FIRST POST, NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The Turkish Trial of the Century opened last month among scenes of pandemonium. With 86 defendants present, proceedings were temporarily adjourned for lack of space. The indictment against the alleged members of Ergenekon numbers 2,455 pages - the indictment of the Nazi high command at Nuremburg was less than 70 - and the defendants demanded every last page of it be read out loud. Some poor schlub of a prosecutor dutifully droned on, page after page, day after day. Arguments broke out over the appropriateness of uttering the swearwords in a courtroom. After a week of this the defendants were so bored that the courtroom emptied out and the journalists secretly prayed for a bomb to go off, if only to relieve the tedium.

If you're trying to make sense of this, remember that Turkish politics are like the adage about the Arabic lexicon: any given word may mean a thing, its opposite, or a camel. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. Neither does Ergenekon.

Without the right political, social and moral institutions, it's just a utopian theory.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
October 21, 2008

CITY JOURNAL
October 18, 2008

Democrats prepare to follow Margaret Thatcher’s example—but backward.

The American, August 8, 2008

ISTANBUL—Last week, Turkey’s Constitutional Court achieved what many here, including me, thought impossible. Since March, when the chief prosecutor launched a case to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for undermining Turkish secularism, Turkey appeared to be possessed by a collective national will to achieve total political self-immolation. The Court’s verdict stopped the juggernaut, leaving the country rubbing its eyes in wonderment and gratitude.

Pajamas Media, July 29, 2008

On Sunday night, two consecutive explosions in the Güngören district of Istanbul--a poor, crowded, conservative slum near the Atatürk International Airport--killed 17 people, among them five children. The death toll may yet rise. Some 150 more were injured and maimed. It is still unclear who placed the bombs. No one has claimed responsibility. But the terrorist Kurdish organization--the PKK--is the chief suspect.

THE AMERICAN
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Is the ruling party of Prime Minister Erdoğan a threat to Turkish democracy? Five experts share their thoughts.

New York Sun, March 21, 2008
A Review of Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East

In suggesting that Islamic extremism may be, if not a spent force in the Middle East, no longer the most dynamic or important one, Robin Wright has more credibility than most. In 1983, Ms. Wright surveyed the wreckage of the United States Embassy in Beirut. Beneath it lay the remains of her friends. Two years later, Ms. Wright wrote “Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam.” The title is self-explanatory and its thesis, unfortunately, has hardly passed into obscurity."

The Sunday Times, February, 2006
by Maurice Chittenden

White Teeth was a whitewash, says Muslim who inspired prizewinning novel's central character

WHITE TEETH, the novel that made Britain feel good about the state of its race relations, has been accused of whitewashing the truth by the real-life model for one of its characters.

by John Hawkins, September 2006

John Hawkins: Why are Europeans so secular compared to Americans?

Claire Berlinski: American religiosity doesn't need to be explained; after all, throughout history, in every civilization, people have believed in the supernatural. What needs to be explained is European atheism, which is the aberration-unique in the world and in human history. It has its origins in politics, I think, not metaphysics. Voltaire was of the view that it is not so much the intrinsic power of the argument for atheism that caused people to reject faith, but rather the corruption of the Church, and largely I agree with him. Before the French Revolution, there were no atheists in Europe. Heretics, sure. But atheists? Unheard of.