Stump speeches? Election promises? Party platforms? Forget about those boring old things. What really appear to be making a difference in how the upcoming Turkish parliamentary elections will turn out are surreptitiously recorded "sex tapes" that have caught some of Turkey's top politicians with literally their pants down.
The outcome of the June election is already a foregone conclusion, with most pollsters predicting that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will again cruise to an easy victory and hold on to a strong majority in the 550-seat Turkish parliament. The main opposition Republican Peoples' Party (CHP) is expected to do better than last time around, when it received around 20 percent of the vote, almost solely because the party was finally able to get rid of its long-term leader, Deniz Baykal, a year ago. Baykal, of course, was forced to resign after a mysterious video recording was posted online showing the 71-year-old and his (not much younger) former secretary engaged in some fairly tame hanky panky. It's not clear if the tape was a successfully executed inside job or a hit job that backfired, but either way, thanks to it the CHP has been able to execute a successful makeover (see this previous Eurasianet article for more on this).
Foreign Policy's website has an interesting story up by veteran Turkey-correspondent Andrew Finkel about the "dark side" of Istanbul's rapid growth: overdevelopment and environmental degradation. From his piece:
....while Istanbul is already on the way to becoming the commercial capital of a region well beyond Turkey's frontiers, the city's ambitions know no end. Recessions in Europe and rebellions in North Africa have only strengthened the conviction that the tide is drifting Turkey's way -- that, if it plays its cards right, Istanbul can become the new London or Hong Kong.
Yet the city's confidence may turn out to be its curse. Relentless urban expansion threatens to lay siege to the former imperial capital and scrub away its natural beauty.
The full article, well worth reading, can be found here.
Human Rights Watch has an interesting new report out that looks at domestic violence in Turkey and the gap between the laws that are in place to protect women and how those laws are being (or, actually, not being) applied.
"With strong laws in place, it is inexcusable that Turkish authorities are depriving family violence victims of basic protections," Gauri van Gulik, women's rights advocate and researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, said in a release. "Turkey has gone through exemplary reform on women's human rights, but police, prosecutors, judges, and social workers need to make the system exemplary in practice, not just on paper."
The writer and illustrator of a comic book that portrays modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, being beaten and bloodied, could face prison time for insulting the memory of the iconic figure. More details here. And an article of mine about the ongoing struggle over just how to portray Ataturk on the big screen here.
For months now, rumors have been swirling around Turkey that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was getting ready to unveil what was being dubbed a "crazy project." Well, that day has arrived. Erdogan has told a conference audience that he plans to initiate a project to build a canal near Istanbul that will connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, thus allowing ships to bypass the Bosphorus Straits, which cut through the heart of the city.
According to reports, preliminary studies for the some 50 kilometer long canal, which would be built west of Istanbul, will take two years. There has been no mention of cost, but Erdogan reportedly said that Turkey -- which, it is worth nothing, is approaching parliamentary elections this summer -- will have no problem financing it. More details here.
[UPDATE -- There are some interesting legal questions surrounding the possibility of Turkey building an alternative route to the Bosphorus Straits. Traffic through the straits is currently regulated by an international treaty dating to the 1930's which essentially guarantees ships free passage through them. So the big question is whether Turkey can actually force ships to go through the proposed new canal it plans to build? More on that here.]
Istanbul, a city of already perhaps 17 million people, continues to grow at a rapid rate that many fear is simply unsustainable. How to deal with the city's potential growth crisis? Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party and its head, former Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are suggesting a plan that would ease the city's growth by building two whole new cities on its outskirts, the idea apparently being that the new developments will siphon off Istanbul's population growth.
Critics are wondering, though, if that plan will really do the trick or will just make things worse. More here.
AFP has a great story about a new Kurdish effort to establish cooperative agricultural communities in Turkey's southeast region. The story tells about the creation of the first of these villages, where a group of 48 pioneering families have broken ground on a new community. From the story:
The 48 Kurdish families last month descended from their crowded rented apartments on the outskirts of the city of Viransehir, rolled up their sleeves and started work on a vast, green plain surrounded by far-away mountains.
"This should be a message to the state, which believes that we are dependent on it. No, we can build our lives on our own and this is proof," said one of the builders, Huseyin Aksoy.
Such villages are being promoted by Kurdish grouping the Democratic Society Congress, not just to build homes but also to promote peace and lay foundations for a "new life" in a region scarred by war and chronic poverty….
….This "peace village" will be named Ax u Av which means "soil and water" in Kurdish.
It will be organised as a farming cooperative based on a system of "democratic autonomy" that even allows children above the age of six into decision-making processes.
This initiative follows a general trend that is developing in Turkey's Kurdish movement, which is emphasizing moves towards greater political and cultural autonomy in the southeast. More on that in this previous post.
The alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink has a new explanation for why he killed the writer: he was driven to commit the crime by headlines in the Turkish media. From Bianet:
At the second hearing of triggerman suspect Ogün Samast at the Juvenile High Criminal Court, Samast said that he was not guilty of killing journalist Hrant Dink but the headlines that called him a traitor. "Where are they now?" Samast asked.
Ogün Samast is the prime suspect of the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007. Dink was editor-in-chief of the Armenian Agos newspaper at the time. The hearing at the Juvenile Court in Gülhane (Istanbul) on Tuesday (5 April) was held under broad security measures in the court house and its environment.
Samast presented a letter he had written to the court at the Tuesday hearing. He wrote, "I am not guilty. Guilty are the headlines that showed Dink as a traitor. I removed the rubbish in front of me; now the ones who wrote those headlines should think. Where are they now, the ones who brought me that far? I would not even know the Agos newspaper. Today, I would sit down with Hrant Dink and talk to him".
Although Samast, who was 18 at the time of the killing, is the main suspect in the 2007 murder of Dink, it is charged that elements in Turkey's police and security forces were complicit in the act. Dink and his writings were frequent targets of Turkey's nationalist press and the journalist had also been convicted by a court for "insulting Turkishness."
Turkey's grueling annual university entrance exams, which determine which institutions of higher learning students will be able to go to, are usually aced through practice and study. But allegations -- some of the politically driven -- have surfaced that some students may have taken this year's exam with the help of a code that would allow them to mark down the right answers, already leading to streets protests from students who are crying foul. From the AP:
Turkish prosecutors are looking into allegations of possible cheating and favoritism in a rite of passage for young Turks nationwide: the annual university entrance exam.
The allegations were raised this week after a lawyer discovered a formula to reach the correct answers for multiple-choice math questions on one exam.
In a country rife with conspiracy theories, the discovery fueled suspicions by some media, students and teacher unions that the state agency which makes the exams devised the alleged code so that students deemed to be pro-government could score high points.
The government vigorously denied such a scheme, but the prosecutor's office in Ankara, the Turkish capital, launched a probe Wednesday into the allegations.
The scandal feeds into mistrust between supporters of Turkey's ruling Islamic-rooted party, which has a strong electoral mandate, and those who fear the government seeks to expand its power so as to undermine secular ideals protected by the constitution.
The International Press Institute is highlighting a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that claims that there are currently some 57 journalists jailed in Turkey -- more than any other country. From the IPI article:
The International Press Institute (IPI) today obtained a report from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) indicating that Turkey is currently holding at least 57 journalists in prison – apparently more than any other country.
The report followed an analysis of more than 70 journalists the OSCE conducted in conjunction with Erol Önderoğlu, editor-in-chief of the BIANET Independent Communications Network in Istanbul.
While Iran and China topped lists last December by reportedly jailing some 34 journalists each, Turkey, a candidate for membership in the European Union, has nearly doubled that number five months later, raising questions about the country’s commitment to freedom of the press and the legitimacy of its democratic image.
Some of the incarcerated journalists are awaiting trial on charges connected to the ongoing Ergenekon coup investigation (take a look at this previous post), but many of the jailed journalists are ones who have written about the Kurdish issue or work for pro-Kurdish media outlets and have been put behind bars through Turkey's anti-terrorism laws. According to the IPI reports, some 700-1000 more journalists are currently facing court proceedings that could put them in jail.
