Geography Archives: Turkey

Turks demonstrated Sunday, 28 February 2010, on the anniversary of the 1997 postmodern coup, in support of the ongoing crackdown on military officers who allegedly plotted a 2003 coup against the government.  More than 30 military officers have been charged and jailed so far.  In its modern history, Turkey suffered four military coups, on 27 […]

Four labour union confederations announced their joint decision to end the resistance if the Tekel workers decide not to continue.  The confederations consider the resistance as a success. In a joint decision, the Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (Türk-İş), the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK), the Public Workers Unions Confederation of Turkey (KAMU-SEN) and […]

  The current Greek economic crisis has an aspect of ancient tragedy (for the Greek people) mixed with a bad theatrical farce (staged on behalf of the European and the Greek bourgeoisie). The farce comes first.  Till very recently the two establishment parties (the center-left PASOK and the center-right ND) preached that their economic policies […]

  Katherine Pratt Ewing.  Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.  xii + 282 pp.  $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5899-4; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-5900-7. Katherine Pratt Ewing’s Stolen Honor provides an interesting and original approach to analyses of discourses of Islam in Europe by focusing on constructions of Muslim masculinity in […]

In most parts of the world today (except perhaps in India, where optimism about the benefits of unregulated financial markets still seems to dominate over the undisputable evidence of their many fragilities) most policy makers talk about imposing regulations on the financial sector.  Of course, the events of the past two years in the world […]

Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran.  Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards.  The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, […]

Until today, the Obama Administration and much of the foreign policy punditocracy in Washington have been overflowing with observations that recent statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reiterating the Islamic Republic’s interest in a deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) were just another example of Iranian efforts to […]

  Tens of thousands of people used their right not to work for one day and supported the struggle of the Tekel workers in a general strike.  For Türk-İş President Kumlu it was a successful protest action withstanding the pressure of officials and employers. Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (Türk-İş) President Mustafa Kumlu reckoned the […]

Millions of members of six union confederations join the general strike to support Tekel workers in their struggle for job security and take action against the pressure imposed to the workers.  Türk-İş President Kumlu repeated the request to protect the workers’ employee personal rights. According to a joint decision taken by six union confederations, millions […]

The government holds on to employing Tekel workers who have been made redundant as “temporary personnel” in public enterprises.  Thus, the union confederations decided for a “general action” on 4 February, as they had previously announced. According to Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (Türk-İş) President Mustafa Kumlu, the workers will make use of their power […]

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan instructed his ministers to work out a new endeavour regarding the Tekel workers.  Minister Hayati Yazıcı said that they are going to investigate the possibilities of all workers in the scope of 4C. After a meeting of Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (Türk-İş) executives with Yazıcı and Finance Minister Mehmet […]

  Ruth Ellen Mandel.  Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.  xxiv + 413 pp.  $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4176-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4193-2. In September 1979, the first federal commissioner of foreigners’ affairs (Ausländerbeauftragte) Heinz Kühn declared Germany a country of immigration — a novel and controversial […]

Six union confederations in Turkey have announced that they will go on a general strike if the government does not respond to the Tekel workers’ demands by 26 January 2010.  The hunger strike mentioned below is now on hold pending the government response by the deadline.  — Ed. Worker Yaşar from the Tek Gıda-İş union: […]

Vali Nasr.  Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World.  New York: Free Press, 2009.  320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]

Not surprisingly, Saturday’s meeting of representatives from the P-5+1 countries reached no agreement about further sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities; as we pointed out in a post on January 14, China’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, who has been representing his country in the P-5+1 political directors’ meetings, declined to […]

Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS.  Ed generously notes his agreement with […]

The government of Egypt is taking a spectacularly hard line against international solidarity efforts in support of civilians in Gaza on the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion, blocking peace marchers from the U.S., Canada, and Europe from even approaching the Egyptian border with Gaza and blocking an aid convoy that has the support of […]

The nature of the current wars in the wider western Asian area reveals a disturbing trend: next to sources of conflict between states there are an increasing number of conflicts within them.  In Yemen, the civil war has had a ripple effect throughout the Persian Gulf region provoking the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and […]

A fascinating social history of swimming pools in northern United States that was published in 2007 deserves attention from Iran researchers.  Contested Waters showed how, between the World Wars, middle class expansion/empowerment in general and eroticization/gender de-segregation at public pools popularized swim facilities that excluded African Americans.  Earlier in the century, women, not Blacks, had […]

On Sunday, the Speaker of the Iranian majlis (parliament), Ali Larijani, met for two hours with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.  Ostensibly, Larijani was in Egypt to attend a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which includes Turkey, Kuwait, Niger, Azerbaijan, and Uganda in addition to Egypt and […]