For Foreign Affairs: Istanbul — On a clear evening in Istanbul’s Besiktas district, a dozen police officers eyed hundreds of people as they packed a private ferry on the Bosphorus. The passengers were attending an event to mobilize support for a “no” vote on a constitutional referendum scheduled for April 16. Equally wary of the police and any potential pro-“yes” saboteurs, a pair of organizers patted down each passenger before allowing him or her aboard. “It’s not going to be a fair vote, so we…Continue Reading “Turkish Voters Take to the Seas”
For The Los Angeles Times: She is facing a potential sentence of 83 years in prison. The crime, some would say, is belonging to the political opposition that is under siege by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Figen Yuksekdag, co-chair of the country’s leading pro-Kurdish political party, is among the most prominent targets of a massive legal assault on Turkey’s Kurdish opposition in the run-up to a vote on a constitutional amendment that could grant Erdogan sweeping powers. The government has already stripped her of…Continue Reading “As Erdogan consolidates power in Turkey, the Kurdish opposition faces crackdown”
For The Los Angles Times Ankara — Light snow fell as Nuriye Gulmen carefully rested a whiteboard next to Ankara’s Human Rights Memorial, a statue of a seated woman reading a book. “Day 48. We want to return to work,” she wrote with a marker on the board, as a dozen protesters glanced at the pedestrians around them, looking for plainclothes police who might thwart their demonstration. Since a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, the government has imposed a state of emergency,…Continue Reading “Protest, get arrested, get released, then start again: One woman’s fight against Turkey’s crackdown on dissent”
For The Los Angeles Times: Ankara, Turkey — Light snow fell as Nuriye Gulmen carefully rested a whiteboard next to Ankara’s Human Rights Memorial, a statue of a seated woman reading a book. “Day 48. We want to return to work,” she wrote with a marker on the board, as a dozen protesters glanced at the pedestrians around them, looking for plainclothes police who might thwart their demonstration. Since a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, the government has imposed a state of…Continue Reading “Protest, get arrested, get released, then start again: One woman’s fight against Turkey’s crackdown on dissent”
For The Los Angles Times Istanbul — With more than 120,000 public workers suspended and nearly 40,000 people in prison, the aftermath of Turkey’s failed July 15 coup is being felt across every part of society, including its highest-ranked schools. The day after the coup attempt, 1,577 deans — working at nearly every university in the country — were forced to resign. An estimated 200,000 students were left in limbo after the closure of 15 universities and 1,043 private schools reportedly linked to Fethullah Gulen,…Continue Reading “Post-coup purge will affect Turkey’s education sector for decades”
For The Boston Review: On the morning of June 7 this year, a car bomb exploded in front of Istanbul’s Vezneciler metro station. Used by tourists and thousands of university students daily, it was a ten-minute walk from my home. Perplexed Turks gathered at the tape strung around the site, watching as the husk of a police bus was towed away, the presumable target of a powerful blast that killed twelve. The closest I could get was the sixteenth-century Shehzade mosque, more than a hundred…Continue Reading “A Kurdish Problem”
For The Los Angles Times Athens — In a country where the Orthodox Church is part of Greek identity, Muslims have long found that new mosques could be built only in certain areas that did not include Athens, the capital. But an influx of mostly Muslim migrants coupled with an unabashedly leftist Greek government is bringing change. Authorities in October signed a nearly $1-million (887,000 euro) deal to build the first state-funded mosque in Athens since the end of Ottoman rule more than 180 years…Continue Reading “As Greece’s government takes on Orthodox Church over mosque construction, minority Muslims stand to benefit”
For The Los Angles Times Istanbul — On a single day earlier this month, Turkish authorities arrested more than 120 police officers in raids across the country and charged them with being members of a terrorist group — all because they were allegedly using an encrypted messaging app. The app, called ByLock, has been linked to the Hizmet movement, a religious group that the Turkish government blames for the July 15 attempted coup. The arrests are part of an increasingly wide-ranging attempt to rid Turkish…Continue Reading “In Turkey, you can be arrested for having this app on your phone”
For The Los Angeles Times Istanbul — Only one man has ruled the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Islam Karimov was the Uzbek leader even before independence, and he has held on to power for more than a quarter of a century with all the tools at a despot’s disposal, his many critics say. But Karimov’s grip on his country appears to be at an end, with persistent reports in recent days that he is…Continue Reading “Speculation swirls that the man who ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist for 25 years may be dead”
For The Los Angeles Times: Istanbul — For much of the last month, in squares across Turkey, hundreds of thousands gathered for a “democracy watch” — part celebration of the failure of a bloody coup attempt that killed hundreds, and part an expression of determination to find and punish those responsible. But not everyone poured into the streets. “It’s right to be proud of what is achieved against the failed coup and traitors,” said Orhan, a middle-aged teacher from Istanbul who asked that his full…Continue Reading “Inside the secretive religious movement that is being blamed for Turkey’s attempted coup”