am i alive?

this morning i hopelessly clicked on my tüpbebek shortcut and actually found my block. (glory be!) then i read the news. blogger has been temporarily unbanned, waiting for "missing evidence." to temporarily celebrate, i'm going to post some missing content: pictures from fall in Erzurum. but i also want to write a bit more about the ban and my thoughts, especially as it relates to Cumhuriyet Bayramı- Republic Day in Turkey, October 29th.

We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us. -Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

digi-turk, a large Turkish cable provider, sued over blogger sites linking to free football games and a local court in Diyarbakir province (South-Eastern Turkey) made the ruling, which banned access to all blogger sites in Turkey. there are a few issues for the legal system to iron out here, like why a provincial court can make a ruling that bans access to internet for the whole country, and why the entire blog hosting service is banned instead of the specific sites breaching intellectual property rights (something that could be done with just a bit more work). but because of these anomalies, the bans can't represent the majority of the Turkish people or the Turkish courts.

in discussion boards about the banning of blogspot, i saw a lot of Turkish people very upset. but i asked my students about the banning and they seemed indifferent or apathetic. most answered by saying that they know how to get around banned sites with proxy servers, and they all know that youtube was banned because of attacks/criticism/satire on/of/about the founder of the modern Turkish Republic: Kemal Atatürk. but i was thinking, especially now that it is the Republic Holiday, of the countries the founder of modern Turkey was looking to as models of his Republic. for better or worse, he looked at Europe and The West when structuring the Turkish Republic (France especially influenced the political system and language). the list of countries that censor internet include Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. and i wonder what Atatürk would think about censorship and to find his Republic in this company on this issue today, even when the censorship is done in attempts to preserve his own legacy from defamation.

to be clear, i'm not trying to write for anyone, although i am trying to make an argument towards the release of censorship on certain grounds. and i'm finding myself more vocal on this topic since it has affected me personally. not only do i host this site on blogger, but i host 2 other sites for my students, one on American Cultural Studies and the other on Introductory Phonetics. much content like this gets caught up in the bans and inhibit the population from information and perspective.

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by the way, i found an interesting Turkish group doing some action on this issue and others: meet the Young Civilians.

This Blog: Banned

on this friday the 24th, blogger and blogspot fell the way of youtube, wordpress, and a specific Richard Dawkins' site: banned from Turkish IP addresses. (see here here here)


youtube was banned after videos satirizing/attacking/insulting Kemal Atatürk, the much revered founder of modern Turkey, had been posted.

wordpress was banned after the lawsuit of an Islamic creationist.

the reasons for restricting blogger/blogspot have not been officially released. i don't think this tube baby said anything too harmful. in case yr wondering, i'm now using a proxy to get to the site and post. most of my students do the same thing so they can watch youtube. the proxy changes what i see on the page though, so i can't add pics or embed links, or do all the things that make this blog pretty.

but this does mean that the blog is super rebellious and radical- so super rebellious and radical that it is officially banned by court order. these words are now civil disobedience.


-tb

bilgi- Ergenekon

so it has been a week since my last post and about two weeks since a post with real substance. but i have been coming to the site and adding news articles related to the happenings in Turkey, and i'll take this post to discuss some of them.

after increased warfare with the militant-separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the last 3 weeks, Turkey expanded its military missions in Iraq and the PKK has increased violence in South-Eastern Turkey against civilians and the military. later, reports that Abdullah Öcalan, the founding leader of PKK, was being abused in prison (where he serves a life sentence) led to protests in Istanbul and many cities in South-Eastern Turkey.

what has led in the headlines though is the mysterious Ergenekon, a supposed ultra-nationalist group known sometimes as the "deep state." some ninety presumed members have been indicted and were set to go on trial last Monday, but the hearings were postponed amidst a chaotic courtroom and will resume sometime this week. those accused of being part of the group, which is sometimes characterized as a terrorist organization, include academics, journalists, and high-ranking military and government officials. some are claiming that this is the biggest court case in Turkey's history.

the story of Ergenekon is interesting as it deals directly with age-old debates and factions in Turkish politics (mainly the relationship between a secular state and an Islamic majority), reflects the variety of perspectives and opinions in the Turkish press, and will test the democratic function of the current conservative government. Ergenekon has two recent charges, first for planning an assassination against Kurdish leaders and Orhan Pamuk (the nobel prize winning Turkish novelist) and next for plotting to overthrow the current government (there have been 3 military coups in Turkey's history, so the fear is justified). newspapers supporting the AKP, the Justice and Development Party that has been in power since 2002, report on links between Ergenekon and decades of terrorist attacks, military coups, and assassinations. they claim, for instance, that both Hezbollah and the PKK either have ties with or are sub-sections of Ergenekon. seemingly more objective sources reference plenty of misinformation in these charges against Ergenekon, citing contradictions in the farcically long 2,500 page indictment and the investigative dossier approaching 10,000 pages (as a reference, the Nuremberg Trial had an indictment of 70 pages). conflicting charges name past leaders of the PKK both as members of Ergenekon and as assassination targets by Ergenekon.

in my research of the story and history, the existence of Ergenekon is rarely contested, but it may be a name for individuals or small groups of influential secular-nationalists, perhaps linked more by a shared ideology than an administrative structure, that occasionally carried out violent acts to support their ideological goals. but it is likely that the AKP, which barely staved of its dissolution for being theocratic, is now tying its political opponents to Ergenekon and creating a series of specious links to do so.

i feel odd sometimes writing about Turkish political events but thought that some people back home might be interested. and the news story seems to represent a lot of the current tensions. i'm intersted in Turkish perspectives, from those watching this blog and the events in Turkey. i'll post some more as things happen-the trial will likely take months.