Aegean Disclosure

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Moon Shadow

Relating to my previous post: compare this with this.

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Form and Content

I was scanning TV channels a couple of nights ago and caught a columnist/historian? (though not his name) describe our odd position on Iraq: "Turkey is not on the US' side, and it is not on the side of the insurgents, it is not on the side of the Kurds, and it is not on the side of the Shiite either." That pretty much sums it up. Then, get this, the commentator said that before the commercial that an actual Iraqi insurgent called the show and, referring to Turkish truck drivers, said that those who did business with the Americans would be killed. After which they got a businessman who had a road contract in Iraq on the phone. The guy said he only dealt with Iraqis. Then he was asked: But weren't the Americans providing their security? No they can only protect themselves, was his reponse. But weren't the Iraqis he dealt with brought to power by the Americans etc. etc.? Then one of the guests, the editor of the Turkish Daily News I think, said that in northern Iraq Turkish companies were making something close to 500 million dolars. The businessman said his gains didn't come anywhere close, and besides he wasn't working in northern Iraq and did not know of any other Turkish companies working in the area. He added that when a couple of French journalists got kidnapped, the French foreign minister went to the Middle East, when Turkish workers got kidnapped there was hardly a word from the Turkish government.

The international skepticism towards Turkish policy usually stems from the contradictions and inconsistencies that plague it when one looks at its position on a number of subjects instead of just one. For example, I have yet to see a convincing argument that details how Turkey's position on an independent Cyprus does not contradict or weaken its position against an independent northern Iraq (an opposition that's based mostly on principle, not implementation). The only argument thus far is "national security", which works when you want to convince your own citizens but does nothing to earn you respect in the eyes of the international community. If Turkish Cypriots are right in asking for autonomy after what they suffered, didn't the Kurds suffer as much under Saddam if not more? Response: But the population demographic is much more complicated in Iraq... counter: It would difficult to argue that Turks and Greeks were geographically (and conveniently) segregated before the invasion. etc etc. Maybe someone can come close to giving a reasonable defense of our position. What's more worrying is that no one in the media or political spectrum seems sharp/brave enough to realize that this is a problem. In other words, there is no attempt to make such an argument to begin with.

Looking at the 2001 Cyprus symposium hosted by Denktas, one sees one Turkish historian argue that it was a bad thing that Greece was encouraging Greek nationalism on the island, and then sees another argue how good it was that Ataturk's Turkey was encouraging Turkish nationalism on the island, how good it was that Ataturk never wavered in cultural or monetary support for that community. The problem is, no one who attended the symposium or put the articles together thought anyone would see a contradiction or, in the least, something odd that required further elaboration....

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"In the US, people are very hard-working, but have a tendency to become immediately restless with their jobs. In a place like Turkey, where I showed the film at the Istanbul film festival, people are fortunate for the jobs they have and are more obsessed with job security. They don't want to leave their job and write the Great Turkish Novel -- I don't think they've reached that level of social prosperity." -- Bilge Ebiri (p & b tip)

Psyche

Can Dundar, from the more "literary" camp of columnists, churned out a poem called "I am Falluja" (In Turkish) that alludes to the killing of a insurgent by a marine, and has lines like "I'm buried with my own blood...Godless me/The one who took a bullet to the brain in Vietnam was me/The one in Palestine who had his arms and legs broken by stones was also me...in all my crime was the same: defending my country against invasion".

This Falluja is not the one that allows car bombing of its own citizens, cutting off heads, and as hostage Zeynep Tugrul mentioned, making children accomplices in your resistance. Probably not Falluja--probably a clean lost soul who left there long ago.

Turkish deaths in Iraq have reached 64 (most if not all were truck drivers), only ten less than the number of British soldiers killed.

Meanwhile, Iraq the Model takes on Juan Cole.
_____________________________


Damn you, Shevchenko!

Those in Ukraine who are worrying about election outcomes can take solace in their 3-0 ass-kicking of Turkey in the World Cup qualifiers, and of Dynamo Kiev's impressive trail in the Champions League...

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Horizon

The Tork has put out a couple of interesting posts, one of which addresses Bernard Lewis' curious, if not bizarre, claim that the US' invasion of Iraq and its subsequent attempt at acheiving top-down democracy should be successful when looking back at what happened in Turkey. But top-down democracy was not acheived here because it was a stand-alone solution, it was acheived because of one man's decisions. If Ataturk was Stalin what he said would still go. We are fortunate that he wasn't. The fact is, once you are crowned the savior of a country by repelling an onslaught of foreign forces, people are going to listen to you no matter what you say. If Ataturk had not proven himself on the battlefield there would be little likelihood that his ideas would be implemented at all. The blatantly obvious difference between Turkey and Iraq is the absence of local credibility in the goings on of the latter. If this is all there is to Lewis' claim, then he is on a downward turn. It's true that Arafat didn't cut it as a valuable leader, but it looks like he was the only one with enough credibility to "sell out" to the Israelis without getting shot by his own people (which is probably what he partly feared at Camp David). Denktas is another who had the credibility but lacked the wisdom. Rabin, on the other hand, had the right idea but did not have the political clout needed to avoid getting shot. The tork seems to argue that those who are contra-Lewis believe that "tyranny is endemic to the East", and therefore he objects to their position. The truth is once you have credibility in the Middle East it wears away very very slowly. If someone were to say that tyranny is much more likely where the population is less educated, would many object? (I don't think pointing out Hitler suffices since if the Germans were any more ignorant, his job would be that much easier) Isn't the Middle Eastern population currently less educated than the West? Do they react more emotionally and ideologically to their leaders and tend to rationalize failed policies?

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I can't believe the amount of hysteria that has been caused in the last couple of weeks by the sheer lack of understanding English. Hint: If the word "minority" doesn't mean the same thing as its literal translation, use another word. The National Security Counsel (Military) joined in the paranoia by stating that the use of the word could encourage attacks on the terrotorial integrity of the country. I'm sorry, but historical precedence doesn't cut it anymore.... Unfortunately, the army is still burning forests in the East in order to drive out terrorists who are hiding out (again our "burn the blanket to kill the flea" proverb comes into play. Just how small is the flea?), and in a few areas soldiers are afraid of approaching cars at checkpoint for fear of getting shot. Deborah Dickinson a while back said: "race schmace--it's about class". And it's true here as well. Many cosmopolitan Turkish Kurds are seen as sell outs because they avoid talking Kurdish or mentioning their roots, partly because of separatism fears and partly because Kurds tend to be seen as hillbillys by many people (one guy who did his mandatory military service said there were Kurds in his regiment who would use rocks instead of toliet paper...how exclusive this practice is in exremely rural areas is debatable however).

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In his other post, the Tork mentions this: "In June 2004, the Turkish Radio and Television (TRT), the Turkish state-owned broadcasting company, has quietly started to broadcast programs in the following non-Turkish languages: Bosnian, Arabic, Circasian, and in two Kurdish dialects (Kirmanci and Zaza)."

Quietly internationally, perhaps, but it was frontpage news in Turkey. I'm not sure "started to broadcast" is accurate since I've only seen it shown once (translated nature programs). No mention of a radio station in Diyerbakir which was shut down for a month because they introduced a Kurdish singer in Kurdish. They were told by the authorities that they must introduce the singer in Turkish (this was also a subject in a recent BBC documentary). Slow is perhaps the best adjective at present.

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There seems to be another wave of Chomsky-bashing going on...echo chambers being unleashed on echo chambers. He became a talking point here in 2002 when a publisher of his books was charged with attacking the unity of the Turkish state. There is an interesting correlation between Chomsky as linguist and his political travels. For linguists languages are scientific evidence that can be used to determine whether or not a universal grammar exists. Therefore any political action that advocates the suppresion of a particular language is for them a direct attack on science.

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Ministry of Silly Walks

The chaos around the Minority Report reached Monty Python-esque proportions when, during a live TV press conference given by Kaboglu (Chairman of Human Rights Commision), a member of the Commision (Fahrettin Yokus) grabbed the report in front of Kaboglu and tore it to pieces! This is despite the fact that out of 30 members of the commision, only seven voted against the report. A lady standing behind Kaboglu could not contain her laughter. Kaboglu's paraphrased response: "And people wander why we can't get into the EU."

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Talat Steps Up

Alreadly facing an unstable political climate in Turkish northern Cyprus and criticism from nationalists, Talat sticks his neck out even more by hinting at concessions that go beyond the Annan Plan:

"We are ready to re-negotiate, offer new and make new changes in the Annan Plan"... In a statement to the Greek Cypriot newspaper, Fileleftheros, Talat said, "The Greek side should decide what it wants and everybody expects Leader of the Cypriot Greek administration, Tasos Papadopulous, to declare what he and his administration want."

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Odds and Ends


Understatement of the day:

"Maybe there has been some miscommunication between us."
--Prime Minister Erdogan on the high poll numbers in Europe against Turkey in the EU

Somewhat good news: Polls in Greece actually less negative than France. Possible reason: France's gains from Turkish membership are limited, whereas Greeks may feel our government (State/Military) would have to tone down its machismo outlook.

bad news: Greeks are reporting an increase in violations of their air space.

funny story: Christopher Hitchens was for Bush less than a week ago, now he's for Kerry (scroll down)

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Minority Report (cont'd)

The same people that raised hell over the report now sent in a request asking for it to be returned. One of complainers said "the best thing about the report is that the back pages are empty. " They claim that the procedure in which the report passed through the commission was not legal, and that changes were made to the report after it was approved. My theory: they didn't attend the meetings or pay attention until the report was made public, and then they freaked out. These guys are also blaming the foreign minister Abdullah Gul for appointing the people that prepared a report that "attacks the country" and "creates new problems" instead of fixing the existing ones. The governor of Diyabakir put in his support behind the report saying, "Turkey has to solve its problems through debate, not by pretending they don't exist." (Hurriyet)

Meanwhile, the TV and Radio content regulators (RTUK) announce that the police are aiding them by scanning channels that RTUK can't reach (probably in the east). In other words, the police will likely be reporting broadcasts that are deemed to encourage separatism. (Hurriyet) And knowing what broad definitions may be used to define separatism, this looks like to be another self-fulfilling prophesy.

Fikret Bila, a Milliyet journalist, declares he wants a "Turkey that doesn't take the written word to court" after he was taken to court for writing a book about Ankara's relation with the Iraq war. The claim is that some things in the book are classified information. (In Turkish)

Update: Peter Boyer on Wolfowitz in the New Yorker, Hitchens' response

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Timeshift Censor

The non-cable TV channel CNBC-e, which is kind of a Turkish Bloomberg on economy during the day, American sitcom channel by night, and upper tier film channel by late night, was forced to push back "Angels in America" to a later time (10->11pm) when gov. content regulators realized that the show was about "a bunch of homos". Where were they at with that godawful Will & Grace? Then I went to check what the so-called Kuran thumpers in Iran were showing on their TVs. To my surprise people were watching LA Confidential and Gangs of New York. Wtf? Oh wait, Kim Basinger and Cameron Diaz are edited out of the entire movie, nevermind.

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That Rug Tied The Room Together

Fetih Bolayir, the chairman of something called "Toplumsal Dusunce Dernegi" (lit~Social Thought Association) and also member of the government's Human Rights Commission accused his own chairman of presenting a "Minority Report" that makes "horrifying" attacks on the secular democracy of the country and encourages separatism. He demanded that charges be brought against the chairman of the Human Rights Commission and those responsible for putting together a "document of treason". The chairman, Kaboglu, countered by saying that more than half of those attending the meetings voted in favor of the report. (in Turkish) Things began to get weird earlier in the week when the report was released, then later the lock to the room where the Commision held its meetings was changed. The government ministry complained that the public saw the report before they did. Kaboglu said nothing was made public before informing them.

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Yeah!

Erdogan apparently said that the Cyprus issue and EU membership are not related. If you think about it for three seconds it makes sense. But if you think about it for a second longer it's almost laughable. It makes sense because the acute apathy shown towards Cyprus as a whole after the referendum leads one to think that the EU couldn't really give a shit. That's possibly true, but even they are going to be forced back into caring for one blindingly obvious reason: Turkey does not recognize The Republic of Cyprus, which happens to be a member of the EU (fancy that). Recognizing existing EU members obviously has nothing to do with becoming an EU member...olives and oranges, man. (But we do recognize Cyprus when we're hosting shitty singing contests like Eurovision. Let's mention that!)

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Gul: The non-choice negotiator

Mehmet Ali Birand has a rather amusing piece on who should be the negotiator when "the condition of our condition" talks start on December 17. It is amusing if only for its lack of depth. One would be inclined to think that when doing an analysis on possible negotiators, one should first establish a set of possible candidates. In fact, the only alternative to Birand's main choice is Kemal Dervis, at least according to Birand. Everyone knew though that Dervis (a political innocent and ex-IMF economist) was scratched off a while ago. Gul, our current foreign minister, seems like the only possibility; anyone else were things to go bad could be easily made a scapegoat. The man's greatest assest is his ability to casually put down occasional nationalistic or status quo arguments that bubble forth from some corners (as he had done when the Annan Plan for Cyprus was put on the table) without denting his credibility. Although he does have his occasional gaffs, his English is not embarrassingly bad (Does anyone remember that god-awful CNN international interview with Mesut Yilmaz? The guy didn't bring a translator and resorted to repeating one answer for dozens of unrelated questions). Birand, as usual, shies away from presenting something that is little known about the negotiations or Gul. (He even begins is article "As usual in our impatience...", see "Penal Code" post below for Birand's patience theme.)

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Hitchens: Wolfowitz is the anti-Kissinger

Apparently (or hopefully), there are two camps under the neo-conservatives, one that believes fixing Iraq will ease Israel's expansionist policies, and the other that believes fixing Iraq will prevent Israel's expansionist policies. In a debate with Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens says Wolfowitz is in the latter group:

Hitchens: Now there are some of the neo-conservatives, I think, thought by taking out the main rejectionist dictatorship in the region, they would make Eretz Israel, or Greater Israel, more secure, or more feasible, alternatively, whether you think Greater Israel has been achieved or not. There were others of the same kidney, if you wish, where Wolfowitz and others took exactly the opposite feeling. If you took out the rejectionist dictatorship, you were in a stronger position to bring the leverage on Israel about the settlements and about expansionism, especially at a time when the Likud party itself is beginning to abandon the ultimate dream of Eretz Israel. I think it's very seldom noticed about this election, especially on the left, and this surprises me and I dare say I might even get Tariq's half acquiescence on this point. If you care about the rights of the Palestinians, which I do and I know he does, and you do, there's absolutely no reason whatever to hope for a Democratic victory in November. It's quite obvious to me that the only chance they have is a Bush second term. The possibility that some pressure can be brought in Israel from this quarter, the only quarter that counts, increases if Bush is re-elected.

Ali: Well, I must say what Christopher said on this is undeniable. The Democrats have over the last 20 years been completely uncritical of every single Israeli government, which has continued to press the Palestinians and crush and kill on a daily basis. What I dispute is whether a Bush second victory would be of any benefit in this particular direction, because the whole thing has now been subsumed under the war against terror, so-called. And Sharon became a valued ally of the Bush administration because he was regarded as absolutely central in the war against terror. And every single struggle is now characterized as a struggle against terrorism. I mean, Putin has destroyed half of Chechnya in the name of the so-called war against terror...I mean, what makes Wolfowitz different from Henry Kissinger in terms of projecting America power?

Hitchens: Wolfowitz and Kissinger disliked each other and disagreed very strongly with each other for a long time. I think the origin of the disagreement and the origin of Wolfowitz's political career is that he argued it was important to dump the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Base or no base, let it go and take the chances that this would have a ripple effect in the rest of Asia, which was just what Kissinger didn't want. As a result, there were outbreaks of democratic insurgency, starting with the Aquino election, in South Korea, in Taiwan, eventuating in Tiananmen Square, in fact, in 1989, which of course, Kissinger also opposed and took the side of the Chinese Stalinists. On the Middle East, the victory of the neo-conservatives is very paradoxical, because contra Bush, Eagleburger -� Bush Sr., that is -� Eagleburger, Scowcroft -- I've just mentioned, by the way, the two leading members of Kissinger Associates -- and others, Colin Powell. The argument of the neo-conservatives, or at least of the Wolfowitz wing, was, "We can't go on like this, running the Middle East as a kind of political slum of client states. We have to take the chance that destabilization would be worth it in the long run." That's what, that's still why the extreme right in the country, people like Buchanan and others, oppose it. Precisely for that reason. They and the pro-Saudi conservatives.

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An Act of God

When she was theorizing about artificial intelligence, Ellen Ullman once wrote:

“I decided that there are huge swaths of existence that would be impenetrable—indescribable, unprogrammable—to a creature that did not eat or shit.”

Well, it turns out that Protestants may not have had their Reformation if it weren't for one man's constipation. The toliet was where Martin Luther came up with the idea and he wouldn't have been stuck there for so long if things had been working smoothly. Archaeologists, apparently, have found his spot. Whoever reported this story definately got their kicks:

The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat...."We still don't know what was used for wiping in those days," says Dr Treu. The paper of the time, he says, would have been too expensive and critically, "too stiff" for the purpose....Future visitors to Wittenberg's Martin Luther museum will be able to view the new find, though structural concerns mean they will not be free to test its qualities as a toilet.

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Carney on Kael

This is old stuff but still:

RC:....the Times's restaurant reviewer should forget about La Grenouille and Aureole and start covering the local Pizza Hut and McDonald's outlets. The art critic should make sure he writes up the black velvet Elvis paintings. The book review editor better not miss a Tom Clancy or Stephen King novel. All kidding aside, shouldn't the film reviewer take his job at least as seriously as the restaurant reviewer? At the very least, shouldn't there be one reviewer at each major publication assigned to covering the real works of art in film–no matter how small their budgets or limited their releases? There's no one at any major publication I know of doing that now.

VISIONS: Doesn't Pauline Kael's promotion of the early work of Coppola, Lynch, the Coen brothers, Toback, and DePalma disprove that?

RC: (Laughing) You're asking the wrong person about Pauline Kael....Kael wasn't interested in art; she was a connoisseur of kitsch. As far as I'm concerned, she was the single most unfortunate influence on the last thirty years of American film reviewing–stylistically, intellectually, and aesthetically. OK, so she went out front and championed certain filmmakers' work before anyone else did. But doesn't it matter that she was wrong about each and every one of them? Have any of them produced a major work?

Kael was the Michael Milken of film reviewing–she had a genuine flair for rhetorically inflating the value of a worthless stock and creating a stampede on the part of others to buy into it based on the inflated value. Look at how it worked in practice: Kael canonized The Godfather, Dressed to Kill, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fingers, Blood Simple, and Blue Velvet as masterworks. Since most critics, like most stock market investors, are more or less sheep, they followed her lead. Once they jumped on the bandwagon, the fiction acquired a life of its own, and she seemed astonishingly prescient. Reputations were made, canonical oeuvres were established based on one or two works, careers were avidly tracked, with the critics wagering on each of the successive works. The only problem is that it was all a shell game. A few years went by and the initial offering inevitably went back to zero, since there was no intrinsic value to start with. Subsequent works (not surprisingly) failed to live up to the "promise" of the director's previous work. The six movies I named were eventually perceived to be merely quite ordinary or worse than ordinary. (Most people seem to have realized this about the DePalma, Spielberg, Toback, Coen, and Lynch movies, though there are those who have invested so heavily in Coppola that they still can't admit that they are holding worthless promissory notes.)

VISIONS: But it's always said that she was a great writer.

RC: Doesn't great writing have something to do with being smart, being perceptive, being critically "right" about a work or a career? Is it great writing if you're consistently stupid and wrong? Are we in such an alexandrine age that great writing has become nothing more than jazzy metaphors, panting exclamations, the snap, crackle, and pop of adverbial self-stimulation? But what's even worse is that the awfulness lives on in all of the Kael-clones she spawned over the past twenty years. You come up against her lamentable legacy every week in the Village Voice, New York, and the Boston Globe–both in the schlock sensibility and in the costume-jewelry glitz of the writing itself.

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Rick Trembles, Maverick Film Reviewer

There are few people in the world who are greater defenders of cinematic trash than Rick Trembles. A resident of Montreal, this guy churns out comic film reviews like no other, and I'm sure those south of the border will be hard-pressed to find an equivalent. Many of his archived reviews are now being published--anything from Birth of A Nation (1915) to Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) to Charlie's Angels. You can check out his review of Team America as well... or maybe his archives.

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Language Edition Variations

There are only a few newspaper that have English online editions, and the ones that do have amusing differences with their Turkish counterpart. For example, the socially conservative Zaman has Erdogan's France visit as the main story but its English edition heads with the guilty plea of a US soldier in the Abu Ghraib scandal. It also has a headline that states the Muslim contingent support for Kerry in the US elections, absent from the Turkish front page. The Turkish edition, on the other hand, has a headline that informs the reader that a Hollywood movie about Fatih Sultan Mehmet is being made. The subtle difference in covering homosexuality is also amusing. The Booker Prize winner, Hollinghurst, along with his "gay novel", is mentioned on the front page in the English edition, but left for the Culture section in the Turkish version.
Hurriyet's English online edition is less detailed than Zaman's. However, it contains a story that Zaman does not mention:

While in France, P.M. Tayyip Erdogan gave liberal messages. He said that gays had their own law and that there should be no fear from an idea that made no "Actual harm."

I guess when he says "an idea that makes no actual harm," he's referring to gay sex. I have no idea, though, what he means when he says that "gays have their own laws." What, in God's name, does that mean? Laws that protect them (I highly doubt it)? (I am reminded of the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire which, though they were taxed, were not required to follow Islamic law--but what Turkish laws nowadays do not apply to homosexuals?) This headline is also completely absent from Hurriyet's Turkish online edition, which leads me to believe that Hurriyet does not want to cause a minor domestic controversy, but at the same time hopes to show off our "cosmopolitan" prime minister to foreigners. How thoughtful of them, if only the story made sense....

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"I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song." --Rilke







Some amazing photos from the Narphotos collective....these are by Coskun Asar. If a transvestite has got your back in a fight in Turkey then you're good to go. They are by far the toughest of the tough, out of necessity of course. For in a hostile environment, they have to put up with getting attacked just for walking the street. If they go up against some gang in any part of the world they will kick ass. No contest.

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One (or Two) Sentence Belated Reviews of Mostly Retarded Movies

The Terminal: Ever wonder what it would be like if Forrest Gump was Russian instead of retarded?

Collateral: Jamie Foxx tells the Last Samurai not to give him "this I-Ching shit" in a taxi cab, thus ending the age-old practice of using taxis to dump bullshit dialogue in a script. Tom Cruise reinstates the practice by continuing to talk about the insignificance of man in the cosmos.

I Robot: Will Smith is a racist black cop in the future chasing down robots who happen to be running down a street with a purse in their hands. This provides sharp commentary on life in the States today where cops chase black people down a street for the same reason, and most of the time it turns out that there is an inhaler in the purse and the poor black guy is trying reach some bitch who is about to die, just like in the movie.

Life is A Miracle: A guy masturbates as bombs fall on his head. No, it's not Underground. Way to go Kusturica!!

Old Boy: When the audience has lost all hope, and while on the ground and having the crap kicked out of him by twenty people, our hero ingeniously begins to hit the attackers' feet with a hammer, like a deranged Charlie Chaplin.

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Turkish Penal Code (Apparently, size does matter)

Cumhuriyet gave a free copy of the new penal code with their newspaper last week, knowing the little I do know about penal codes I was surprised how thin the thing actually was. Cumhuriyet must have sensed the laziness of the general public to go out and find the damn thing...good for them. They have, after all, saved me a trip to the library. Although I did not see laws against Armenian genocide acceptance or advocating removal of Turkish troops from Cyprus, there is an article that presumably allows people to be charged for it (2+ years jail sentence):

Insulting the Turkish national identity, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey: up to 3 years (if committed by a Turkish citizen abroad: to be increased one-third); Insulting the Turkish Government, the judicial organs, military or security institutions: up to 2 years (if committed by a Turkish citizen abroad: to be increased one-third).

The vagueness in wording is rampant throughout the text. What differentiates a criticism from an insult? The fact that one would leave such a distinction in the hands of a few judges is absurd. Convinctions may be hard to come by, but even having to waste months or years in court is punishment in and of itself.

The European Green Party, usually referred to as the most vocal supporter of Turkey's EU bid, held a parlimentary meeting in Istanbul today. And for ardent supporters, they made a lot of people squirm. Daniel Cohen-Bendit bluntly stated that people being sent to jail for speech, even when their words directly attacked the State, was unacceptable. His bluntness even took the translator by surprise, who started off watering down some of his words but then began translating them more accurately when she realized he wasn't letting up.

What's also been amusing is a couple of pieces by Mehmet Ali "Gee What a Great View" Birand. He spends most of his time begging both the EU and Turkey to be patient cause "things are getting better." Either I haven't been paying attention, or Birand is growing a few fangs, and it's a good thing:

"I am talking about our general attitude towards our Kurdish citizens.

We didn't even recognize their existence.

Didn't we tell them: "You don't know who you are. You are not Kurds, you are mountain Turks?"

Didn't we change the names of their villages to Turkish?

Didn't we even prevent them giving their children Kurdish names?

Didn't we ban them from talking Kurdish or listening to Kurdish songs?

Didn't we purposefully leave the Southeast poor and ignorant? Didn't we ignore the fact that a clan structure was being established there?

Now, let's look at the status of the Alewis.

Didn't the dominant Sunnis force Alewis to remain on the sidelines for years?

The religious Affairs Directorate didn't use even a small part of the taxes it collected from the Alewis to support Cem Houses (Alewi places of worship).

Alewis were always put under pressure.

Only when the Sunni Islamists became dominant did the Alewis draw praise as the "protectors of the secular system."

Didn't the state instigate Sunni-Alewi conflicts? How quickly we forget the large-scale clashes that occurred in the 1970s.

In his later article, his title exhumes his usual, almost child-like optimism: "I bet Ataturk is smiling," he says. In it, he notes the following:

"The European Commission gives a 'green light' to Turkey. However, the report was dominated by its aim to alleviate fears in EU countries. And then I looked at our media: Some are just ignorant, while some want to be seen as rebels while blasting the commission's report. Thank God most see the bigger picture."

One of those rebels, presumably, is Nuray Mert, who attacked the report on being weak on defending religious freedom and too overly concerned about superficial exhibitions of cultural diversity. Then Birand throws this in the field of strawberries:

"Our 'commission official' was honorable after all...We criticized the man for years. We accused him of being a Nazi and anti-Turkish. What he said was right but it didn't suit our purposes, so we just ignored them. However, we should now give credit where it's due."

Well, no wonder Guenter Verheugen is being ridiculed by Europe's right nowadays. Birand, as usual, finishes by saying that the pessimism exhibited by some goes against the facts. There are some pessimists out there, however, who are so inclined because they refuse to demand anything less than what is just.

What was also amusing was the misunderstanding of our press over the use of the word "minority". In the West, it usually implies receiving some kind of additional attention. In Turkey, it is used to refer to groups of people who have to pay a certain price to be who they are.

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Amis vs. Updike Redux

If there hasn't been a book that has lost its place on my bookshelf despite having the last 70 pages drenched in coffee it's Martin Amis' The War Against Cliche collection of essays (1971-2000), filled with his take on Updike and Bellow. For the last twenty years it looks as though Updike has not relaxed his insistence on reviewing translations. Amis' 1976 piece on Updike's book reviews reads as if it were written yesterday:

"Updike can keep a straight face while noting the linguistic tang of translated 'Arab and Bantu exclamations'; and he is perfectly capable of talking about the style of a novel translated from the French translation of the Polish--which is like analysing the brushstrokes of a Brownie."

Updike's last two reviews have such musings.

From José Saramago's (Portugese) The Double:

The proof that the universe was not as well-thought-out as it should have been lies in the fact that the Creator ordered the star that illumines us to be called the sun. Had the king of the stars borne the name Common Sense, imagine how enlightened the human spirit would be now.

Updike's response:

One wonders. “Common sense” in Portuguese is surprisingly similar to the English: comum senso or bom senso. Nevertheless, some spirit-altering connotations may be lost in translation. Is common sense really a cure-all?

From Orhan Pamuk's Snow:

“….You’re here this evening, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I want to read you my poem again,” said Ka, as he put his notebook into his pocket. “Do you think it’s beautiful?”
“Yes, really, it’s beautiful.”
“What’s beautiful about it?”
“I don’t know, it’s just beautiful,” said Ipek. She opened the door to leave.
Ka threw his arms around her and kissed her on the mouth.

Updike's Response:

Maybe...it reads better in Turkish.

Clearly, books that rely on too many cultural cues usually do not fair well in translation. Novels that do exploit cultural cues, however, are usually popular nationally because their cues can act as a cover for an otherwise obvious lack of depth. Their mediocrity is unearthed with another language. In cases where novels that first wallow in cultural debris but then transcend it, it’s more of a tragedy because the actual transcendence is what is absent in the translation, and the cultural debris all the more present. There are those that can avoid this, and at least Updike is out in front leading the search.

Meanwhile, his collection of short stories (in untranslated English) came to my library.The thing, unsurprisingly, is huge. If you happen to like Updike and step aerobics, it’s your lucky day cause this doubles as both.


"The reckless aggression of his first term moderated into the diplomatic 'hardball' of his second."
--Amis on Reagan circa '88