Tag
Turkey
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The Protest Is Over—But Its Politics Remain
Ten years later, the Gezi Park protests continue to shape Turkish politics.
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James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere
How the United States terrorizes the rest of the world, Baldwin realized abroad, echoed how it terrorized its inhabitants at home.
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B-Sides: Latife Tekin’s “Berji Kristin”
As in mythology, the characters in a 1984 Turkish novel are acted upon by forces distant and uncaring.
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Turkey’s “Ghost Empire”
A Turkish academic I once met in a provincial Anatolian city insisted to me that Turkey is a country where a lot goes unsaid, a place where much is buried, and where fairy tales are told to hide a violent past. A Marxist and atheist, he spoke with regret about the disappearance of the Christian…
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Muslim Fashion Is Now Mainstream
Modest Fashion is having a moment. From London catwalks, which hosted the first branded “Modest Fashion Week” in February this year, to gyms and running …
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The Pasajlar of Tunalı Hilmi Çaddesi, Ankara
Bookended by Koçatepe Mosque and Kuğulu Park, Tunalı Hilmi Çaddesi is a leafy anomaly in a city that worships concrete …
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James Baldwin’s Istanbul
“Baby, I’m broke, I’m sick. I need your help,” James Baldwin said to a friend when he landed in Europe, looking for a place to rest. This time, his European city of choice wasn’t Paris. It was Istanbul. …
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Turkey’s Progressive Past
In her posthumously published memoir, written in the late 1960s, the journalist Sabiha Sertel reflected on her life in exile from Turkey, her home country. She had lived through a period of authoritarian rule led by a man whose attempt to transform the country into a Western-style democracy had forced her and others into exile,…
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The Armenian Genocide and the Politics of Knowledge
In this centennial year since the Armenian Genocide, countless conferences, meetings, and commemorations are underway across the globe. While they have all been peaceful so far, they come at the end of a century of violence. I refer not just to the events of 1915–17, but also the waves of violence spurred by memory, recognition,…
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Necessary Digressions
On July 2, 2014, Recip Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister of the Republic of Turkey since 2003, announced his candidacy for president. With this maneuver, worryingly similar to that of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have seemingly angered as many people as they have pleased in their (some…
