.
A trip down Green Lanes in Haringey, the hub of the Turkish community in London, also helps to explain some of the causes. Here, in scenes reminiscent of central Istanbul, Turkish-run grocery stores, restaurants and kebab shops are open well into the early hours of the morning. Turkish men work these menial jobs, often doing 14-hour shifts at unsociable hours.
Erkan Arslain, 29, who works in a grocery shop in Green Lanes, speaks of a breakdown of communication between Turkish parents and their children. “Most can’t talk to their parents because they’re scared they’ll be told off,” he said. “If you’ve got no one to talk to, you think there’s no way out and that the best option is to die.”
Mr Yadilcgi, whose voluntary work brings him into contact with young Turkish men, said: “For these men, hope has died. They don’t see a clear future for themselves. They don’t find any ground between living and dying.”
Posta Kutusu
‘Home Office’in sizi görüşme odasına çağırma itimali var’ [28 Ağustos 2011, Pazar]
Nüsra Şahin, Ankara Anlaşması başvurularında Home Office’in kendisine sunulan evrakları yetersiz görmesi ya da dosyada tutarsızlık görmesi durumunda söz konusu başvuruyu yapan kişiyi görüşmeye çağırmasının mümkün olduğunu ifade etti.
Şahin, bunun yeni bir uygulama olmadığını belirterek son günlerde Türk vatandaşları arasında bu konunun sık sık konuşulduğunu ve konunun sadece bilgi kirliliğinden dolayı gündeme geldiğini söyledi.
Konuyla ilgili olarak gazetemize bir açıklama yapan Şahin, Ankara Anlaşması İş Kurma Vizesi’nin Türkiye Cumhuriyeti vatandaşlarının oldukça rağbet gösterdiği bir vize türü olduğunu ve birçok girişimci vatandaş tarafından tercih edildiğini söyledi.
“Bilindiği üzere bu vize kategorisi vatandaşlarımıza Birleşik Krallık’ta kendi işlerini kurma fırsatı veren bir kategoridir” diyen Şahin, “Vatandaşlarımız, şimdiye kadar öğretmenlikten, pazarlamacılığa, bilgisayar programcılığından restoran ve kafe işletmeciliğine kadar uzanan geniş bir yelpazede, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti vatandaşları arasında Ankara Anlaşması diye bilinen ‘European Commission of Association Agreement’ anlaşmasına dayanarak, iş açmak üzere Home Office’in ilgili departmanına başvuruda bulundular ve işlerini açtılar” dedi.
Son günlerde Ankara Anlaşması ile ilgili başvuru yapan adayların Home Office tarafından görüşmeye çağrılacağına ilişkin söylentilerin ortaya atıldığını kaydeden Şahin, “Biz Immigration Connection olarak bu kuralın zaten Göçmenlik Müdürlüğü Talimatları’nın ilgili bölümünde belirtilmekte olduğunu ve herhangi bir değişikliğin söz konusu olmadığını dile getirdik. Bu konuda Home Office’in ilgili departmanında çalışan vize memurlarından hem sözlü hem yazılı bilgi istedik. Aldığımız cevap bizler için hiç de sürpriz olmadı. Herhangi bir değişiklik söz konusu değil. Home Office bu kuralı Göçmenlik Müdürlüğü Talimatları’nda belirtilen şekilde, başvurunun hakikiliğinden veya içeriğinden şüphe duyduğu ya da belgelerde tutarsızlık gördüğü durumlarda uygulamaya koyabilir. Bu yeni bir gelişme değildir” dedi.
authspot
German’s Married to Turks Are Not Allowed to Have Dual Citizenship [Feb 3, 2008]
On the difficulties and regulations for Germans who are married to foreigners.
To get a citizenship especially in Germany is difficult. When my husband married me he was able to apply for the German passport after three years but the foreigners who do not marry Germans they have a waiting time of I think 8 – 10 years and have to fulfill lots of criteria. Although they do not allow the German wifes of Turkish to get a second nationality. I had to decide to be always a foreigner in Turkey, because when I take the Turkish nationality I will lose my German passport and have no rights to return to my home country like before.
I would need a visa which is only possible when somebody of family or friends will invite me by notary and sign a form where they declare that they will pay all costs for me , also health insurance. And it would be only possible for a tourist visa of 90 days, which would cost me a commission of 1500 Euros (return by arrival in Turkey after holidays). We have lots of old German ladies, who went to Turkey with their Turkish husbands in the sixties back to Turkey. And they did not know this. They all lost their rights in Germany and live after the dead of the husbands with no income in Turkey and there is no possibility and no help of anybody to get the German citizenship back.
When I married in Turkey, they asked me about my demands, to be German or to get a Turkish citizenship. And they told me what will happen, when I take the Turkish one. But I am not really sure that will happen in every city where foreigners marry a Turkish. But I think they have to say it now.
Firat Cengiz and Lars Hoffmann
The 2011 Turkish elections and the prospects for Turkey-EU relations | openDemocracy [29 June 2011]
Turkey’s recent elections have created a more open-minded parliament. For the country’s future to reflect this change, both sceptical EU member states and the new Turkish government must focus on renewing the process of Turkish accession to the EU, considering the country’s economic and regional political weight and the growing number of Turks that reject future EU membership
The Turkish Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; hereafter AKP) has just won the third consecutive parliamentary elections in Turkey with an impressive 49.9% of the vote. The party, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, initially came to power in 2002 with a pro-European agenda and was able to count on active support by liberals and intellectuals both in Turkey and abroad. Yet, its nine years in office have led to the need for a re-evaluation of the party’s political agenda – particular its impact on Turkish-EU relations.
Background
No other candidate country had a longer and more intricate relationship with the EU than Turkey. It was in 1959 that Turkey applied for associate membership to the European Economic Community (EEC). In 1963 the Ankara Agreement was signed to pave the way for a Customs Union between Turkey and the then-EEC; but no substantial achievements were made until 1995 when the Customs Union was finally created. In the meantime, Turkey had applied for full membership in 1987; yet, only in 1997 the European Council confirmed that Turkey was eligible to become a full EU member. It took another eight years until the accession negotiations officially started and today eight accession negotiation chapters have been opened – though only one was provisionally closed (Science and Research) due to the conflict on the application of customs union rules by Turkey to Cyprus. Although the first AKP government paved the way for the opening of accession negotiations in 2005, only three years after, the Commission’s 2008 Progress Report on Turkey stated that the (then newly re-elected) AKP government ‘did not put forward a consistent and comprehensive programme of political and constitutional reforms.’ Similarly, the report pointed out that ‘the lack of dialogue and spirit of compromise between the main political parties had a negative impact on the smooth functioning of the political institutions.’ The same criticism was restated in the 2010 Progress Report.
Meanwhile, Turkish enthusiasm for EU membership has significantly decreased. The 2004 Autumn Eurobarometer showed 62% of the country looking favourably towards EU membership with only 20% opposing it. In contrast, the latest Eurobarometer data (Autumn 2010) revealed that only 42% believe EU membership would be a good thing, 32% believe it would be a bad thing and the remaining interviewees had either no opinion or thought membership would be neither good nor bad.
Raphaël Liogier
Islam: A Scapegoat for Europe’s Decadence [January 6, 2011]
How Muslims Have Been Taken Hostage by Europe’s Most Acute Civilizational Crisis Since WWII
Raphaël Liogier is the director of the Observatoire du religieux (www.world-religion-watch.org) and a University Professor in Sociology and Theory of Knowledge at the Institute for Political Studies of Aix-en-Provence in France (Science Po Aix). His last book, Souci de Soi, Conscience du Monde : Self Care, World Awareness, deals with the different aspects of the current individualization and globalization of beliefs.
The Niqab in the Occident: A Hyper-modern Spiritualist Trend.
Since the early 2000s, young women wearing the full veil have been becoming increasingly visible in Europe. One might easily take the resurgence of the veil, which covers the entire face except for the eyes in the tradition of Persian Gulf countries, to be the result of male imposition and the sudden salience of Islamic radicalism. However, neither is the case. This veil is not only by and large voluntary, but hyper-voluntary— it conveys a desire for asceticism, total existential makeover, and radical conversion by encapsulating one’s will and making it visible. That such a garment is difficult, if not painful, to wear is yet another reason for its desirability. It expresses no mere subservience to a social order or to an archaic culture, but a profound personal decision which is both binding and conspicuous. It is a veil of distinction, a means of distinguishing oneself in the eyes of God and others, not a tool of conversion. Were everyone to wear it, it would become less desirable. The issue is not one of knowing whether this is “true” Muslim attire. The Gospels do not advocate one style of dress over another, yet this has never prevented millions of Christians from proudly displaying crosses on their chests. What matters is the motivation of the faithful, which bestows meaning on their desire.
The investigation conducted by the Observatoire du Religieux (World Religion Watch) at Sciences Po Aix (Institute of Political Studies, Aix-en-Provence, France), concerning the niqab, sometimes inappropriately called the burqa, in Europe, has identified three categories of women in regards to their views on the veil. The first such category consists of young women between the ages of 17 and 30 from non-practicing families of Muslim origin, typified in the case of Khadîdja, a person of North African descent whose parents work in architecture and medicine and who she describes as not understanding her position. Khadîdja rejects anyone’s rights, especially her parents’, to be judgmental about her “choice.” She maintains that she wants to choose her own life and that no one has the right to impose guidelines on her chosen lifestyle. These young women generally do not adhere to any particular organization but harbor the intent to be “total” Muslims. Some neighborhoods, such as rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, a street in Paris where boutiques for Muslim accessories and “fundamentalist” bookshops are legion, are places where it is fashionable to show off one’s style.In other words, such a self-experimental proliferation of fashions and extreme, deliberately visible expressions, is precisely what defines hypermodernity.
