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Forum Messages Posted by Roswitha

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Thread: Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company

371.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 22 Dec 2008 Mon 04:29 pm

Stampede for ´Bush shoe´ creates 100 new jobs

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/22/turkey-george-bush-shoe



Thread: Altruistic Turkish Heroine: Serife Baci

372.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 21 Dec 2008 Sun 12:07 am

Istiklal - Serife Baci part-1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoRpGsbRdyM

 

 

http://wowturkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47479



Thread: Secular Turks ´facing prejudice´

373.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 19 Dec 2008 Fri 07:29 pm

A report in Turkey has highlighted "very worrying" evidence of increased discrimination against secular Turks.

The study, called "Being Different in Turkey", links this directly to the presence of the religious conservative AK Party in government.

It details widespread social pressure on non-devout Muslims to attend Friday prayers, fast during the month of Ramadan or wear a headscarf.

It was conducted by the Open Society Institute and Bosphorus University.

It suggests that a government policy of making appointments to local administrations on the basis of political and religious beliefs, rather than competence, is forcing non-devout Turks to change their habits in order to protect their business or their jobs.

The AK Party has its roots in political Islam, but has always insisted its views have changed.

Last year, the party survived an attempt to close it down, as a threat to Turkey´s strict secular system.

Social pressure

The study documents what many secular Turks have complained about in the years since the AK Party came to power.

Based on interviews with almost 5,000 secular Turks, Alevites and Christians in 12 cities, it concludes that religious conservatism is flourishing, breeding increasing intolerance of those outside the Sunni Muslim majority.

It claims that the appointment of AK Party devotees to local administrations, schools and hospitals is changing the social atmosphere in Turkey in what it calls a very worrying way.

The report cites page upon page of examples: non-religious nurses put on permanent night shift; landlords refusing to take female student tenants unless they wear a headscarf; secular civil servants bypassed for promotion.

It talks of increased social pressure to attend Friday prayers and fast during Ramadan, and documents the difficulty in many cities of obtaining licences to sell alcohol.

The report´s authors accept that much of the Turkish heartland has always been socially conservative.

But they blame the AK Party for failing to promote tolerance for other groups´ rights and freedoms while in government.

Instead - the report says - the government´s practices have had quite the opposite effect.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7792239.stm



Thread: what caught my eye today

374.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 19 Dec 2008 Fri 06:25 pm

The chickens come home to roost

(guardian.co.uk) Do we imagine that anyone vaguely knowing these people would forgive their murderers?

"America´s chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism."

By Paul J. Balles

Thirty-nine women and children and eight teenagers at a wedding could hardly be mistaken for militants. Yet that´s what the U.S. military said about the 47 civilians murdered in an air strike in Afghanistan (BBC 11/07/08). Do we imagine, for a minute, that anyone vaguely knowing these people would forgive their tormentors and murderers?

When a superior officer ordered three of his U.S. marines not to take time to process the prisoners according to the rules, the threesome took turns blowing their prisoners’ brains out in Fallujah in 2004 (Los Angeles Times 11/07/08).

How many of us would seriously think that stories of these atrocious misdeeds weren’t broadcast by word of mouth through all of the Arab and Islamic worlds?

"We did a study on 3,000 children in Gaza," says, Dr Eyad al Saraj, a child psychologist. "45 per cent of them said the worst thing they have witnessed was the beating of their fathers by the Israeli soldiers. That was the symbol of security and power for them and it was shattered."

Is it any wonder that these children grow up finding new symbols of power in the model of the man with the Kalashnikov?

After the U.S. media reported Reverend Jeremiah Wright´s sermon as an example of a bad influence on Barack Obama, few people wanted to face the truth of what Wright said about the chickens coming home to roost:

We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. We killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye!

Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America´s chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.

How many Americans are ready to admit that 9/11 was a crime of our own making?

Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. underecretary of the Treasury says: "America’s brutal crimes against the Muslim world have invited every Muslim to become a law unto himself – a revolutionary. It is not terror that Washington confronts but revolution."

Here´s a “chickens come home to roost” theme in Roberts´ view after the carnage in Mumbai. Roberts describes the provocation to terror well, and his analysis bears repeating:

The attack on Mumbai required radical individuals. These people resulted from the U.S. overthrowing the elected government in Iran and imposing the Shah [the faux Shah Pahlavi]; from the U.S. stationing troops in Saudi Arabia; from the U.S. invading and attempting to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, bombing weddings, funerals and children’s soccer games; from the U.S. violating international and U.S. law by torturing its Muslim victims; from the U.S. enlisting Pakistan in its war against the Taliban; from the U.S. violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting military operations on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistani civilians; from the U.S. government supporting a half century of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands, towns and villages; from the assault of American culture on Muslim values; from the U.S. purchasing the government of Egypt to act as its puppet; from U.S. arrogance that America is the supreme arbiter of morality.

Military interrogator Matthew Alexander´s reactions to abuses of prisoners are revealing of the policies and practices that lead to resistance. According to experts on terror, inhumane treatment produces nothing of any value; it leads only to hatred and a desire for revenge.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of human bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It´s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our programme of detainee abuse.

How do we expect the family, friends, relatives and members of the tribes of the victims of our policies and practices to react?

Call it what you will – chickens coming home to roost, revolution, resistance, victims – but don’t dismiss the arrogant immorality of brutalizing the world as someone else’s evil.

-- Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see pballes.com. This article appeared in Redress Information & Analysis.

 

Source: Middle East Online



Thread: Serkan Çaðrý & Sabahat Akkiraz - Kýnalý Kar

375.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 19 Dec 2008 Fri 02:28 am

I like her voice, she must be very famous?

 

http://tr-tr.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=25838413319&oid=10814120954

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Serkan+%C3%87a%C4%9Fr%C4%B1+%26+Sabahat+Akkiraz+-+K%C4%B1nal%C4%B1+Kar&search_type=&aq=f



Thread: Demre and St. Nicholas

376.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 19 Dec 2008 Fri 12:24 am

In the 4th century, a bishop named Nicholas was a local hero in this seaside town, living the kind of life that eventually led to sainthood. For most of the 16 centuries that followed, Saint Nicholas was known chiefly as the patron of sailors, barrel-makers, small children and Russians.

And though it´s not entirely clear just when the historical Saint Nicholas began to meld into the image of the jolly man in the red suit, historians can now say precisely when the transformation was complete. On Feb. 3, the Demre City Council voted unanimously to erect a statue of Santa Claus in the town square, replacing a bronze statue of the Saint Nicholas who merely lived here.


Mayor Suleyman Topcu points with pride to Demre´s official seal, which features a stylized Santa, rather than the town´s 4th-century local hero. (Karl Vick -- The Washington Post)

"This is the one everyone knows," Mayor Suleyman Topcu said of the plaster-of-Paris figure put up in place of the elegant bronze. "We couldn´t figure out what the other one is."

They are finding out. The demotion of the real Saint Nicholas did not go unnoticed. Offended parties include Russian Orthodox tourists who venerated the saint made the patron of their homeland by Czar Alexander II; the sculptor, also Russian, who donated the bronze statue five years ago; tour operators who pitch Demre as part of a tour of Turkey´s religious history; and an assortment of bystanders who see the town´s elevation of Santa over Nicholas as the ultimate commercialization of, if not Christmas, something dignified and sacred.

"The one out there is a joke," said Ozay Eryener, a Turkish tour guide ushering a busload of Germans through the ruins of the ancient church from which Nicholas´s bones were stolen in 1087 and spirited to Italy. The bronze statue, with its halo and arms extended benevolently, now stands at the entrance to the ruin, tucked unobtrusively between a stone pillar and a bit of wall.

Its demotion passed without comment by the Germans accompanying Eryener. "We prefer not to tell them," he said.

Demre is not a place where one more Saint Nick would necessarily attract a lot of notice. Images of the secular Santa beam from the stone archway at the edge of town. His bushy whiskers, rendered in lamb´s wool, spring from the hand-woven wall hangings on sale in vendors´ stalls. The city´s official seal features a handsomely stylized Santa framed by a dashing red cap. A tinsel palm tree glimmers on streets lined with the real thing.

"We don´t know what to think, really," said Guray Yilmaz, a local vendor. He stood in the shadow of the sun-blasted Santa, beside his display of local spices: nutmeg, red pepper, "sex tea" and black cumin. "The tour guides come and they get angry. Then other people say this is more popular.

"The local people say this is better," Yilmaz said, with a nod toward Santa. "The other was a priest, a Christian."

Turkey is, after all, overwhelmingly Muslim. Nicholas lived in Demre before the prophet Muhammad began reciting the words of God on a mountain in the Arabian Peninsula. In the 4th century, Demre was known as Myra and was part of the Roman Empire. Saint Paul changed boats in its harbor while roaming Asia Minor spreading the Gospel. A massive stone amphitheater still stands at the edge of town, drawing tourists in the lee of rocky cliffs laced with impressively carved tombs.

Nicholas, whose birthday is observed Dec. 6, was renowned both for his generosity and for his passionate, even violent defense of the young Christian church. He was said to have slapped the face of an Egyptian who questioned whether Jesus was equal to God. He also is said to have saved Myra from famine, three boys from being pickled in a barrel and several poor local women from lives of prostitution -- the last by secretly dropping bags of coins into their homes at night so that they could wed.

Such late-night largess may be the thread that connects the historical Nicholas with his modern incarnation, so famous globally that even Muslim Turkey claims a version.

"Noel Baba is our citizen," said Faruk Akbudak, a senior bureaucrat in Demre, using the Turkish for Father Christmas. "We respect him. We embrace him."

"Yes, the people prefer this one," said Topcu, the mayor. "But the foreigners do, too."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61509-2005Mar23.html

 



Thread: Demre and St. Nicholas

377.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 19 Dec 2008 Fri 12:22 am

In the Turkish town of Demre, Santa Claus or St Nicholas birth is celebrated every year during the three-day festival held in early December. Born in the nearby town of Patara, St Nicholas is remembered not only as a famous Turkish archbishop, but also for his kindness to children.



Thread: Takva

378.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 18 Dec 2008 Thu 07:17 pm

A Man´s Fear of God is one of those films that playfully enact conflicts of fundamental importance for the world we live in. Takva starts off with humble Muharrem, an introverted single man living in Istanbul, being drawn into the inner circle of a Muslim brotherhood he has adhered to ever since his childhood days. When the erudite and strikingly pragmatic leader, Sheikh Cemal, appoints him as his financial organizer, Muharrem gets endowed with all the amenities and trappings of a modern world businessman. He has to collect rent and administer the order´s finances. His naive will to live a life according to what he thinks is the will of God clashes not only with his unfulfilled sexual desires, but also with the mechanisms of power within the order. The brothers´ lifestyle may be conservative, but they run an organization that is fully intertwined with the present day social, political and economic life of Turkey.

For Muharrem, who hardly understands any of this business, this means that every step he intends to make for the greater glory of God draws him ever deeper into the quagmire of corruption, lies and hypocrisy. The authority he is endowed with now makes him haughty and difficult to deal with, while his accumulated frustration increasingly throws him into literal fits. Everything escalates when he comes face to face with the woman he desires...

The plot for this great film is based on an old folk tale from Turkey about a man who refuses to marry the daughter of his spiritual master although he clearly loves her. In Onder Cakar and Omer Kiziltan´s adaptation, the narrative serves to expose the inner mechanisms of puritan Muslim orders and throw light on the mental set-up of its loyal members. The film is pure fun to watch due to countless instances of great irony, a remarkable love for detail and breathtaking scenes of ecstatic rituals. While the filmmakers were very careful not to ridicule the milieu they´re depicting, their critical approach accounts for a film that substantially helps understand the way political Islam "works".



Thread: Takva

379.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 18 Dec 2008 Thu 07:14 pm

This film,  was one of the most thought provoking films I have seen. It displays Islamic culture and religion, which we seldom see in the western world. It also provides a fascinating window into a fundamentalist Muslim´s struggle with his morality as the story unfolds. In some ways, is the story of a character who enters a scenario in which he is the fish out of water. However, this fish out of water story is dramatic, not comic.



Thread: Takva

380.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 18 Dec 2008 Thu 06:17 pm

Catwoman, You also learn about DHIKR and HADRAH

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhikr

 

and

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrah



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