Turkish Forum

Category: World

  • TREASON TIME WITH TRAVIS

    TREASON TIME WITH TRAVIS

    I’m standin’ here. You make the move. You make the move. It’s your move. Huh?
    You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? 
    Well, then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? 
    You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.

    Travis Bickle,  TAXI DRIVER

    TR32

    TREASON TIME WITH TRAVIS

     

    TREASON: The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.

    MISPRISION OF TREASON:The deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony.

    Hey Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu! Hey you! I’m talkin’ to you! I’m talkin’ to you, Mister Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The leader of the that sissy-boy “opposition” party! What are you doing? All the time backin’ off, backin’ off, talkin’ away at the parliament like it all means somethin’. It don’t mean nothin’ to me and people like me, that’s for sure. Takin’ it, takin’ it for years you’ve been takin’ it from that religious mob that lies, cheats and steals like a plague of cancer. And you, playin’ word games with them while they destroy your country. Not smart, Kılıçdaroğlu, not smart at all. Them guys stole everything…everything, even the mosques and the police and the army for God’s sake. And where the hell were you, Mr. Opposition Party Big Shot? They even stole the mountains and the forests and the trees and the streets and the air and they even got the big ships. And you? You got the baby carriage and the garbage pail. And you’re the only one there, you’re the boss. So pay attention, understand? I’m talkin’ to you…man-to-man, I’m talkin’ to you! You got that? Good, because here’s a man who won’t take it anymore. Not from these government criminals destroyin’ our country while you and your rabbits sit on your collective duffs. They embarrass me, these people, so stupid they are. They think we’re stupid too and that’s the worst part. That, and lookin’ at you and your boys hangin’ around all day in them big red chairs waitin’ for the word to come from their big boss. Then you all jump up like hungry dogs at chicken bones. You try to be clever in your retorts but you don’t say nothin’ and you embarrass us a second time. So do somethin’, Kılıçdaroğlu, somethin’ with courage. I drive a taxi all day and all night. And that takes courage. So you do likewise, be brave and earn some respect. Walk out of that cesspool of a parliament. Leave shoe boxes on your desks as complementary mementos to the thieves-in-charge. Then all of you take a hike over to the criminal court and file those treason and misprision of treason cases against the gangster government. And throw in the American ambassador and his fellow agents for good luck. And we the people will hail you in the streets.

    We’ll show them, won’t we Kemal? You’re the main opposition man! You can be the big dude prime minister even without kissin’ America’s feet. And I’m gonna get you in shape right now. Too much sittin’ is ruinin’ your body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on, it will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There’ll be no more pills, there’ll be no more bad food, no more destroyers of your body. From now on, it will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight. I’m one of your biggest supporters, you know. I tell everybody that comes in this taxi that they have to vote for you. You understand? Are you still lookin’ at me? Good, because I’m lookin’ at you…hard!

    Mr. Travis Bickle
    Somewhere in traffic in Istanbul
    25 December 2013

  • Mandela was a true freedom fighter

    Mandela was a true freedom fighter

    It is with sadness that I heard of the news of Mzee Nelson Mandela’s death.

    Museveni-ICCThe sad and heroic story of Mzee Mandela starts in 1453 AD when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople (Istanbul as it is called today) from the Byzantine empire.

    That capture blocked the overland route from Europe to Asia that had been established by Marco Polo many centuries before.

    That route was important to Europe especially for spices and silk trade.

    With that blockage, the Europeans started looking for an alternative sea route to the east, around the massive African continent.

    Prince Henry, the navigator, of Portugal established a naval school at Cadiz to improve on the construction of ships and on navigation techniques so that they could have ships that could withstand long ocean voyages to Asia, around Africa.

    This is not the time and place to go into the details of that European effort of circumventing the Moslem blockade.

    Suffice it to say that by 1498, a mere 45 years after the fall of Constantinople, the Portuguese, Vasco Da Gama, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town) and spent the Christmas of that year at Natal, that is why that area was so named, remembering the birth of Christ.

    With the discovery of the sea route to the Far East by the Europeans, that is where the sad but also heroic story of Nelson Mandela and Africa begins. Initially, the Europeans came as traders, establishing refuelling and replenishment stations for their ships on the way to the Far East.

    Within a few centuries, however, the traders had become the colonisers. The sad thing is that while all this was unfolding, the African chiefs and other leaders never made serious efforts to co-ordinate in order to guarantee our future as free people. Yes, various tribes fought the colonialists. However, the co-ordination was either not there or too late.

    On account of internal weaknesses within Africa, therefore, by the birth of Mzee Mandela in 1918, the whole of African continent, except for Ethiopia, had been colonized. Therefore, Mandela had the misfortune of being born under colonialism like many of us were.

    Various individuals reacted differently to this situation.  Many acquiesced and accepted colonialism or even collaborated with it. However, a few others like Mandela, Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, etc., chose the difficult, hard route of resistance to colonialism.

    That resistance invited reprisals from the oppressors. The African National Congress (ANC) people are more qualified to go into the details of that resistance by the party and the individuals that were involved. On account of our Pan-Africanist orientation, we linked up with the ANC in 1967 in Dar esSalaam.

    Ever since that time, the NRM, or its precursors, have been working closely with the liberation movements of southern Africa – ZANU, ZAPU, FRELIMO, ANC, SWAPO, MPLA, etc, etc.

    The resistance of all the colonized peoples in the world had benefitted from three factors: the continued resistance of those colonised peoples, the fratricidal fighting among the imperialists (the first and second World Wars); and the solidarity from the socialist countries (Soviet Union, China, etc, ever since 1917).

    That resistance had led to some of the cleverer imperialists giving back the freedom of the people peacefully, examples being India and many of the African countries, including Uganda. However, those who were not so clever, such as Portugal and the Boers of South Africa and Rhodesia, thought they could maintain their colonial or minority and racist regimes.

    It was the lot of freedom fighters like Mzee Mandela and his colleagues to sacrifice and fight those regimes. Mzee Mandela spent almost the whole of his adult life fighting for freedom, starting as a youth in the 1940s.

    Eventually, he went to jail where he spent 27 years. Out of his 95 years on earth, given to him by God, it is only in the last 22 years, since 1991, that he has lived as a free man. What a sacrifice!!

    Even those 22 last years of his life, he was not out of danger. Did I not recently hear of South African racists that were plotting to kill him for fighting for freedom?

    Didn’t Chris Hani die, shot dead, when South Africa was preparing for the first democratic elections? Chris Hani had been at Rwakitura to visit me where I tried to prevail on him not to go back to South Africa yet, but in vain.

    Mzee Mandela and his colleagues in the ANC have fulfilled their mission of throwing out the oppressors. It is the duty of the present generation to immunize Africa against future colonisation.

    Salutations to the sacrifices and achievements of Mzee Mandela and his colleagues.

    The author is the president of Uganda.

    via The Observer – Mandela was a true freedom fighter.

  • Turkey: How Conscription Reform Will Change the Military

    Turkey: How Conscription Reform Will Change the Military

     

    Analysis

    November 18, 2013 | 0522 Print Text Size

    TURKEY
    Turkish soldiers commemorate the anniversary of Victory Day in Ankara on Aug. 30. (ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images)

    Summary

    A large, conscripted military may no longer be the most appropriate way for Turkey to protect its interests and defend against external threats. Ankara appears to have acknowledged as much Oct. 21, when it voted to reduce the length of time conscripted soldiers are required to serve. The measure, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2014, will effectively shrink the military by 70,000 members. This is no small diminution, considering that Turkey, with its 750,000 soldiers, has the second-largest military among NATO members. Political and economic considerations may have informed Ankara’s decision, but ultimately the move was made to reflect the changing geopolitical conditions under which Turkey now finds itself.

    Analysis

    Historically, Turkey’s location and geography has necessitated a robust military. Located at the crossroads between Asia and Europe, the country was critical terrain during the Cold War. In 1952, Turkey became a member of NATO, serving as the southwestern bulwark against the Warsaw Pact. It mustered a large standing military by establishing compulsory service for all Turkish men. Though the Cold War ended two decades ago, Turkey has maintained this practice.

    Conscription is mandated by the Turkish Constitution, but the legislature determines how it will be enacted. Currently, a healthy Turkish man with no college education serves for 15 months. Prior to 2003, the minimum requirement was 18 months. The upcoming change will reduce this term to 12 months. Of course, there are some exceptions to the mandate. Men with college education have a shorter commitment of six to 12 months, and men over the age of 30 can buy their way out of service for a fee.

    Exemptions notwithstanding, conscripts constitute the majority of Turkish service members, comprising some 500,000 soldiers. With such a short service time, many conscripts fail to gain experience after their basic training. As a result, the Turkish military has a small professional core that is augmented by lightly trained forces.

    Old Structures, New Threats

    This structure made sense during the Cold War, when Turkey was facing similarly structured Soviet and Soviet-backed militaries. Mobilizing an entire population of even lightly trained service members, should the need arise, certainly has its advantages. But times have changed, as have Turkey’s primary strategic threats. Whereas once the country was confronted with the prospect of a Soviet ground invasion, it now contends with domestic terrorism, Kurdish insurgents and, more recently, border issues with neighboring Syria, still in the throes of civil war. Smaller, more agile professional forces, along with Turkey’s paramilitary forces, are better suited to address these security concerns.

    However, force structures are not determined by threats alone. For decades, the Turkish military acted as the guardian of the Kemalist principles upon which the country was founded. Maintaining a large standing army helped the military extend its influence into the political affairs of the state. But the rise and political consolidation of the ruling Justice and Development Party over the past decade has severely undermined the Turkish military’s political influence. The mere sight of once-invulnerable Turkish generals in jail confirms that Turkey’s civilian political leadership has supplanted the military establishment.

    Clearly, there is a political element to the conscription reform, as evidenced by the Justice and Development Party’s political consolidation and its imperative to curb the military’s influence. Equally important, a presidential election will take place in 2014 and general elections in 2015. A circumscribed military service requirement will likely buy the ruling party considerable political capital among voters, many of whom would rather study, work and earn a living than perform an increasingly archaic social service.

    Aside from political considerations, military modernization and increasingly capable military technology demand that force structures maintain highly trained, professional personnel. New technologies and the requisite personnel operating them require more time and more money. The current conscription model does not address these requirements sufficiently. Therefore, the military is being reconfigured as a smaller, better-trained and more expensive per capita professional force supported by higher-end technological platforms.

    This transformation likely will continue for the foreseeable future. Conscription will be modified to the point that it faces elimination, which would probably require a constitutional amendment. Other countries that have undergone similar reconfigurations, including former Warsaw Pact members that later joined NATO, have learned that this process can take decades to complete and that a smaller military is not necessarily a cheaper military.

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  • 24,000-Year-Old Body Is Kin to Both Europeans and American Indians

    24,000-Year-Old Body Is Kin to Both Europeans and American Indians

    Sibirya’da gömülü bulunan 24.000 yıllık çocuğun DNA’sı Avrupalı ve Amerikan yerlilerinin akrabalıkları gibi Antropologlar için sürpriz sonuçlar ortaya çıkardı.

    21genome-1-articleLarge

    A view of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia near where the young boy buried at Mal’ta was discovered.

    By NICHOLAS WADE

    The genome of a young boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia some 24,000 years ago has turned out to hold two surprises for anthropologists.

    The first is that the boy’s DNA matches that of Western Europeans, showing that during the last Ice Age people from Europe had reached farther east across Eurasia than previously supposed. Though none of the Mal’ta boy’s skin or hair survive, his genes suggest he would have had brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin.

    The second surprise is that his DNA also matches a large proportion — some 25 percent — of the DNA of living Native Americans. The first people to arrive in the Americas have long been assumed to have descended from Siberian populations related to East Asians. It now seems that they may be a mixture between the Western Europeans who had reached Siberia and an East Asian population.

    The Mal’ta boy was aged 3 to 4 and was buried under a stone slab wearing an ivory diadem, a bead necklace and a bird-shaped pendant. Elsewhere at the same site some 30 Venus figurines were found of the kind produced by the Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe. The remains were excavated by Russian archaeologists over a 20-year period ending in 1958 and stored in museums in St. Petersburg.

    There they lay for some 50 years until they were examined by a team led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Willerslev, an expert in analyzing ancient DNA, was seeking to understand the peopling of the Americas by searching for possible source populations in Siberia. He extracted DNA from bone taken from the child’s upper arm, hoping to find ancestry in the East Asian peoples from whom Native Americans are known to be descended.

    via 24,000-Year-Old Body Is Kin to Both Europeans and American Indians – NYTimes.com.

    more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=SC_2YO_20131120&_r=0

  • Red Alert: Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Kanal Istanbul Threatens International Ecology!

    Red Alert: Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Kanal Istanbul Threatens International Ecology!

    Erdoğan’ın Kanal İstanbul Projesi uluslarası ekolojik hayatı tehdit ediyor.

    Some scientists argue that Erdoğan’s project will severely harm the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

    Neither-of-the-two-possible-routes-for-a-new-channel-e1382625591597

    Regardless of whether either of these routes, or another one, are chosen for Kanal Istanbul, it remains a dangerous project for both the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Photo: Courtesy of Tarık Günersel.

    The Turkish government, controlled by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has announced that it will soon begin construction on Kanal Istanbul, a canal project announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2011.

    Istanbul is on both the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus, which is a natural channel that connects the Black Sea to the Marmara, Aegean, and Mediterranean Seas.

    Life is words in action, literature is action in words.

    Humans are about to destroy their spaceship Earth. Some of them are aware of this and they try to change the course of events. Will they succeed? Will more humans be alarmed and do something?

    Literature is vital and translators are messengers of world peace.

    Though I shall focus on the literary scene in Turkey and its problems regarding freedom of expression, I shall not omit the other parts of our planet. Today local is global and vice versa.

    Tarık Günersel is a poet, playwright, aphorist, librettist and short story writer. He is the president of PEN Turkey and an ex-member of the PEN International Board. He studied English Literature at Istanbul University. A self-exile after the military coup in 1980, he spent four years in Saudi Arabia with his wife Füsun and their daughter Barış, teaching English. A dramaturg at Istanbul City Theater since 1991, he has acted on stage and screen and directed some of his plays. He proposed World Poetry Day in 1997 which was accepted by PEN International and declared by UNESCO as the 21st of March. His translations into Turkish include works by Samuel Beckett, Vaclav Havel and Arthur Miller. His works include The Nightmare of a Labyrinth (mosaic of poems and stories), and How’s your slavery goin’? His Oluşmak (To Become), a “life guide for myself,” includes ideas from world wisdom of the past four millennia.

    The proposed channel will be constructed somewhere in Thrace, between the Bosphorus and the city of Edirne, which is near the Bulgarian and Greek borders of Turkey. Two possible routes for the channel have been mapped so far, but neither of them has been declared the official route.

    Two scientists, Cemal Saydam of Hacettepe University and Etham Gönenç of Istanbul Technical University, have reported the terrible consequences of Erdogan’s canal:

    -The new channel will increase the salinity of the Marmara Sea and severely decrease its oxygen levels.

    -Lack of oxygen will end marine life in the Marmara Sea. It is predicted that the Marmara and Bosphorus will suffer from the smell of sulphur. In time the ecology of the Black Sea will also be harmed.

    -The part of Thrace that lies between the new channel and the Bosphorus will become an island. The underground water sources that exist there will be replaced by sea water.

    – Once put in place, the Kanal Istanbul will be irreversible. The AKP government controls mainstream media and misinforms the public about the project, but its dangerous impact is not limited to the people of Turkey. It will have international effects. Other countries on the Black and the Mediterranean Seas should protest this project.

    Turkey’s Minister of Transportation and Communication, Binali Yıldırım, has refrained from mentioning any critical scientific reports. He merely mentions that the channel project is not incompatible with the Montreux Convention.

    Now is the time for international scientific and environmental communities to join forces against this hazardous project, pushed by PM Erdoğan and his AKP-controlled government.

    via Red Alert: Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Kanal Istanbul Threatens International Ecology! | Sampsonia Way Magazine.

  • Daily chart: Sex and equality

    Daily chart: Sex and equality

    Cinsiyet eşitsizliğinde 136 ülke arasında 120. sırada yer alan Türkiye ve Güney Kore en aykırı ülkeler olarak gözüktüler.

    Sex and equality

    Oct 25th 2013, 16:32 by K.N.C., P.K. and G.S.

    How women fare around the world

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    FOR eight years the World Economic Forum has released a ranking of how women are narrowing the gap compared to men in the terms of political participation, economic opportunity, health and education. The highest ranked countries are Scandinavian; almost two-thirds of 136 countries examined narrowed their gaps. (Intriguingly, the Philippines ranked 5th and Cuba 15th, far ahead of Britain and America.) Yet the overall scores mask interesting differences. Looking at the G20—a smattering of countries from all regions that play a role in international policymaking—the degree to which equality in health and education has largely been achieved is striking. The most notable outliers are Turkey and South Korea, who both seem ready to graduate from emerging market status—but in terms of gender equality, look to have more work to do. And Japan is especially depressing: the third largest economy ranks 105th in the Forum’s report.

    via Daily chart: Sex and equality | The Economist.