The re-Islamization of law by the leadership of the Islamic Republic following the 1979 revolution immediately clashed with the realities of contemporary Iranian society. [1] This clash engendered divisions between the parliament and the Guardian Council (a body of faqihs [2]] tasked with safeguarding laws’ conformity to Islam and the constitution). [3] Numerous government projects and decisions adopted by the parliament were rejected by the Guardian Council on the grounds that they did not conform to shari‘a (Islamic law). The Council’s hard-line policy generated continuous conflicts, necessitating the intervention of Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic.
A shadow haunts Iran, the shadow of democracy and popular sovereignty. Twenty years ago the Islamic Revolution established a polity based on two contradictory elements: a republic of equal and sovereign citizens, and a hierarchical theocracy of pastoral power descending from an unelected religious leader (vali-e faqih, the Supreme Leader), which represented an innovation in Shi‘i Islam. The inevitable tensions between these irreconcilable elements are now coming to a head. [1]
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have faced a series of economic shocks since the Gulf war. Each shock alone would have been difficult to weather, but combined they have led to a considerable worsening of economic conditions. These shocks included the Gulf war, Israeli closures of the West Bank and Gaza, and the influx of diaspora Palestinians after the Oslo accords. While the first two clearly had negative consequences, the last is more complex. The repatriation of diaspora Palestinians has led to a reversal of the “brain drain,” and an influx of much needed capital. Yet the impact of this spending has been disappointing and widening economic inequality may have resulted.
“War on Terrorism Hits LA,” the headline of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner screamed on January 27, 1987. The Los Angeles Eight, as the seven Palestinians and a Kenyan came to be known, are still fighting deportation today. Dangerous security risks? The Immigration and Naturalization Service said so. International terrorists? The INS still argues that the Eight were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These charges were partly based on secret evidence, including photos showing the Eight distributing a “subversive” magazine published in Damascus entitled Democratic Palestine.
The hum of approaching aircraft sends residents of this dusty rebel outpost scurrying for cover. The over-flights may be the United Nations planes from Operation Lifeline Sudan carrying famine relief — or Sudanese Air Force Antonov-27s searching for signs of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), whose army, the SPLA, controls most of the southern third of this strife-torn country. Battle-weary civilians take no chances. Random — and mostly ineffective — air raids have increased throughout the contested south since a “humanitarian cease-fire” broke down last summer. The government has sought to pressure the SPLM to accept a wider truce rather than extending the previous one only in the famine-wracked Bahr el Ghazal region.
A quarter of a century ago, MERIP Reports, the forerunner of this magazine, received wide acclaim for its incisive and politically accurate reporting on Iran in the years leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Two decades after the culmination of the tumultuous events that redefined Iranian society and politics, and indeed, regional geostrategic and ideological realities, we are pleased to present this special issue of Middle East Report assessing Iran's Islamic Revolution at 20 from an on-the-ground perspective.
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
