International press reports have not done justice to the complexity of recent dramatic events in Iran. What began as a genuine, spontaneous student uprising in defense of press freedoms and political reforms has now been appropriated by extremist religious paramilitaries and vigilantes aiming to discredit the students and provoke a crackdown by anti-reform elements of the regime. Khatami's call for moderation in the wake of street battles between students and security forces was not an "about face" on reform, but a demand consistent with several appeals for calm issued by leading pro-reform figures and groups, including the fledgling student "Unity Council."
When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak presents his coalition government to the Knesset he will receive a vote of confidence from 75 of its 120 members. Seven parties, some with incompatible positions on key issues, support the new government. In addition to Barak's One Israel list (Labor Party plus Gesher and Meimad, 26 seats), the coalition includes the Sephardi-orthodox SHAS (17 seats), the dovish-secularist MERETZ (10 seats), the politically ambiguous Center Party (6 seats), whose leaders include ministers in the previous Likud government; the secular-Russian immigrant Yisrael ba-`Aliyah (6 seats), the pro-settler National Religious Party (5 seats), and the ultra-orthodox United Torah Judaism (5 seats).
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visits Washington this week at a time when US-Egyptian relations appear to be harmonious. Yet beneath the surface, relations may not be as cordial as they seem. Particularly discordant notes in the current US-Egyptian relationship concern free trade, regional economic integration and Egypt's human rights record. These issues will be high on the agenda during meetings between US and Egyptian officials this week.
This document is excerpted from a longer report by the Netherlands Kurdistan Society, Forced Evictions and Destruction of Villages in Dersim (Tunceli) and the Western Part of Bingöl, Turkish Kurdistan, September-November 1994 (Amsterdam, 1995).
After the victory of the Welfare Party in the municipal elections of March 1994, the newly-elected mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thanked the disciplined and devoted Islamist women who had campaigned door-to-door until election day. Islamist women also gave the same determined performance during the general election campaign. Contrary to expectations, however, the Welfare administration refused at the last minute to allow women to become parliamentary candidates for the general elections in December 1995. Headscarved women, they claimed, would have difficulty because of the dress code which prohibits women in public offices from wearing the headscarf, a prohibition which applies to women deputies in the parliament.
There are three kinds of people in Turkey who most look forward to the country’s membership of the European Union. The first group, most obviously, comprises big businesses — “Istanbul” capital as opposed to small and medium domestic market-oriented Anatolian capital. The other two groups are rather less obvious, and it is their views which I want to challenge here. The second group is left/liberal opinion, ranging from social democrats and parts of some socialist organizations, to trade union leaders and activists of the various human rights organizations. The third group, broadly speaking, is the Kurdish movement.
The stark black letters on white stone in the cemetery are all that remain of rioting that left 17 dead last year in Istanbul’s Gazi neighborhood. The shattered glass has been replaced, the burned cars swept off the streets, the angry leftist slogans on walls painted over. What remains of those two days in March 1995 are memories, and the graves of those killed.
It was close to midnight on March 12. People had come to protest a drive-by shooting that killed two and wounded 15 in this run-down neighborhood on the outskirts of Istanbul. Hours earlier, unidentified gunmen had driven through Gazi and shot up four coffee shops and a pastry shop. The people of Gazi were convinced that ultra-rightists linked to the police had staged the attack.
The emergence of legal Kurdish parties and the frequent occurrence of death squad-style political assassinations were two developments in Turkey’s political life during the 1990s. For the first time in Turkey’s history, there was a group in the parliament that represented — if only implicitly — Kurdish nationalist opinion and systematically protested humans rights violations against Kurds. At the same time, a number of influential Kurdish political and community leaders were killed, many of their deaths described as “murders by unknown actors” because the police usually failed to find the assassins.
Turkish Islam is tied up with Turkish nationalism in a unique fashion, the product of Turkish history and identity. Turkey’s brand of Islamist ideology challenges the secularist components and the European identification of Kemalism, historically the dominant form of Turkish nationalism, but retains the central core of Turkish nationalism and statism.
Afkhami, Mahnaz and Erika Friedl. Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
Al-Rawi, Rosina-Fawzia. Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing (Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 1999).
Baaklini, Abdo, Guilain Denoeux and Robert Springborg. Legislative Politics in the Arab World: The Resurgence of Democratic Institutions (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
Botman, Selma. Engendering Citizenship in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
The death of Eqbal Ahmad on May 11 was an occasion of great sadness for those who had the privilege of knowing and working with him. Eqbal was associated with MERIP for many years as a contributing editor, but this affiliation hardly conveyed the key role he played in MERIP’s formative years. If we could designate a category for those whose example, encouragement and vision were crucial in transforming MERIP from an idea into a reality, Eqbal would be in the first rank.
Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
Mary Jean Green, Karen Gould, Micheline Rice-Maximin et al, eds., Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
Winifred Woodhull, Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization and Literatures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
“You are a Turk from Germany.” The words are from the song “Sen Turksun” (You Are a Turk) by German-Turkish rap group Cartel. Cartel shot to prominence in 1995 in Germany and Turkey with their album, “Cartel,” which within a month of its release sold 30,000 copies in Germany and 180,000 in Turkey. The “Cartel, Number One” video aired repeatedly on Turkish television and quickly hit the top of the Turkish pop charts. Every Turkish station and newspaper wanted to interview the group, which fascinated the Turkish public with its aggressive style, its ingenious music that combined rap with elements of Turkish musical genres, and its lyrics. For example:
“If we were to continuously work until 5 o’clock as hard as the employer wants, we would not be able to get to work the next day. No human being can work as much as that.”
— Domestic Worker
In what can be termed a modern-day slave trade, Sri Lankan women arrive in Lebanon only to find themselves abused, imprisoned, raped, hungry, defenseless and alone. Siriani P., 27, came to Beirut in a desperate attempt to save her family from a life of poverty. Just ten months later, however, she grabbed the first opportunity to run away from her employers.
“Trafficking into Israel is not simply a story of economic migration; it is a modern slave trade.” [1]
— Martina Vandenberg
I never knew that cold could burn. It was a wild wind and my fingers were numb and clumsy. I fumbled with the sheet of paper, turning the page over and over. It was little more than tatters now, covered in smeared ink. My mother wrote all the instructions for me on this page and I held it in the palm of my hand since the day I had left home. Now it seemed the words had dissolved in the ship’s mist and the heat of my skin. I stood on the pavement, still feeling the pulse of the waves in my legs. I stared at the shell-curves of her Arabic letters, intricate as nautilus chambers.
I had forgotten how to read Arabic.
