[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Turkey launched the Arabic version of its official TV last Sunday. Called “TRT Arabic,” the channel is expected to reach 350 million people throughout the Arab world. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who spoke at the opening ceremony, noted that it marked “a historic day for Turkish-Arab friendship,” initiating an era of “brotherhood, unity and solidarity” between the two peoples.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
I spent last weekend in Mardin, a must-see Turkish city. Located near the Syrian border, it is a home of Arabs, Kurds, and Syriac Christians, along with various other religious groups some of which you might have not even heard. Moreover, placed on the skirts of a magnificent hill, the city is full of centuries-old mosques, churches and homes, giving the looks of a truly medieval town. Everything you see is breathtakingly old, natural and authentic.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
This week, an interesting debate on an interesting topic took place in Turkey.
First, Selma Aliye Kavaf, the minister who is responsible for “women’s and family affairs,” said something pretty tough about gays. “Homosexuality,” she argued, “is a biological disorder and a disease that needs treatment.”
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Well, with a headline like the above, I know that I am on dangerous ground. Shariah, which roughly means Islamic law, is a toxic word for good reasons. Lots of horrific things are happening in our world by those who claim to implement this legal tradition. Shariah-imposing countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are dictatorships that systematically violate human rights. The latter is especially hellish for its women.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Yet another horrible honor killing took place in the southeast, the least developed part of Turkey. A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by her relatives simply for befriending boys. Forensic experts found soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that the poor kid was conscious while being buried into the ground.
May God have mercy on her soul. And may her killers face punishment in this world and the next. What they did was cruel, monstrous and evil.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Alas, it happened again. An extremist Muslim attacked a Westerner to punish him for “mocking Islam.” This time, the victim was the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed had sparked a worldwide storm five years ago. A 28-year-old man of Somali origin broke into the cartoonist’s home last Friday, wielding an axe and a knife. “We will get our revenge,” he reportedly yelled, before being shot by the police and taken under custody.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
It happens toward every year’s end. The more Westernized part of Turkish society warms up for New Year’s Eve. Decorations are put up, parties are organized, and restaurants advertise eat-and-dance-all-night-long programs. Santa Clauses and pine trees show up in upscale malls.
The Turks who embrace these Christmas symbols often have no idea about Christ. They just like the lifestyle of the wealthy, happy and joyful people they see in Hollywood movies.
Yet another belated post: My book review of Islam and The Secular State by Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im. It was published in the December 2008 issue of First Things, a monthly theology magazine.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
The boldest headline that President Obama’s visit to Turkey gave the world media was a simple reaffirmation. “The U.S is not and will never be,” he said, “at war with Islam.”
For many Muslims, it was good to hear this because they had really started to suspect that there was a “war on Islam” launched by the American government. In fact, no significant U.S. official had ever said anything close to that. Some of the policies of the Bush administration, from the Iraq War to Guantanamo to “rendition” created doubts and fears. Moreover, some Republican pundits and ideologues, which people perceived as the real mind of the Bush team, engaged in fear mongering about Islam. All these, at the very least, left a bad taste in the mouths of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Since Israel started its brutal onslaught in Gaza, I have been receiving dozens of emails everyday about the nature of the conflict and the parties involved. Most of these fall into two distinct narratives that are 180 degrees opposite.
My Muslim friends are telling me that Israel is “the real terrorist,” that its goal is to annihilate or enslave the Palestinian people, and it is responsible for not just the current bloodshed but also the 60-year-old tragedy in the Holy Land. My American or Israeli friends, on the other hand, are telling me the exact opposite. The problem is Arabs, they say, who never accepted Israel’s right to exist. Hamas, for them, is responsible for the carnage in Gaza. Israel, they argue, is only defending itself against this fanatic group.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
I have great sympathy for the Palestinian people. They are my co-religionists with whom I share a common history and culture. Every now and then I recall with nostalgia that the Ottoman Sultans, living in my home city, Istanbul, used to rule Palestine for centuries in a way that made it possible for its people live in peace and security. And I feel deeply sad about what happened to them after we Turks were forced to leave the Holy Land during World War I.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
The Israeli air force has been bombing the Gaza Strip since last Saturday. As of yesterday, the death toll was over 400 hundred. According to the United Nations, a quarter of these people were women and children. The wounded, which again included hundreds of innocent civilians, were calculated to be more than 1,000.
Now let’s stop there and think for a second. I repeat: the Israeli war machine has killed around 100 innocent civilians. Some children died bleeding in their mother’s arms, others were burned alive.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Zeynep Fadillioglu is a Turkish designer known for creating some of the most stylish lounges and nightclubs in Istanbul. As a winner of the Andrew Martin International Designer of the Year award, her fame, and that of her husband, restaurateur Meto, has gone beyond Turkey.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
WASHINGTON – In his recent book, “The Obama Nation,” conservative pundit Jerome Robert Corsi was criticizing the growing popularity of the then Democratic presidential candidate. If he wants to keep on, he might now consider writing a sequel: “The Obama Nations.” For now not just millions of Americans, but also billions of foreigners are inspired by the hope that the African-American president-elect spreads.
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
HO CHI MINH CITY – Some of the most striking images of the ’70s were from the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese forces. After a bloody war that lasted for two decades, the Vietcong had finally captured this capital city of U.S.-supported South Vietnam in April 1975. While the Americans were hastily evacuating their personnel, the gates of the Presidential Palace, which used to host the pro-U.S. leaders of the south, were crushed by tanks of the People’s Army of Vietnam. It was a victorious day for communism — and a tragic one for capitalism.
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
The mighty Tsahal, the Israeli military, recently carried an air attack over the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The reason was the Qassam rockets that Hamas militants have been firing into the Jewish state for quite some time. After a week-long offensive, more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs. At least 25 of them were civilians, including nine children and three women.
Then the Israelis decided to end their bombings. “This operation has run its course,” said the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon. “This is certainly deterrence.”
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
This might not be the most politically correct thing to say, but I cannot resist the temptation to proclaim the truth: Most Turkish women are horrible drivers. You will see what I mean if you spend a couple of years, or even months, in Turkish streets. If there is a car in front of you which is too slow, too undecided, and too paralyzed, there is 95 percent change that a lady will be sitting in its driver seat. Indeed, it is a truism among Turkish men that “women can’t drive.”
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Music has not saved the world, as some pot smoking flower-powerists used to believe it would in the 1960s. Yet musicians have occasionally uttered words of wisdom that might have helped us calm our hypes. Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known by his stage name Sting, once gave one such message of restraint. In one of his greatest songs, “The Russians,” released very timely in 1985, Sting sang the following:
“In Europe and America,
There is a growing feeling of hysteria,
Conditioned to respond to all the threats,
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets.
Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you,
[But] I don’t subscribe to this point of view,
It would be such an ignorant thing to do,
If the Russians love their children, too.”
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
EL ESCORIAL – The medieval monks who built the giant Monastery of El Escorial couldn’t have imagined that their all-Catholic civitas dei would someday host hot debates on the future of political Islam. Yet that’s exactly what happened here, in this little Spanish town located some 45 kilometers northwest of Madrid, this week. The “political Islam” in question was Turkey’s incumbent AKP, the Justice and Development Party, and its namesake in Morocco, the Parti de la Justice et du Développement.
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Mehdi Zana, the former mayor of Diyarbakır and a prominent figure among Turkey’s Kurdish nationalists, has made the news twice in the past weeks with his claims on Kurdish history. First, he argued that Kurds simply had a brighter record before Islam. Second, as we read in the weekly news magazine Aksiyon, he claimed that the authentic religion of the Kurds is Zoroastrianism. They later converted to Islam, according to Zana, “due to the fear of the sword,” and “as a big mistake.”
Talks, interviews and TV appearances »»
Visit Akyol's Turkish-language website.