Geography Archives: Turkey

Introduction In most countries, political leaders and bosses are using the global economic crisis to once again unleash an attack on workers and the poor.  As part of this, we have seen corporations around the world trying to make workers pay for the crisis by retrenching tens of millions of people.  In the most extreme […]

Barack Obama’s Cairo speech heralds a shift from the Islamophobic rhetoric of the Bush regime, but not from the long-term aims of the U.S. empire. Predictably, Barak Obama’s speech in Cairo came under hysterical criticism from the right.  Sean Hannity screamed that Obama gave “sympathizers of 9/11” a voice on the world stage, Charles Krauthammer […]

Lower Courts Unanimously Declared Law Unconstitutionally Vague Washington, DC, June 4, 2009 — The Obama administration today sought Supreme Court review of a decision declaring a USA Patriot Act provision unconstitutional.  The case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, originally brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in 1998, challenges the constitutionality of the law […]

Philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations, relations which fail to connect, or should not connect. When every connection is naturally legitimate, philosophy is impossible or in vain.

Philosophy is the violence done by thought to impossible relations.

Today, which is to say “after Deleuze,” there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by cinema — or of cinema by philosophy. It is therefore certain that cinema offers us paradoxical relations, entirely improbable connections.

June 2, 2009 Mr. President, The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) hopes that your speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds will contain practical steps to uphold your administration’s stated intention to seriously deal with the problems that have inflamed resentment and fostered a sense of humiliation among peoples, individuals, and ethnic and […]

  Countless academics have sought to measure the tangible benefits of being a union member.  The difference between union and non-union wages, often referred to as the “union premium,” can be calculated in many different ways.  It’s a profoundly complex field. . . .  Here’s a classic example of the poop one has to wade […]

“You don’t have to do this.”  Those are the near-last words of several victims in the Coen brothers’ classic, No Country for Old Men, as they try to convince the movie’s unrelenting assassin that he should spare them.  The assassin, played by Javier Bardem, finds this annoying, because in his mind these murders are pre-determined. […]

When the global crisis of capitalism first broke out in 2008, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan said: “Hopefully, this crisis will touch Turkey like a tangent line.”  Touched by the crisis, Turkey’s unemployment rate is already 15.5%, the highest in the history of the republic, the highest in Europe, and among the highest in the world.  […]

Abstract Following the 2000-01 crisis, Turkey implemented an orthodox strategy of raising interest rates and maintaining an overvalued exchange rate.  But, contrary to the traditional stabilization packages that aim to increase interest rates to constrain domestic demand, the new orthodoxy aimed at maintaining high interest rates to attract speculative foreign capital.  The end result was […]

  Obama did what was expected, dispensing good luck charms for all.  What he left behind is a state of delirium, a la the Hunchback of Notre Dame: “He gave me water.” Even though some of Obama’s gestures during the visit — such as Obama reminding the young people he was chatting with of the […]

Obstacles to Israel’s Arab minority participating in higher education have resulted in a record number of Arab students taking up places at universities in neighboring Jordan, a new report reveals. Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of […]

Cf. Emine Özcan, “Thousands of People Say ‘Enough’ to 60 Years of Nato” (Bıa News Centre, 5 April 2009).

A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]

Peter Wien.   Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941.   SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East Series.  London: Routledge, 2006.  x + 162 pp.  $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-36858-2; $39.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-46182-5. Sometimes — when read against the backdrop of a particular time and place — a book resonates beyond the immediate […]

In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, calling for putting economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip […]

See, also, Hajir Palaschi, “Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women,” Trans. Yoshie Furuhashi, MRZine, 18 February 2008. The Iranian Revolution and its aftermath have generated many debates, one of which pertains to the effects on women’s labor force participation and employment patterns.  For […]

  Rageh Omaar: Amnesty International’s 2008 report on human rights states that allegations of torture and other ill treatments and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officials persist in Turkey.  This despite an overt expression of zero tolerance for torture by the Turkish government since 2002.  Kurdish-born human rights lawyer Eren Keskin has […]

Fatah and Hamas The results of the public opinion poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) during the period 29-31 January 2009 show that the majority of respondents (46.7%) believed that Hamas came out of the war victorious compared with only 9.8% who said that Israel won the war.  Over one-third, 37.4%, […]

  “Supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination is a duty of Israeli communists.” The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its front Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) were the only political forces in Israel that confronted the massacre perpetrated by the Tzahal (IDF), the Israeli armed forces, in Gaza last January.  Regrettably, […]

  His face the color of the Turkish flag, his right arm pinning the panel moderator to his seat, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preferred not to listen to any more Israeli bullshit about Gaza.  With finger-wagging Israeli president Peres regurgitating the usual self-serving argument of self-defense to justify the criminal acts of his state, […]