By Dilara Yentür – At 04:17 on February 6th, 2023 an earthquake ravaged the lands of southern Turkey and northern Syria. Buildings crumbled like sandcastles, roads tore apart, and the silence of the night was…
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By Matthias Teeuwen Last Thursday Professor Thijl Sunier gave a lecture on the backlash in the Netherlands of the coup attempt in Turkey in July. The room was packed with students, faculty members and other people interested in the subject. What Sunier particularly succeeded in, was challenging and debunking the assumption that the concern Turkish-Dutch citizens showed with the coup and its consequences was an indication of failed integration on the part of these Turkish-Dutch citizens. Sunier argued that this is not a case of failed integration; instead, this is a case of the complex and transnational interplay between religion, citizenship and politics.
Door Hikmet Özenç Demirkan
An outstanding social movement is taking place in Turkey almost for two weeks. The protest has started with a small group against demolishment of Istanbul Gezi Park and replacement of the park with a shopping mall. Police got remarkable violent towards the peaceful protesters and the second day the number of protesters reached to tens of thousands. Police kept on increasing their attacks by using excessive amount of tear gas, pepper spray and pressurized water. With an ambush at the dawn protesters shot by water cannons and tear gas from multiple entrances of the Park. Tents were collected by the police and the park closed down to public reach. Some photos and videos show that police burnt a tent while some protesters were in it. The increasing police brutality triggered more and more people to join the protests.
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Maja Lovrenovi? Somewhere between Göreme and Nev?eher, the towns in the Cappadocia province of Central Turkey, in an underground restaurant carved into the famed regional volcanic sediments, a tightly seated crowd of tourists was awaiting for performers to appear on the stage area in the middle of a huge circular cave-like space. We had all been shuttled there in tourist buses, to enjoy raki, meze and the “whirling dervishes”. We had been told beforehand that the dance performance is not the actual trance-reaching Mevlevi ritual of sema, but in the same note nevertheless kindly asked not to take pictures until the lights are turned on at the end of the act. The dancers might get distracted by the camera flashes, it had been explained to us, as they need to concentrate on the whirling movement “just as the real dervishes used to do”.
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