Opinions
Reflections on my first trip to TÜRKIYE
Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying a group of Jewish community leaders on a Niagara Foundation sponsored trip to Türkiye (Turkey). Our mission: to provide the group with windows into the Jewish experience in Turkey. One of the trip participants would describe this as, “not a Jewish trip to Turkey but a group of Jewish people traveling to Turkey.”
Hate speech in politics and media
It is hard to understand the relentless efforts of Turkish politicians and media networks to create new objects of hate, in contrast with the global and local struggle against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and similar approaches that pave the way for hate speech, hate crime and discrimination. Hate speech, mutually produced in the context of the developments following the Gezi Park protests in June, is concrete proof that we are making life in this world increasingly unbearable for one another.
Portrait of an Anatolian Muslim with no schooling*
It seems like this season is a season for losing fathers. Yesterday, like many friends around me, I too lost my father. All fathers are great, but mine was different, an extraordinarily good person. He had a finger in every innovation that was brought to the village. Although he never went to school, he could speak and write in Ottoman and [modern] Turkish. He would read history books for the curious in the house.
A time for sacrifice
The sacrificial festival has many social aspects to it: it is all about charity, community and family, as well as the pilgrimage. During this holiday, people visit their relatives and friends; family ties are strengthened, and it gives children an opportunity to bond with the older generation. The sacrificial festival is a time for wishing one another well, exchanging gifts, having big feasts, donating and praying.
Countering Al Qaeda’s Message
Important literature from mainstream Muslim scholars in Pakistan (Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri), Turkey (Fethullah Gulen), and elsewhere, which claim terrorists are not real Muslims, has yet to be translated, disseminated, or publicized more broadly in the Arab world, Somalia, Mali, or indeed Kenya. Al Qaeda’s extremists are all too ready to lampoon the majority of the world’s Muslims as infidels.
It is shame not to reopen Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary
Sometimes you need many pages to properly express a feeling or idea. Sometimes a sentence is enough to depict that dominant feeling or idea. This is the very feeling I personally have in the face of the debates concerning the reopening of Halki [Greek Orthodox] Seminary on the island of Heybeliada near İstanbul, which was closed down in 1971 by the interim regime formed in the wake of a military memorandum in Turkey. “Shame” is the only word I can find to describe this feeling.
Ergenekon’s coup-lovers owe an apology to the Hizmet movement
Since the start of the Ergenekon trials, some of the suspects and their supporters constantly, steadfastly and fiercely argued that the Ergenekon cases were based on fabricated evidence prepared by the Hizmet movement, claiming that the defendants were actually innocent. They now owe an apology to the Hizmet movement.
Civil society-democratic relations, Gezi and the Middle East
Ihsan Yilmaz Civil society and democratic relations are like the chicken and the egg. We do not know which one must come first, but we know that their existence depends on each other. In Turkey, the Kemalists tried to suppress civil society to monopolize the lives and thinking of citizens. They aimed to socially engineer […]
From Islamophobia to ‘Hizmet-phobia’
An important person who was praising an intellectual in Northwest Africa said, “I wish we [Turkey] had such scholars with far-reaching foresight.” He was right, because the intellectual that he mentioned provides an excellent example for others in his works and lifestyle. But he was also wrong in a sense, because we have several scholars […]
Fethullah Gulen, the man rushing to put out the fire
Salih Can “On condition that the national honor is not disrespected, no effort should be spared to establish peace among groups under threat of split within as Alevi-Sunni, Kurd-Turk and Laz-Circassian” Fethullah Gulen Sivan Perver’s view of Fethullah Gulen Sivan Perver’s words reflected the truth when he said “The Honorable Gulen’s opinions are pretty much well-intentioned. […]
A cami and cemevi together
TUĞBA AYDIN A groundbreaking ceremony for the first cultural complex in Turkey that will have both a cami (mosque) and a cemevi (Alevi place of worship) was held in Ankara on Sunday with the participation of Labor Minister Faruk Çelik, Alevi CEM Foundation President İzzettin Doğan, Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ankara deputy Sinan Aygün and […]
Lack of tolerance and democracy
It is not a prerequisite for democracy that everyone share the same ideas, culture, beliefs, or lifestyle, living together in unqualified happiness.
A society in which everyone shares the same ideals, interests, ideas, lifestyle, culture, language and beliefs appears to be a more totalitarian than democratic one.
Why so merciless on yourself?
There has been no prophet who didn’t face lies or slanders about himself. All of them would be exposed to slanders and -God forbid a million times- accused of lying, self-seeking, fabricating the Qur’an -the revealed word of God- or being taught, insanity, sorcery, being taken over by genies (djinns), just reciting poetry or having a “genie-granted” […]
Unscrupulous news reporting by Der Spiegel
ABDULLAH BOZKURT Der Spiegel’s recent article titled, “Dangerous Friends: Power Struggle Splits Turkish Ruling Party,” by Hasnain Kazim and Maximilian Popp, is perhaps the best example of the way in which Der Spiegel misrepresents and unfairly presents the magazine’s biased view of the Gülen movement in Turkey. This unscrupulous news piece may only pass as […]
