Keyword: Freedoms
Gülen-linked journalists organization voices concern over profiling claims
The Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV), one of the most prominent institutions affiliated with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, released a statement expressing its concerns over the government’s claimed profiling of citizens, civic groups and public employees. “It is worrisome to witness developments that echo the said “National Security Board decision, such as the plan to ban prep schools, the profiling of public employees or the purging of bureaucrats who are affiliated with certain communities,” the statement published on the institution’s website said.
Deputy PM threatens Taraf daily, Baransu for covering controversial MGK docs
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç on Monday called on prosecutors to take legal action against the Taraf daily and journalist Mehmet Baransu, who last week revealed a controversial National Security Council (MGK) document indicating that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) signed on to a planned crackdown on the Hizmet (Gülen) movement in 2004.
Hate speech and respect for the sacred
Islam seeks to protect five major principles that are specified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and adopted in the modern world: religious freedom, the right to observe religious duties and the protection of this right; the right to life and its protection; the right to mental and physical health and its protection; the right to property and its protection; the right to marriage and reproduction and its protection.
Bediüzzaman on the Armenian issue
Question: Armenians are dhimmis. How can dhimmis be equal to Muslims? Answer: Let us not see ourselves in a magnifying mirror. We are to be blamed on this issue. We could not protect them as well as we should have; we failed to demonstrate the justice of Sharia. Because of the wrong practices of autocratic regime, we failed to protect their rights within the Sharia framework…
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.
Medialog calls for law against hate speech and crime [in Turkey]
In a two-day conference on hate speech and hate crime organized by Medialog (a platform under Journalist and Writers Foundation) in İstanbul, leading journalists and academics urged the government to draft a law against defamation, blasphemy and discrimination while protecting the freedom of expression.
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.
People overwhelmingly support democracy as answer to Kurdish issue
About 90 percent of the Turkish public believe the Kurdish question cannot be settled through military means but by democratization, and that expanding cultural rights and negotiating are the answers that will finally produce a settlement for Turkey’s decades-long problem with separatist terrorism, according to a recent survey conducted by pollster MetroPOLL.
Lynching campaign: Democratic stance of Zaman and Today’s Zaman
We have been observing a systematic campaign of lynching in social media against Zaman and Today’s Zaman. Zaman has been on the side of democracy since it was launched. To this end, it has supported the democratic reforms that Turgut Özal initiated as well as the EU membership bid and the AK Party’s democratic reforms. Zaman has never wavered in its democratic stance despite all direct and indirect pressures.
Education [for Kurds] in mother tongue
The Wise People Commission has prepared a report on its two months of work and submitted it to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. What does Turkey — east and west — think about the settlement? What are the basic expectations and demands? How will concerns that the country could be partitioned be eliminated? Will Turkey […]
Mr. Gülen’s felicitous advice on Kurdish issue, freedoms
BÜLENT KENEŞ The interview Mr. Fethullah Gülen, a well-respected Turkish-Islamic scholar, gave to Rudaw, an online newspaper in northern Iraq’s Arbil, resounded powerfully in the Turkish media. I must note that it would be wrong to analyze the views Mr. Gülen expressed in this interview within the scope of the developments that have occurred in the wake of […]
Gülen calls for broadening freedoms, improvement in Kurdish rights
Well-known Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has encouraged the broadening of rights and freedoms of people and the improvement of ties with Kurds to restore peace and security in areas long plagued by a simmering conflict that has killed at least 40,000 people. Speaking to Rudaw, an online newspaper in northern Iraq’s Arbil, Gülen touched […]
Gülen speaks to Kurdish paper, renews his support for education in mother tongue
Well-known Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has voiced strong support for education in one’s mother tongue, in reference to allowing the use of Kurdish in education in Turkey, and said basic human rights and freedoms could not be the object of any political bargaining as they are the natural rights of human beings. Speaking to […]
Turkey’s picture on freedom of the press bleak on WPFD
FATMA DİŞLİ ZIBAK Journalists who have taken the opportunity to reflect on the thorny issue of freedom of the press in Turkey on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day (WPFD), which is marked every May 3, have drawn a bleak picture, speaking about the various problems that restrict freedom of the press in the […]
