Although many note the explosion of corruption during the Özal years, the mentality that led to this state of affairs can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire. Bribery was not, of course, a uniquely Ottoman tradition, and in fact the early Ottoman sultans were known for their intolerance of corruption. But the later ones were not. This is chronicled by Ottoman historian Halil İnalcık in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire:
Turkey’s YouTube Ban Is Cause For Concern
RADIO FREE EUROPE
July 08, 2009
Very few people in Turkey are exercised by the YouTube blackout, now in its second year. Despite the ban, the video-sharing site is believed to be the ninth most popular site in Turkey. Almost every Internet user — from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the humblest teenage porn connoisseur — knows how to circumvent it with proxy browsers. “I get in,” Erdogan told reporters in November, 2008. “You can do so as well.”
Make Way For the New Europeans
Washington Post
Sunday, August 9, 2009
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN EUROPE
Immigration, Islam, and the West
By Christopher Caldwell
Doubleday. 422 pp. $30
“Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” — an allusion to Burke — is the latest in a series of pessimistic books, my own included, treating the conflict between post-Christian Europe and a resurgent Islam. Christopher Caldwell, an editor of the Weekly Standard and contributor to the Financial Times, makes arguments that have been made elsewhere: Mass immigration has changed Europe’s demography and is rapidly changing its culture. Many immigrants to Europe have failed to assimilate; many retain or have developed an Islamic identity antithetical to liberal European values.
Subtergenekon and Other Crimes
In Turkey, alleged terrorism requires a brand-new vocabulary.
CITY JOURNAL
3 January 2012
George Orwell’s greatest act of genius was the invention of Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, devised to meet the ideological needs of “Ingsoc,” or English Socialism. Explaining the nature of a mass trial in Turkey likewise requires the construction of a language all its own.
Supping Full with Horrors: A social evening with Turkish outcasts
CITY JOURNAL
April 23, 2012
I came back late at night from the Distinguished Physician’s special dinner party for minorities, Leftists, and persecuted journalists. His villa in Istanbul overlooks the once-picturesque cove of Tarabya on the European shore of the Bosphorus. It is still picturesque, if you look only to your right. Harold Nicolson wrote of this view:
“To the south, fringing the soft lip of the Marmora, another ruin; the frail façade of a palace on the shore. Three marble arches opening to the sea: the carved brackets of a fallen balcony, the waves below splashing on heavy capitals half-buried in the sand.
Continue reading Supping Full with Horrors: A social evening with Turkish outcasts
Davos on Tour in Istanbul
THE NATIONAL INTEREST
June 8, 2012
The arrival of the World Economic Forum in Istanbul this week was overshadowed in the Turkish media by the arrival of Madonna and her entourage, although there was a symmetry in events—massive security, caravans of expensive cars with tinted windows, snarled traffic and cab drivers cursing them all. Tagging behind the Material Girl was her twenty-four-year-old lover, Brahim Zaibat; tagging behind Turkey’s mercurial prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. In both cases, the pair looked every inch the happy couple.
Turkey’s Sex, Lies and Videotapes
Gatestone Institute
June 26, 2012
TURKEY’S SUPREME COURT PUTS BLACKMAILERS IN AWKWARD POSITION
The news from Turkey, journalists here always complain, comes so hard and fast that they just can’t keep up with it. The Supreme Court obviously decided to take pity on them last week by declaring war on porn. Now, they didn’t criminalize all porn—let’s not exaggerate here—but the Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that anyone in possession of videos depicting oral or anal sex may be sentenced to prison.
Turkey: A Baffling 24 Hours In Istanbul
It’s now easier to get news from Mars than Hakkari
August 9, 2012
GATESTONE INTERNATIONAL POLICY COUNCIL
I confess freely that I’m finding it difficult to make sense of recent events in Turkey, and I submit that anyone offering a confident analysis is exaggerating either his access or his analytic acumen. There is obviously a great deal happening; but the people who understand it aren’t talking, and the people who are talking don’t understand it.
A Phantom Wrapped in an Enigma Wrapped in a Riddle
Why we should worry about Turkey’s missing jet
GATESTONE INTERNATIONAL POLICY COUNCIL
August 11, 2012
It is apparently lore at the Economist that foreign correspondents have a shelf life of three years. After this, they know too much. They become too involved in the minutiae of local politics to explain a story to their domestic audience. Then, of course, there is the famous State Department “clientitis” problem—diplomats, it is said, need to be rotated out in roughly the same amount of time lest they begin to understand the host country’s point of view a bit too well.
Continue reading A Phantom Wrapped in an Enigma Wrapped in a Riddle
Who Is Fethullah Gülen?
CITY JOURNAL
AUTUMN 2012
Controversial Muslim preacher, feared Turkish intriguer—and “inspirer” of the largest charter school network in America.
With the American economy in shambles, Europe imploding, and the Middle East in chaos, convincing Americans that they should pay attention to a Turkish preacher named Fethullah Gülen is an exceedingly hard sell. Many Americans have never heard of him, and if they have, he sounds like the least of their worries.