As previously reported here, Turkey has been struggling with a red meat shortage that has led to a spike in prices. Not a good thing in a country that runs on kebabs.
Now, to add to the woes of Turkish meat lovers, reports are circulating that officials have found large-scale bacterial contamination among some Turkish meat producers. In fact, according to the reports, some of the tainted meat had been sold to the local Burger King chain, which ended up making their Whoppers with it, despite initially having promised authorities that it had disposed of the bad stuff (by selling it to a dog breeding farm, according to one report).
This being Turkey, though, some -- particularly local meat producers -- suspect some kind of conspiracy behind the contamination reports, believing they are being spread by those who want to increase the amount of imported meat coming into Turkey. More details on this meaty subject here.
For the first time in 95 years, Turkey allows Christian worshipers, including many Armenians from abroad, to attend a historic mass at the 1,089-year-old church on Lake Van’s Akdamar Island in eastern Turkey. Closed since 1915, Holy Cross Church was restored by the Turkish authorities between 2005 and 2007 and reopened as a museum.
This story was modified on 9/20/10 to clarify mass attendance numbers -- Ed.
As an Armenian growing up in Basra, Iraq, Vanuhi Ohannesian was always hearing about eastern Turkey’s Lake Van region, her grandparents’ birthplace and the place after which she is named.
A plan by a group of some 200 Orthodox Christians to hold a group prayer in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine church turned mosque turned museum, is shaping up as a major headache for Turkish officials.
The group is being led by a Greek-American NGO called the International Hagia Sophia Coalition whose mission is to restore the Hagia Sophia as a place of worship. Although organized prayer is not allowed in Turkish museums (even ones that were once churches) the group seems to be inspired by the Turkish government's recent decision to allow once-a-year services at two former churches: the Sumela monestary near the Black Sea's Trabzon and the Armenian Akdemar church near Van in Eastern Turkey.
But the government seems to be in no mood to entertain the wishes of the Hagia Sophia group. As the Hurriyet Daily News reports:
The Turkish government has said in no uncertain terms that a group of nearly 200 people led by a Greek-American nongovernmental organization will not be allowed to conduct a religious service at Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia.
“A message was delivered to [event organizer] Chris Spirou that his attempts were seen as a provocation,” Turkish diplomatic sources told reporters Thursday. The sources did not disclose who gave the message to Spriou, a Greek and American citizen….
…. “We have directly and indirectly held talks to stop this [Hagia Sophia] initiative,” another Foreign Ministry official told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “We made it clear that any attempt to disturb the public order would not be tolerated.”
In what could prove to be a very significant decision, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights today announced that it has ruled that the Turkish state was liable in the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. In its ruling, the court also decided that the Turkish state had denied Dink his freedom of expression prior to his murder.
The court case was initiated by Dink himself, after he was convicted for "insulting Turkishness" because of a column he wrote for Agos, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper he edited until his death. Dink's family then filed a separate case after his murder in January, 2007, accusing Turkish authorities of failing to take appropriate steps to protect his life after he received numerous death threats. The two cases were later merged.
The outspoken Dink was shot three times in the head on the sidewalk in front of the Agos offices. His accused murderer, Ogun Samast, who was 17 at the time of the killing, is currently on trial, but the case has been dragging on and the Dink family has accused the Turkish judiciary of failing to take the case seriously.
The Turkish state has faced criticism that it failed to do enough to protect Dink, despite repeated threats to his life by ultra nationalists. There have also been questions about whether certain members of Turkey's police force played a role in the incident.
Following Samast's arrest, for instance, pictures were leaked to the press showing members of the police force proudly posing with the accused murderer.
'This decision should not be the end of the story,' says Emma Sinclair- Webb, a Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch.
'The authorities and the court should view this as a push to get to the bottom of this case, find out who the murderers were and uncover any possible collusion by elements of the state in the killing,' she added.
The Pew Research Center has new survey results out that paint a fairly bleak picture of Turkish public opinion. The survey's bottom line? Turks seem increasingly unhappy with their own institutions and increasingly unhappy with the rest of the world, with very few of them having positive views even of countries that Turkey is improving its relations with, such as Iran and Russia. From the survey, which was conducted in April:
As Turks debate an upcoming referendum that would modify the country’s constitution, a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey reveals how much confidence in Turkish institutions has slipped over the last few years.
The referendum, which is backed by the ruling religiously-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP) and opposed by more secular opposition groups, includes provisions regarding the judiciary, as well as measures that would increase civilian control of the military. Throughout the country’s history, the military has a played a major role in Turkish politics, and it continues to be a popular institution: 72% say it is having a very or somewhat good influence on the way things are going in Turkey. However, this is down from 85% in 2007. And the number of Turks who believe the military is having a very good impact has declined from 57% to 30% over this period. Confidence in the military has dropped most steeply among the nation’s Kurdish population – just 37% of Kurds give the military a positive rating, compared with 64% in the 2007 poll.
A mock constitutional reform ballot box in Istanbul
On September 12, Turks will go to the ballot box to vote on a much-debated constitutional reform package. Most people probably don't know what they are voting on exactly. What they do know is that voting "yes" (or "evet" in Turkish) equals a vote of confidence for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and that vote "no" (or "hayir") is a way of thumbing their nose at the government. While Turkey is in deep need of major constitutional reform, the reform package being presented to voters is modest and appears designed more as a political tool than a real reform effort. That, at least, is the conclusion made by Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Bilgi University, in an analysis piece for the German Marshall Fund. From his article:
On September 12, Turkey will hold a referendum on proposed amendments to its constitution. The proposed changes are aimed at broadening the constitution’s democratic content, expanding and reorganizing the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors, and making the architects of the 1980 military intervention subject to prosecution. The need to change many features of the 1982 constitution might have provided the opportunity for the government and opposition to demonstrate agreement on the basic characteristics of the political system, even while disagreeing on policy matters. However, the prime minister appears to have wanted to exploit the constitutional changes to further polarization, which he feels has worked well for him. Irrespective of the outcome of the September 12 referendum, constitutional reform, rather than serving as an opportunity for integration, has created yet another occasion for reinforcing the deep cleavages in Turkish politics.
Van, a city in far eastern Turkey, is a place that runs on breakfast. The town is crammed with small restaurants, known as "Kahvalti Salonu," that serve nothing but breakfast all day long. And not just any breakfast, but a monstrous, multi-item thing that puts other meals to shame.
Robyn Eckhardt, writer of the Eating Asia blog, recently wrote about the Van breakfast (and it's recent arrival in Istanbul) for the Daily Zester food site. From her piece:
As Philadelphia is to cheesesteak so Van is to kahvalti, or breakfast. The city is dotted with single-purpose kahvalti salonu (breakfast "salons"), and its downtown boasts a "Kahvalti Caddesi" (Breakfast Street) where, in accommodating weather, patrons hover over impressive spreads at outdoor tables. Eaten in, taken out or delivered to one's door, Van kahvalti is an anytime-of-day meal. The only rule is that it be hearty.
One of the more interesting and significant recent developments regarding the Kurdish issue in Turkey has been the growing talk about increasing political autonomy for the predominantly-Kurdish southeast region. Such talk has been bubbling under the surface for years, but it has become more pronounced recently, with Kurdish politicians speaking more openly about their vision for a more autonomous Kurdish region within Turkey.
Following up on this development, the Hurriyet Daily News has a very interesting interview with Gultan Kisanak, co-chair of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party. From the interview:
“Turkey’s strong centralist structure causes problems. There is a need to transfer some authority, responsibility and financial resources to the local governments,” she said. “[Strengthening local administrations] was already a matter of discussion in the country as part of its negotiations with the EU. But the government came out against it.”
According to Kışanak, the project envisages the creation of 26 political and administrative regions, each with the democratic means to self-govern. “There are 81 provinces and thousands of districts. They can no longer be ruled from one center,” Kışanak said.
The party has also proposed the establishment of regional parliaments that would have their own flags and symbols.
Last month, Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir brought the idea to the public’s attention when he said having the Kurdish flag fly next to the Turkish flag would be a good method of solving the problem. A prosecutor, however, launched a probe against him for the statement.
Rejans, a veteran Russian restaurant in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, is one of those institution's that over time has become less about the food (which get middling reviews) and more about the memories it evokes. Founded by Russian refugees nearly 80 years ago, the restaurant has played host to, among others, Agatha Christie and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's secularizing founder. For many older Istanbulites, the name Rejans still evokes memories of a bygone era, when Istanbul was a truly a cosmopolitan city.
After all these years, though, it now seems that the restaurant's future is in jeopardy, with a legal battle brewing between Rejans's owner and the people who have the lease to run it whose end result could be the creation of a new restaurant in the place where Rejans today stands. The Hurriyet Daily News has the full (and very confusing) story here.
