garfucius sayeth...

the cliché, every picture is worth a million words, only denotes a readiness to admit limited ability of abstraction.

garfucius sayeth...

once there were opinionated cusses.

in this age of linearization and standard cogitation, even cusses are
opinion-less.

modernity is necessary - even for islamists

mehmet y. yılmaz of hürriyet commented wednesday on an interview with abdullah gül, who said it is possible to make "türban"(*) even "more modern". he added, had he been elected president, his wife, too, would adopt a different style of covering her head. "wives have their responsibilities as well, and hayrunisa hanım is well aware of that," gül noted. yılmaz wrote in response, gül's statement implied that even he found his wife's current headgear unacceptable for the first lady of the country. he then refuted the idea that persons can change their "individual or familial concepts of life" according to the post(s) they occupy. "what is not modern is not that piece of cloth," yılmaz iterated. "it is the idea behind the cloth. the mentality that makes women's equal presence in society contingent on certain dress codes".

although i can not think of challenging anyone for wearing it(**), to me, türban is at best an admission by women themselves that their social status is secondary, albeit, by so called divine decree. furthermore, it is a sad and unfortunate ratification that woman is man's pleasure toy; a plaything that can charm and seduce just by showing a whiff of hair.

covering up makes woman socially recognizable namely by the sexual favors her gender implies. conversely, covering up is the only way she can avoid being just that. a woman covers up because she believes she then stops being a sexual entity, except for the husband/male who practically owns her. concealment denies any "illicit" man, driven only by sex in the hermeneutics of his life, a chance to conceive of her as an instrument to be enjoyed. a türban signifies that a woman willingly submits to an oppressive dress code because she aggrees to the hermeneutics that she is by nature and god's will, afflicted with the curse of representing a sexual being, or a being only defineable by her sexuality!

in iran or saudia, such acquiescence may be coerced out of women. in turkey, in a much worse manner, it is quite often voluntary. "türban politics", especially by men but by women, too, is an admission that the particular individual concerned with open vistas of the feminine is guided more by what lies between the legs than what lies between the ears. therefore, (s)he is dangerous for the mental health of the public in general.

i feel closer to the school of opinion that claims the türban and similar religious dress codes (***) will gradually fade away if not fade out, as modernization progresses. therefore, i believe gül's statement that "türban can be made more modern" does in fact, reveal a new concern among the religious "circles" that "modernity is necessary".

that signals a long distance covered since the days necmettin erbakan, the leader of the "national view" movement and tayyib bey's padre et padrone(****), regarded all mores and ideas blown this way by westerly winds as the root and praxis of evil.

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(*) the turkish version of a turban, the hindu headdress which somewhat and somehow politically motivated muslim women wear to cover their hair in a supposedly more modern fashion than with a plain scarf
(**) someone, regardless of gender, who forces a woman to wear a headdress, though, is another matter. that person is an autocrat, a martinet who imposes on the will of someone else and is no better than any other fascist.
(***) furthermore, i am of the conviction that what is called "political islam" will evanesce in a few decades, just like the political pull of communism is the soviet times.
(****) and his friends and comrades currently in the refah (welfare) party

can patriotism heed economy?

the pkk is not a new phenomenon. neither is its viciousness, nor its evil habit of killing innocents.

i can remember too many tourism seasons wasted because of pkk bombs going off just before the charters start to take off in may or june, scaring the better tourists away, giving an occasion to "shark" operators to bargain prices down to chick peas. the pkk's bombs and bomb threats have been a factor in turning the country into the holiday paradise of international proleteriat.

i recall many-a statements from government officials as well as the bigshots of the tour industry, trying to be persuasive that the country is safe for foreigners to visit.

i have yet to hear a very highly placed state official, like gen. yaşar büyükanıt, turkey's chief of general staff, to come forth and say "the bomb attacks will continue," just as the season is beginning.

i have no doubts that gen. büyükanıt is a most passionate patriot who loves turkey to death and he is at least as vexed as i am, or any other of our compatriots is, because of the bloodlet that spells pkk. indeed the pkk has nosw become a threat not only to turkey's territorial integrity but to the citizens' corporal integrity as well. yet, the statement from the top security officer of turkey that the carnage will not stop may cause the tour industry to bust, which translates to a few billion dollars' loss in revenues; just as the stock exchange fluctuations during the (non-)election of the president cost a fortune to the economy.

this is alfred e. neumann

he comes with the famous caption "what? me worry?"

palestine has to be solved: king abdallah

this morning i watched a bbc interview with jordan's king abdallah. nothing he said was new but nothing he said was unimportant.

king abdallah openly stated, emphasized and underlined that the crisis in the near east, the crisis at the core, is the palestine - israeli conflict. unless that is resolved, he itirated, there can be no peace, no solution to any other issue plagueing the region.

the interview came just as lebanon is once more being drawn into the cauldron of war, after having regained its prosperity - the sole reason being the intransigent ignorance of muslim militants or militant muslims, who, instead of creating or participating in any productive economic activity, prefer to function as semi-amateur mercenaries for the axis of evil between syria and iran, killing and dying as pawns in somebody else's war.

anybody with slightly more equipment for cogitation than the dimwit(s) who claim "ariel sharon is (was?) a man of peace" is aware that unless a more equitable balance between israel and the palestinians is struck than what war and raw power dictate, the very porous near east powder keg will keep on catching fire from one hole or the other.

even the cause of the main trouble in palestine today, the electoral victory of hamas is a metastasis of the same cancer. because israel found an excuse for its belligerent policies in the late yasir arafat's opportunistic incompliance and corrupt regime, hamas could come to power.

then again, the other problematic issues in the region, the matter of iran and its nuclear ambitions; syria, whose main industry in the last three decades has been terror and insurgence; iraq, which is the main and frequently only concern of the west; are all offshoots of the essential trouble between israel and palestine.

that is what king abdallah tried to draw into the very british field of vision of the bbc interviewer; who kept trying to put -especially- iraq on the burner as the main menu.

i have little love to lose for the english. i am, admittedly, an established anglophobe. however, the insistence of the bbc journalist to draw abdallah into debating iraq and iran, with his carefully modulated ox-bridge tones and manners, the slightly condescending attitude when speaking to the wog (*) king of a state, virtually created by "great" britain, while simultaneously paying obeisance to him because the king is a far larger piece of the establishment in which he is a minor pawn; would have done away with most sympathy, if i had any to spare (**).

the passive aggressive technique he employed is taught in interrogation 101 classes, to people whose job is to question others for garnering information, and does not necessarily always manifest the biases of the interviewer. he actually intends to draw out the speaker / confessor by implicitly contrasting him, without putting forth any real contrary argument. i believe the british educated king, too, is hardly alien to the technique, though there is no reasonable cause to accuse him of complicity with the bbc. furthermore, yes, i am an anglophobe but politically, i am not that quite often anti-british. her majesty's governments have had a far deeper grasp of the near east than the u.s., even better than bill clinton, and seem to be more aware that there can be no settlement to any of the dangerously escalating hostilities in the region.

lo... even antonius blarus was conscious of that and did try to warn dubya!..

iran's main and most utilitarian armament is not the shahab missiles, it is the perceived injustice against the palestinian people. hamas? that is just an egg laid by the anka, the mythical giant bird of the persians that signifies the empire(s) of iran.

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(*) westernized oriental gentleman
(**) i am not essentially an undistinguishing lover of the human race and have a grand capacity to hate and despise all nations and their states with equanimity but i do reserve some credit to advance to some races. among her majesty the queen's subjects, the irish and, be "british" as they may, the scots are entitled to it. i used to like queen elizabeth personally but in my heart, although i think i understand her motives, she is badly implicated in the princess diana tragedy. nevertheless i may forgive her if she outlives charles or persuades him not to succeed and thus spares the world a king of brittania who reminds me (and possibly many more) of alfred e. neumann, the symbolic face we used to see often on the cover of mad magazine when we were kids.

love, love where did you go?

just an example of the church's cantankerousness, the holier-than-thou attitude that may not always be so holy indeed: after the first communion ceremony of the two girls and a boy last sunday, there was a holy communion for the rest of the attending public. a nice little girl of maybe 12 was in line just before me and when it was her turn to take the host (*), the priest suddenly stopped and yanked the sacred bread dipped in consecrated wine out of her reach.

"have you had this before?", he demanded the bedazzled girl rather rudely. sparks were flying out of his eyes, which he now centered on me. "has she had first communion in church?" he asked me. now, according to church rules dating back 1000 years, last revised toward the end of the 19th century, a child goes through an initiation into catholic rites by way of first communion, before (s)he can receive the eucharist, that is, unite with jesus by eating the sacred bread/body and sipping the wine/blood of the christ. it is the parents' duty to ensure that the child is duly prepared and does not take communion before the induction. so, i guess the priest thought i was the girl's father and was expecting an answer from me.

i almost said yes. the girl was a total stranger to me - i did not even know she was christian or not.

the catholic church is a creature of habit. it has survived and will survive by clinging to its very well planned and ordained rituals and norms. however, in my view, the priority of the church is, or should be, promoting the love of jesus, and promoting itself as the conduit of that love; rather than enforcing strict liturgical discipline with an unsmiling face. so, for me, a child's happiness and joy and possibly also the pride of being accepted by community, of becoming "somebody", is more important and in decorum with the spirit of christ (and christianity, or any religion) than observing some canon with militant precision.

however, i did not dare tell the priest to go ahead, give the child the host - how was i to know whether her family aggreed with my interpretation of catholic dogma?

the girl, now hesitant and not understanding why she was subjected to this turndown, was visibly disquieted and dejected. she did not fathom why she was denied what was available to all, including the three children - who were all younger than her by the way. she was also somewhat afraid.

some people from the queue told the priest that yes, she was eligible for the eucharist. after that, the fierce eyes, self satisfied with upholding the law of the church, turned with discipline on the girl who was now allowed to eat the holy bread dipped in wine. yet, i guess, this time, the child took the host not because she wanted to but because she was afraid not to, lest she would be the focus of yet another scene! she ate the host, broke away from the row and disappeared through the pews.

later, in the patio, i asked her mother how she fared after the ordeal. the mother told me that she had thrown up in a nervous fit, caused by the anxiety she suffered by reason of a servant of the church.

yes, god's rottweiler, if he really wishes to revive the house of jesus christ, has to fetch love back under its roof. barking for more obeisance, apparently, betrays the purpose.

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(*) the round, flat and thin waffle that represents the body of jesus he offered the disciples at the last supper. only the faithful who observe catholic rites and norms fully are supposed to partake of it.

god's rottweiler

last sunday, i was at a first communion. the first communion is a maturation rite for catholics that is as important as boys' circumcision for muslims or the bar mitzvah for jews, though it is a unisex affair.

normally, i would mourn for the dwindling catholic presence in istanbul but the occasion calls for a more comprehensive critique of religious practice. on the same calender day as the ceremony i attended, the pope was saying mass in brazil, on a trip he set forth in the hope of regaining the popular attraction the catholic church has long been losing.

the sociological reasons for the exsanguination of credence in the church are rather obvious: catholicism, as opposed to the far more strict and pervasive but mobile protestant cliques, is basically far more a rural faith. since the (catholic) reformation, it has done little to address the statistically and politically growing urban masses, preferring to appeal to the peasant masses in europe and its global extensions, mainly in the hispanophone third world and brazil. the rather reluctant secular move to legalize divorce in italy was one example of this obsession with the old, essentially rural practices despite the exigencies of a modernizing world. such fixations persist in other matters as birth control, the attitude toward gays and lesbians, "adultery" etc.

the catholic church makes it difficult to lead an urban, contemporary life without fear of divine retribution. however, since hollywood has come up with zillion more imaginary horrors than st. john the theologian (who, incidentally, rests in ephesos, in the basilica to his name in selçuk) could come up in the "apocalypse" while exiled in patmos, the fear of god can hardly stop an individual from adapting to modern modes and styles of living. man takes a shortcut between his self and his faith and ignores or excludes the church - exactly the protestant thesis.

in the 16th and 17th centuries, the catholic church remarkably renewed and reformed itself, in order to answer to the emergent needs of the remaining catholics in europe. that was done through disciplining the clergy, organizing revenues and finances, better public relations and the allure of vatican's immense cultural wealth.

such a move is again necessary if the church wishes to bring back its glory. true, there are a number of "renegade" priests out there, urging for a more active church that must get involved in society to alleviate hunger, suffering, misery, torture etc. yet that movement, apart from being only seedling if that, is only an extension toward the underdog of the same lord-to-peasant attitude that cripples the church's style. personally, i am very much for a socially active and vocal catholic church but i also resent the dominant style in the clerical hierarchy that views the layman as little more than an ox driving, cattle herding, superstitious and stupid medieval villager. i want a church that argues and debates its positions rather than impose truths based on dogma on ignorant masses who simply do not exist in an age of information. i need a church that can help me become a better, wiser and more adaptive person who can cope with the vagaries and cruelties of modern, urban, contemporary life through the knowledge of my soul in addition to my city-smart, informed mind.

pope johannus paulus II, who, in matters celestial was as dogmatic as his forebears in the middle ages, nevertheless put his stamp, as head of catholicism, on the history of the late 20th century. he made the world go round faster, the force of his personality thus attracting followers all over the world. johannus paulus II was revered all over the world, even in russia and turkey.

cardinal ratzinger, "god's rottweiler" who succeeded him as benedictus II was known for his harsh doctrinalism even before he ascended to st. peter's throne. he was reputed to have kicked out hundreds of people from the cathedral in cologne because reportedly he did not approve of the way they were dressed or their comportment. ratzinger might have been a good choice at a time when the church was bleaguered by decadence, corruption, heresy and desertion to bring order to god's house with an iron fist, albeit in a boxing glove. however, at a time when morality or the sense of good and bad is less explicable through imperious and unchallengeable maxims than the machinations of a far more complex society than the church was ever geared for, more urbane attitudes toward divine salvation might be in order.

and apparently, god's rottweiler would rather guardian an empty house than fetch the urban manna modern souls are craving and which can boost the catholic church on its holy road to eternity.

i'm american!

oh no i'm not jumping on the recently trendy wagon in turkey, declaring "we are all armenian", "we are all christian" etc. - i did that kind of things when i realized, in my latter teens, that "make love not war" is more than a slogan. it just tells you we bloody well are all human...

i say am american because when i wrote about the ugly american, by no means did i use it as a blanket epithet to include each and every citizen/member of the usa. that label has evolved from the title of a 1958 book by william lederer and eugene burdick. the "documentary" story is based on the behavior of some american technocrats running the american aid business in southeast asia. as the date indicates, the events correspond to american international experience in its very early years as a superpower, not fully able to understand the world it has found itself trying to run. it depicts americans face to face with peoples who in their innately intraverted culture, are thoroughly foreign to those alternative but well rooted civilizations. the picture of the ugly american, arrogant, ignorant, thoughtlessly blundering, complacent and snobbish; summarily unpleasant came out as the caricature of a bungling, rookie imperialist in contrast to the suave, sophisticated 19th century euro-colonialist, pretender to a mission civilatrice that was the white man's burden.

that picture of america has never been totally accurate, even during the cold war. true, the u.s. policy machine is guilty of creating and supporting such monstrous political characters as augusto pinochet of chile, georgios papadopoulos of greece or our very own kenan evren but despite a plethora of practices that made itself the subject of hatred and loathing throughout the world, america also was where faces turned when people described what or who they were or wanted to become. one way or other, even sometimes by the abject examples (the rosenbergs come to mind, or dear joe mccarthy) it set, america showed the world how to be free. it was the north all compasses turned to, thus describing all the directions. yes, in many ways, america epitomized evil, yet without for one minute ceasing also to promise the good.

and it was the good peoples saw in the u.s. that allowed it a far more comprehensive and lasting hegemony than britain, for instance. half a century has passed since the ugly american by hit the stands. it may well be 60 years since the authors observed the events they wrote in that milestone in self criticism - including the film version starring the deathless marlon brando. in all that time, even under ronald reagan, the drugstore truck driving man to the woodstock generations and the teflon president to the political intellegentsia, the promise never vanished.

probably, the administration of texas's chief executioner is the lowest point in the post-isolationist history of the u.s., in the way of international sympathy. the current, pathetic image of the u.s. signifies the point where a leader has metamorphosed into a bully. dubya has resurrected the ugly american, not only because he thrusted a totally unnecessary and already lost war into the world's primary field of experience, but because he represents that unfeeling, self righteous, arrogant, ignorant, avaricious, patronizing brute power that rather than persuade, prefers to impose its view and style of life on others. if you think i am speaking loosely, allow me to remind you that a major media issue just prior to 9-11 was how mr. john ashcroft, the then (possibly slightly senile) attorney general, had ordered the marble statues of "naked women" that represented justice at the entry to the department of justice dressed up to cover their nudity. the complex of which dubya is only the spearheas has seldom been so evil in the country's history, evil to the point of jeopardizing its firmest institutions - who could believe that the berkeley university, the heart of the 1968 revolution would shrink from publishing rosa luxembourg's memoirs just because 9-11 happened?

i am still american, that goes beyond dubya, who, thankfully is already a lame duck and thankfully again, is "irreplacable". i am american because for a huge, world-smart, globally minded portion of the u.s., although it may numerically be in minority; the entire universe is also america, and the entire humanity is as good as americans. it is the america of "be and let be", the america that, even in business, knows a richer, freer world is more profitable as well as more fun than a deader world. the america that recognizes its errors and moves first to correct them, even though they may often be hindered by the america of dubya.

alons enfants de la patrie- le ugly american vous attend

the french sunday elected monsieur nicolas sarkozy, or sarko for short as their president.

if you ask me, since general charles de gaulle, whom history should have no qualm calling charles XI (the last king charles, no. X, a post-bonaparte bourbon, abdicated in the upheavals of 1830), the only man who ever filled le trône français to truth with a physical, psychological and political presence, was the late françoise mitterand. les autres were like midgets sitting on a gigantic horse. that probably is the difference between a jockey and a chevalier du sang.

at any rate, sarko, whose track record identifies him with a rather racist annotation of peronist opportunism, represents an a l'americaine retrogression of mainly france but also most of the rest of europe to varying extent.

when the ex-chief executioner of texas dipped his war loving presidential nose in the cess-pit that was iraq, despite my unfounded hopes that the world-wary sector of the american establishment would find a way to stop him, i wrote a piece trying to analyze the motives of the bush-cheney et.al. gang. what i came up with was rather revealing, for me at least: despite its immense size and volume, american economy is inbound or intraverted to the tune of 3/4. in short, the foreign trade deficit that supposedly plagues america is, in one sense, caused by the fact that three fourths of u.s. economy is hardly universally competitive.

economy is the most obvious and most quantitatively measurable aspect of social life. i do not hold to the marxist dictum that it is the infrastructure of society and culture etc, are secondary, superstructural phenomena. however economic activity is an indicator, though not in a causal way, also of life styles and, maybe more importantly, cognitive styles - the way we know our world.

an inbound economy, therefore, signifies an inbound mentality, which does not care where the rest of the world can or will head, as long as a gallon of petrol is available at 25 cents in nebraska. nor does the inbound mentality mind in what state the u.s. will leave iraq and the near east when compelled to withdraw; because the obvious is happening in a war america started despite the world and more and more poor g.i.'s are returning home in body bags. the introverted, world-dumb section of the u.s. population is only interested in its narrow world equilibria and the policies to keep them intact - which is unlikely to happen in a world where the wings of a butterfly in valparaiso cause a storm in odessa.

the inbound mentality is one aspect of the arrogant, incompetent, exploitative ugly american of the 60's; whose daily version you would meet in that fat, sunburnt, unsophisticated tourist anywhere from paris to antalya, asking "but how much is that in real money?".

are we now looking at the prototype of a français moche, a transatlantic update of the ugly american? possibly...

the wave of "opposition" that carried not only sarko, but also his rival mme. segolene royal to the trône was the reaction prompted by the now-almost -proverbial polish plumber episode. there is no secret in that a good portion of the french society has lagged behind in the global race and is suffering from an unhealthy dose of incompetitiveness. add to it the rather strong and despotic state structure, a remnant of the code bonaparte; a not-so-productive labor force protected by unduly strong unions etc.; and the extra euros the frenchman has to pay in taxes to look after the new(ly accessed) europeans, while his products cannot find the easy markets they are accustomed to; the over all balance hardly favors a fully extravert french outlook on world economy or society. the french displaisire already manifested itself in the rejection of the e.u. constitution. the revolution de paisans came with the preference of ultimately provincial presidential candidates as the socialist sego and sarko and the coronation of the latter. the whole phenomenon is reminiscent of american intraverted conservatism.

yet, whatever the cause, france has no chance of withdrawing into its borders as the isolationist (*) americans wish their country to do. but in the immediate future, the necessity prevails to look inward, to do some economic, political, racial etc. house cleaning toward liberalization and to upgrade french economic, political, cultural capital as well as output to more universal levels of attractiveness. however, the problem is not the resolve of french business to secure for itself a fine bite of world economic cake - france already invests a sum in the u.s. about equal to what american companies have invested in france. the resistance, as before, will come from the provençal foci of power, which were strong enough to give sego and sarko the impetus in becoming the major political figures they were not cut to become. if sarko is about to prove his métiere, he has to show virtuoso mastery in conducting that gelatinous peasant renitence into a less viscous gush toward globality.

in the race for supremacy in the world, france has long been eating out of its own capital. and with his intraverted backing that has been the main reason for france's lag, sarko can reverse the trend if and only if america extends him the necessary credit in all fields.

bien venu, le ugly american, ici le français moche. ensemble let us march toward the urbane horizons of globality...!

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(*) there never was any true isolationism in american politics. the term simply refers to the cautious u.s. policy of avoiding europe and confrontation with european powers until world war I. neither can america ever withdraw into its continent and turn its back on the world, at least in the near future. a global political-economy does not allow that simply because globality is more profitable.

who is the patriot?

a friend of mine in the tourism industry received a message from a business associate in the u.s. who (previously) intended to expand his operations in turkey. now he is back pedaling.

reason one: the virtual putsch by internet. we may love, like, be very proud of, many
of us might even prefer to live under a military regime instead of islamists but the
world according to the normal man generally abhors a place and people who fail in
democracy. within the last week, even the usually pro-turkey cnn made us the
stock of laughing matter, commenting extensively on the army's readiness to delve
into politics. we learnt another patriotic lesson on how to slide back into the last
century in ten lines online...
reason two: the may 1 scandal in istanbul. all tour agencies i know are up to their ears in letters
asking whether turkey is safe to visit. loss of revenues adds up the cost of loss of
face... all because one man decided that protecting the virginity of a town square is
good "public administration"; while he condemned the public to suffer, to be beaten,
tormented, humiliated, arrested, gassed and treated as criminals. the governor of
istanbul is incompetent for the job if only because he still confuses "state authority"
with "public order". that is a giant step backward to th 19th century.

heads

just to make a point, a footnote for the future:

it is true that the possibility is quite low that the western world shall willingly accept as its equal associate into its civilization, a turkey whose head of state has a wife who covers her head in religious fashion - no politically correct rhetoric can alter that fact.

however, the possibility that the same civilization will ever accept a head of state in turkey, soldier or civilian, who wears a uniform inside his head is absolutely nil.

blogger plays truant

anybody know a swell definition of what's a good life?

symbols and dead kids

there was a huge rally protesting the premier's rather inarticulate desire and ambition to become president this weekend in the capital. according to reports, the tandoğan square in ankara, just a stone's throw from atatürk's mausoleum, the anıtkabir, turned into a "sea of flags" while hundreds of thousands declared fealty to the republican ideal of secularism.

the moderate and hardline pro-islamic pro-government front contended, rather than through counter-rallies, by verbally denouncing and decrying the secularists' assembly and hanging posters, banners etc. that urged national will as reflected in parliament to prevail in electing the head of state.

while thousands were demonstrating in ankara, a tragedy of catastrophic proportions was lived only 150 miles away in aksaray, where more than 30 schoolchildren and their parents on their way to visit cappadocia were killed when their bus collided with a truck.

the bodies of the casualties were laid to rest with a doleful ceremony in izmir, their point of origin. hundreds, maybe thousands attended. the coffins were draped in turkish flags, too.

question one: if we had spent half the mental effort we do over such high matters as contemplating and arguing how our holy and hallowed state must be run as on such mundane matters like why turkish drivers are world-record breakers in deadly accidents or on why norms supposed to order social life along rational principles, are worth less than the bureaucratic paper they are written on especially in traffic (though not much better in any other area either); could it be possible that neither the rally nor the ceremony might be necessary?

question two: of course participating in others' joy and sorrow is an exemplary act of social solidarity and empathy is a noble feeling. i only have praise for those people who left the sunday comfort of their homes to attend the funeral of the unfortunate victims. however, the question has nothing to do with individuals and their goodwill in this case. should we, instead of stately manifestations such as "ceremonial" gatherings or demonstrations, exalt ultimately less grandiose but more productive achievements as good organization, might it be possible that we would not have to gather to weep collectively after the mass annihilation of our children?

question three: the flag is the simplest symbol of allegiance there is. it is so simple that even the most nescient individuals in a certain society can realize their identification with what the flag signifies. therefore, an exaggerated display of the simplest symbol also manifests itself as a subliminal uncertainty about what it denotes. besides, as symbols, by nature can only convey meanings in their most rudimentary, they can hardly supplant the communication of ideas by words.

so, is it a coincidence that the place of non-verbal signs and tokens are far more pronounced in the third world, compared to societies based on rationality which essentially rely on words? then, as a corollary, instead of trying to impose our truth/message on a situation by means of overwhelming yet obscure symbolisms, could we avoid confrontations and even collisions through sensible and intelligible exchange of ideas, even idiosyncrasies and obstinacies?

peeing in dark trousers

i am not a tv gazer, i am a terribly accomplished zapper.

simply put, regular shows and programs on the tube boooooooore me to death and subsequent multiple reincarnations within 90 seconds. not limited to our very own turkish broadcasting -this morning i spent a full two minutes or so looking at and listening to a chick on the bbc, who, planting flowers and assorted vegetation in a garden, uttered about 1000 words a second, all of them quite familiar, and wove them into a sound cocktail actually saying nothing of substance.
i can't even stand conan o'brien any more. worse, with few exceptions, movies feel toooooo looooong and only a handful of seres/serials are watchable.

but zapping is a good method of sampling what is on show. skip the gibberish and football crap instantly, linger a moment to hear a question asked or a comment, stop there a while if the going is good and you do patchwork a sociological picture of the goings on. however, as far as the turkish stations are concerned, the presidential election, for the american and british channels, the war and the plight of muslims in the west have already lasted longer than the endless and ultimately unviewable young and restless. especially when it comes to tayyib bey's aspired ascent to çankaya; oh lords of fire and ire! have words ever been so completely exhausted out of meaningful ideas and insight! how can so many tongue-hours (*) be spent without a single spark of inspiration slipping through some lips at least?

and then there was a show sunday, which i indeed stuck to for five minutes or so, just for purposes of scientifc methodology, where the recent hyperbole about an alleged and suppressed coup attempt in 2004 against tayyib bey's government. the show, was hosted by

derya sazak of milliyet, whom i know from his rookie days in ankara, fuat keyman, an academic of sorts plagued with the occupational malady of being enamored with his own voice; and alper görmüş, chief editor of nokta which published alleged pages from an alleged journal, allegedly kept by the-then-navy-chief-of-staff allegedly recounting the alleged putsch. keyman spent all that time and probably more speculating about an alleged coup and alleged that it never happened because it allegedly could not have happened!

such epic and universal waste of resources in epidemic proportions, supposing that at least some people do watch those shows, is a devastating revelation of the cerebral levels homo sapiens sapiens has collectively attained but i am past the point where i could feel any social responsability or compunction about that. rather, i am usually amused (bemused?) by the pathetic wisdom that apparently mesmerizes the speakers themselves.

they remind me of what my dear old friend, elder and partner in various crimes, distinguished professor dr. tevfik dalgıç, currently of the university of dallas, would tell his students about immaterial accomplishments: "it's like peeing in dark colored trousers, nobody notices anything but you get a warm feeling anyway..."

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(*) no, you haven't caught me watching. i know the shows take a lifetime because i keep zapping all around all that while.

kid playing with the loaded gun

it's only days before turkey hails its 12th president. of one dozen chiefs of the nation, only a few were elected rather than "approved" by the grand national assembly. turgut özal's ascent to the position was rather tumultuous, süleyman demirel's less so; but none raised a ruckus like tayyib bey's trials.

my opinion of the man is already obvious - he is not up to par for running anything bigger than a small black sea town and that only because it will keep him busy and out of much mischief.

however, under the current settings, tayyib bey -though i hate that it is so- has every right in the book to climb to çankaya, the seat of the top state job since atatürk. if a man is good enough to be premier, he is good enough to become president, too. if you are afraid that his somewhat pedestrian religious, political etc. standing is detrimental to the well being of the state and or the nation, you should have the democratic mechanisms, principles, practices and habits in place even before he started climbing the first rungs of the ladder. not having that, you tried to do it on the edge of a bayonet and the jab you gave him made him spring to the top.

the ongoing blast against tayyib bey's presidency is that if the top seat falls to the islamists, too, there will be nothing to check their controlled march toward sharia in turkey. sorry, but it was not tayyib bey who ordered this constitution or one of his fans who drafted it for the generals; nor were he or his cohorts in the assembly that passed it before the 92 percent majority of the voting public approved it for fear the generals would not leave if the bill was rejected. oh, the authors of the putsch had no real intention of leaving the helm anyway. with the constituiton in effect, some "general", not necessarily military, was supposed to eternally sit at çankaya and safeguard the holy state's interests against such malfeasants like commies or fundamenties. the whole idea then, exactly 25 years ago, was to prevent what is happening right now from happening!

it simply did not work out that way and now you got a kid playing with daddy's loaded gun in the hall!

praying to lose football games

sorry, fans but to me, football (soccer) is not only infantile it is also awfully pedestrian. it is far less a sport than an occasion to group, identify, meld with the mass, strip off inhibitions guiding proper behavior and blow steam - both for player and spectator. myself? i hate crowds, groups, masses, dis-individuation of any sort, have few social inhibitions and i don't behave properly anyway, so who needs football? it takes too long (a minimum of two hours wasted? no!), is uncouth and unless you are watching someone absolutely special like the once-upon-a-time legendary pele, it is a totally frenzied flurry of what freudians would call sadistic activity.

worse, for cultures that allow few other outlets or "sublimations" for primeveal urges, it becomes a unique reason for participation mystique, situational and transient bonding, strife for a sense of superiority and in case of loss, occasion for venting out pent up violent anger at anything.

some 10 years ago, when galatasaray had just begun winning games outside turkey, after a so-called victory kalashnikovs were sounding in the streets. so i called 155 (turkey's natiional police dial-up, like 911 or 999) to complain. no answer for minutes. i then called the traffic number, 154 and told my story. "where do you live sir?" the man asked and i almost started citing the address of the friend's house i was staying, when he went on "we won the game!".

no, i did not feel like a tratior when the poor policeman said that but i did lower my national expectancy a few notches. now, we are more officially sensitive to football violence but since nobody can link "football" and "violence" mentally, everybody insistently abstracts each concept from the other and lays the blame on "fanatic supporters" as nevertheless violence spreads deeper every week of the league season. as the national gun association says, "guns don't kill people"...

just for reasons of basic survival and peace of mind, i pray for turkish teams to lose in all international events. i hate officiallly sanctioned hordes roaming mindlessly in traffic, jam packing already clotted city arteries, yelling incoherently, exhuming their libido barely buried under the surface into that forced co-ed camaraderie born of a shared affect, eventually leading to lewdness or worse resulting in fights over women or booze and of course firing guns into innocent bystanders of all definitions, including other stupefied merry makers.

even worse, a false sense of ephemeral superiority wafts in the air as flags dominate buildings, vows of allegience are sung and the media bleat or graffitize elegies for the victorious, with ill concealed glee implying the victory is immanent in the valor of the victor. we win because we are turks, galatasaraians and so on.

can anybody explain the weird existence of trabzon in turkish social - political and cultural life without touching on the phenomenon of trabzonspor?

now that turkey has beat greece 4-1 at home, and at that, after the "enemy" scored first, the football jihad is in full force flow again. next to be brought on its knees is norway. there is no need of course, to compare the quality of life in greece or norway with turkey or commit similar intellectual acts of treason - ours not to reason... ours to kick and cry... period.!

the glee over the victory over greece reminds me of burcu sunar's master thesis, where at one point she puts forth the proposition, based mostly on c.g. jung, that the turco-greek love/hate affair is a gendered relationship / rivalry, with everything reaching into sexual overtones where turkey, the masculine beast, tries to establish its phallic dominance over the feline femininity of greece with his penetrating (goal posts and willowing nets?) strength. greece, more clever and conniving gets her behind bitten at times but usually hisses and spits at turkey perched on a high wall he cannot attain; such as europe!

one last word on football: i totally disdain the national team coach, fatih terim. he stands for everything that i hate in this community, which i believe, is what chains the country to a stagnant and putrid time frame that will never pass unless all that mental garbage is disposed of. however, i take my hat off to fatih terim this once, for what i (the zap freak) caught him saying on the eve of the match: "whatever the outcome, we will shake hands and congratulate each other once the game is over". and i admit that it was less the words than the authority behind the statement. it was his personality that made what he said sound "true".

new post in turkish

hi, i am back. already dropped a note in the türkiş blog for those interested. doing a little checking for a couple posts in english. see you soon.

garfucius a la turca

history continues polyglot and so do the footnotes! go to http://galipturk.blogspot.com/ to view the turkish version of garfucius's wisdom.

achtung! naw-rooz!

naw-rooz (nevruz in turkish) is the day the sun enters the sign of the lamb in ancient oriental calendars or aries in western astrology. it is the day the new year begins.

as in all similar celebrations based on the cycle of seasons, naw-rooz probably extends back to antique dionyssiac - demeterian practices; when the invernal death of nature and its primaveral renascence were alternately observed as marks of collective time keeping.
for some reason or another, naw-rooz, which is persian in name became associated with the kurds. for centuries, kurdish tribes rejoiced the advent of spring on the 21st of march. the main event was jumping over a flaming fire, possibly to symbolize the merriness of the warm days ahead.

however, as the pkk and the kurdish question became more deeply engraved in turkish political society, naw-rooz, too, acquired a political character. first in the east, then the kurd populated sectors of large towns, it became an occasion where separatist slogans were shouted in demonstrations, occasionally acts of vandalism and pillage were staged, the turkish government was protested and clashes occurred with the police and the military law enforcement. the wood fire, too, was replaced with burning truck and tractor tyres which gave less flame but a thick, poisonous, pollutant and very visible cloud of smoke.

about 10 years ago, the state put its hand on naw-rooz. it was declared as a day to observe nationally, i.e., kurd, turk, what remains of armenian, greek and jew all together, as one soul. papers printed and tv's broadcast sights of bejacketed, necktied officialdom wearing black shoes and generals in full uniform jumping over the fire. tyre burning was of course outlawed, not because of environmental or health concerns, but because of the difficulties of policing it. thus, the spirit of revolt injected to naw-rooz by the kurds was enucleated.

yet, during the last few naw-roozes, the revolt was back. clashes, though not major, occurred in the east and big cities like ankara, izmir, adana, mersin, even antalya and of course the largest kurdish populated city in the world, istanbul, between the police and gendarmerie and the kurdish militants and youth, who now include a good many under 18.

tomorrow, march 21 is naw-rooz. information coming to newsrooms indicate there may be protests and demonstrations tomorrow in istanbul. at any rate, the police, in the name of taking precautions, may block, control and close down quite a few roads for security reasons, congesting the already paralyzed city traffic. those who travel around gaziosmanpaşa, tarlabaşı (taksim) and dolapdere should be particularly wary. their daily rhythms may be seriously upset.

happy naw-rooz, to all of us by the way. after all, it is originally a day for merry making. spring is here!

nevertheless, also... achtung, naw-rooz!

wet dreams of wet cement

for the benefit of non-turkophone readers, i got to start this post with a brief:

within the last few weeks
1. a number of public land holdings have been offered for sale and the zorlu group,
the owner of vestel, already bought some huge prime real estate in the heart of
istanbul's "skyscrapers district". do not let the epithet mislead you, the tallest
building here goes 30-40 stories high, lower than the skyline of a mediocre midwest
town in the u.s., although revenues do make the mouths of arab oil sheikhs water.

2. the head of the government, other elected and appointed officials have begun to utter
exaggerated numbers of tourists expected to visit turkey. now, these people are no
dunces and they have at their disposal all figures and statistics.
hence, they know that tourism in turkey is not only an economic but also an
environmental, cultural and developmental midden which nobody dares probe, drain,
clear or even cover. probably since the mention of the word tourism induces a state of
euphoric pipe dreams of sun drenched beaches, white sails, green treks, hot spas or
snowy hills spiced with new, renewed, rehashed or escapade love affairs; nobody really
questions official figures (nobody questions figures anyway, it is still officially
uncertain what turkey's population is!). by the way, although of course such misdeeds
never happen in this land, transparency international cites construction and
tourism as the two most corrupt industries suitable for large scale money
laundering. add to that the fact that one most favored industry of the novo italian
mafia is landfills, especially in the mezzogiorno which still maintains a hefty portion of
its feudal character.

so what? am i against development? am i against capital infusion? am i against the reconstruction of istanbul? am i against the mafia?

not necessarily... every capital infusion allows the total cake to grow somewhat. except, real estate enterprises can hardly be called investments; their value-added contribution is usually lateral rather than vertical. that is why in older economy texts, they used to be called placements.

the reconstruction of istanbul is essential, but not the construction of an istanbul anew. currently, the city, situated in an incredibly attractive natural and geographic setting, is one of the ugliest in the civilized and semi civilized world - take out the relatively virgin historic peninsula and what remains of pera, you are left with heap after heap of clustered masses of concrete, clustered into congested confines where a congealed lifestyle draggles behind a time wasting, tiresome, inefficient national economy. what istanbul needs is tearing down that ill used space and building from scratch according to rational plans. istanbul, to become something real, desperately needs urban utopia of renascence and metanoia.

constructing a burgeoning new, plastic, inflated toy town on the immediate rim of the old city is the textbook worst scenario in urbanization, a guide to what not to do. just considering the extra burden on the plight of the infrastructure and the extra idle population it will draw into the city should be enough to discourage such wet dreams of drowning istanbul under cement. but more importantly, the end-result is so ugly, it so denies the historical heritage of the two empires that created constantinopolis, it is an epitome of characterless poor taste.

so, yes, i am against this epidemic of wet dreams of wet cement pouring destructively into one of the rarest landscapes on earth. i am particularly against this idea of scopophilic "development" consisting on the veneration of phallic concrete dolmens blocking the sight and breath of the city; the american injected oil sheikh idolatry of the so-called new in foul appreciation of the classical. i amnauseated by this malgusto arabian model of urban concretization that greedy, taste poor, culturally noveau riche accolytes here swallow as development and insist on pushing down my throat with wet cement.

let them spill their seeds on that wet cement. we already have enough eyesore monsters anyway.

cyprus and cypriots

speaking of cyprus, must have been 10 years or so... during a conference in vienna, we had this band of greek and turkish cypriots sitting in the same session and suddenly voices began to get too loud in the corridor at lunch break as they began arguing about the well known and well worn issues. i made a remark, more as fun than anything serious, and adamantia pollis, the dear lady from new school, new york grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me away. "addie" is barely half my size but the strength of her personality and presence reflects in her sinews and i docilely tagged along. in a safe corner she chided me "you crazy? in a minute they will begin speaking cypriot with each other, we'll understand nothing of what they're saying but will remain stranded here fighting over what matters to only them".

addie is one of the wisest, most clever and most intelligent ladies i've ever met. i guess she summarized the real cyprus problem as simply as it ever can be.

empiricum at work

i hope to be leaving for xios tomorrow, via izmir and by ferry from çeşme. i am (*) an organizer, chair and commentator on the 3d greek -turkish workshop on cooperation, security, communication and scientific dissemination in eastern mediterranean panel that the imsam - empiricum contributes to.

the workshop begins with a discussion on turkish - greek relations, of course, but as opposed to before, we do not argue about who is right any more. not only because, objectively, nobody is (nor can be) that right but also we - even us academics! - have wisened to the fact that doing something together renders such arguments as moot as who is winning the uefa cup. excitement that leaves no aftertaste once it is passed.

this third meeting covers topics ranging from shipping to chemical engineering and cinema or from development to how iran's missiles add to the equation in the eastern mediterranean. no more the boring fir lines, continental shelf issues bickering over oil that is not there and of course, cyprus.

all that, fortunately, is now intellectual garbage politicians, journalists and diplomats have to sweep. oh, and also some self important academics who think it is a goo thing to be a politician, journalists or diplomat. well, it takes all kinds.

for our part, we of the empiricum now do what is right and try to make the best of what we have! we do, indeed: this is a copy-paste from the official program (**): round table discussions (to be continued in a taverna!).

thus, i shall be absent for a few days with your leave.

xara sas!

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(*) supposedly, it's john karkazis and nikitas nikitakos did almost all the work...
(**) just in case some stuffed shirt airbag may be reading this and accuses us of being un-serious let me note that the taverna part of the program extends to after 2100 hours.

success is bovine waste

are you aware how the word and concept "success" has dominated our language and hence our thought templates with the invasion of every aspect of our lives by the corporate mentality "results count"? we used to say "good in bed", now even that is "a successful lay".

i am about to ban the word in my classes because it has become another roadblock before the alleys of thinking. it is an utter confusion of means and method with consequence. it is a false idea, a false representation.

"success" is not of itself. it is the end-result, an outcome, a consequence of a process or various processes totally dependent on other factors related and unrelated to the acting person. you are lucky, you succeed. you are well prepared, you succeed. you are well off, you succeed. you are well trained and educated, you succeed. you are in the right place at the right time, you succeed. you know the right people, you succeed. you work hard, you succeed. conditions favor you for a number of reasons, you succeed.

so, you succeed or don't only if other factors are in action. therefore, successful can hardly be an adjective. success can hardly define any quality, beyond a situation - it does not qualify.

let us talk correct if we are to think correct. if we talk bovine excreta, we may end up mooooeing like cows.

thank you for being ill - florence nightingale hospitals

florence nightingale hospitals group is celebrating its 20th anniversary and has decorated istanbul's billboards with their announcements.

actually, the florence nightingale hospital is much older, named after the lady of the lamps, the heroine of the wounded in the crimean war, who initiated modern care for the sick and the injured in turkey; although more soldiers died under her care at the scutari (üsküdar) hospital of typhoid, typhus, cholera etc. than battle wounds, due to poor hygiene - istanbul's bane is historic as well as historical isn't it?

anyway, i believe it would be more appropriate to say that the group is rather celebrating the 20th anniversary of the privatization of florence nightingale. good for them! i congratulate. the fn is a fairly good hospital, i've got a very good friend practicing there, too.

the 20th anniversary billborads are interesting. they give statistical data about the heart transplants, kidney operations, bones mended, c-sections, acne treatment etc. that the hospitals have carried through. so far, that's understandable but what baffles me is that the announcement ends with thanks to the turkish public.

you're welcome. but what do you thank us for? consuming cigarettes like food so that our "ethnic" epithet has become synonymous with smoking: "fumer comme un turc"? greasy, protein deficient malnourishment that screws our hearts and veins? inhaling the worst air in europe, caused above and before all else by vehicles of the city government belching deadly fumes, among badly driven cars and trucks which also serve as death's scythe? drinking too little water and fighting dehydration with salt consumption? frightening hygiene conditions and child swallowing sewers reminiscent of nightingale's times in disease ridden scutari? lack of exercise? living in stressful environments while turning every single environement voluntarily into one of stress? etc., etc., etc.?

are you thanking us for having bad hearts, leaking kidneys, raki blown livers, faulty spleens, infected bowels, poor eyes, fat bellies, weak bone marrow, prostate, carcinoma prone lungs and lymphs; so each one of us potentially can blow your healed patient stats to international levels of success?

why didn't i read how many patients die, in proportion to the lives "saved"?

many happy returns florence nightingale group- but for the next 20 years, please either hire a better pr crew who knows what it is talking about or at least learn the nuances of turkish better enough not to thank the people for being sick.

financing someone's penis with my money?

yes, islam is a definite obstacle before turkey in becoming a member of the european union or a part of european civilization! not per se because it is a religion but because it is a weltanschauung, a way of looking at, mentally shaping and experiencing the world and because it is a comprehensive, pervasive and oppressive religious weltanschauung(*) permeating every iota of man's being, expropriating all aspects of individuation and hence, free thinking.

islam is representative of the a-mathematical and anti-mathematical modality of thinking typical to the orient. the orient cogitates without mathematics, or at least without proportion and relativity as an aspect of mathematical thinking. the orient, therefore, is not rational, the thinking of the orient is ordinal, i.e., it uses arithmetics to count and order things. since, without proper individuation and rationality, personality, too, can hardly develop, the oriental, is less an independent free human than a subject. after all, being muslim literally means to surrender.

since ordinal thinking is the motherlode of ordinal systems of living i.e., social organization, there are no "equal" beings in the orient either; just an escalation of people who must kow-tow to each higher echelon on the licking order. such systems are by nature military, and what a military system needs last is a "citizen", an able-minded, free thinking rational individual.

an ordinal system thrives on the number of able-bodied subjects who obey rather than think, who believe rather than question, who resign rather than organize and who live on the generosity of superiors rather than what is rightfully earned, instead of the supremacy of law where rights and duties are objectively defined, rather than by command. therefore, in the irrational orient, fealty counts, not merit. economy-wise, too, because a sense of proportion is not developed, it is not per capita wealth but a conspicious, imperial total of riches, which naturally collects and concentrates only at the top, that determines prosperity.

the orient wants soldiers instead of citizens. therefore, to the oriental mind, a large population is a sign of power because that mind is stuck in the ages when prosperity was the result of the spoils of war - war needed people who would die on the battlefield, thus also keeping the number of mouths to feed relatively under control. that is why, borrowing from judaism, which continuously needed a minimal population to survive, islam based its own human resource policy on a hadith that orders muslims to reproduce.

yes, there was a time during the capitalization of the occident, too, when a growing population was encouraged, because it was rational to have more hands to work the labor-intense mills of production and fight in the wars that were shaping the modern world. as technology reached certain levels where manpower was gradually replaced by machinery and computers later, and when it became obvious that another world war was quite unlikely, that rationality demanded a slow down in population growth which corresponded to an increase in proportional per capita wealth.

oh sure, the occident's cut down on reproduction has a significant aesthetic and hedonistic factor too, which the oriental culture lacks: fewer children means more free time for the adult individual to enjoy to pleasure.

in the meantime, the orient continued to fill its ranks with poor, unfed or malnourished, uneducated, unhealthy, unfree masses draining the already meager resources, even in the oil rich countries. and what did the politicians do? they encouraged the great unwashed to reproduce and multiply - obey the prophet's orders!

now, the man who thinks he is the latter day caliph of turkey has declared that his government will issue state (government?) support for families (meaning married couples) and more children (in arithmetic terms, more than two). even if that support realizes as tax cuts (which the great unwashed don't pay anyway) it means that i, a single, childless, high bracket wage earner, shall be paying more tax for the reproductive purposes of a poor, unproductive (which unfortunately is not synonymous with infertile), uncouth, rowdy, uneducated, unskilled, ignorant family of slobs at the expense of my welfare!

in other words, i shall be financing the pleasures of some stupid dude's wimpy penis!

no wonder rationalists in the islamic orient were called mut'azil, the isolated!

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(*) for a good account of what weltanschauung is, read master sigmund freud's last chapter in the new introductory lectures (penguin freud library). even if you are one of the unfortunate souls who dis, mis or demi understands psychoanalysis, the reference should provide satisfying reading. here is a sample paragraph where the master defines weltanschauung:

‘weltanschauung’ is, i am afraid, a specifically german notion, which it would be difficult to translate into a foreign language. if i attempt to give you a definition of the word, it can hardly fail to strike you as inept. by weltanschauung, then, i mean an intellectual construction which gives a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which no question is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a place. it is easy to see that the possession of such a weltanschauung is one of the ideal wishes of mankind. when one believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life, one knows what one ought to strive after, and how one ought to organise one’s emotions and interests to the best purpose.

suicides, the media and the bridge

this post is corollary / supplementary to the previous one about the effects of the media on (especially violent) behavior:

reha muhtar, once the chief editor of show tv, is one of the two(*) pillars of populism who contributed extensively to establishing hebetude and banality as national intellectual virtues and institutionalizing ignorance as a mass occupation by dethroning whatever there was of information in order to institute infotainment as the primary resource of cognitive apathy.

the muhtar style of televized news and funmongering was once harshly criticized by the intelligentzia among many other reasons also for promoting suicide attempts because, cameras would flock to the bridges spanning the bosforus whenever some nincompoop threatened to jump unless his beloved were to come and declare her undying affection to him or another hanging down the balustrades (gunwales?) would blackmail his father to buy him a new car. once or twice, some unfortunate blighter - as the brits would say - did slip his hold or actually took the death plunge. however, most of the times, it was a parade and a charade as well as vicarious relief from bogus excited tension for millions of viewers.

when criticism reached political levels, - i believe it was rtük the censorship board again - the authorities intervened and jump-from-the-bridge-suicide-infotainment dispatches virtually disappeared.

pheeewwww... suicides thus abated as people were not incited to take their own lives by the "visual stimuli" not supplied by the now-censored-tv-stations ... thanks... who?

***
to the media of course, oh dear reader, whose colossal lack of a sense of follow-up, the catechism of journalism, did not urge them to even check the stats... i recently found out due to a very sad and misfortunate incident, that a minimum of two and maximum of 10 persons per week continue to throw themselves off the bosphorus bridge according to the police.

only, we do not know that and what is not known cannot hurt the great public conscience.

do i hear someone say "the effect of the media"?
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(*) the second institutionalizer is the late actor kemal sunal, whose characters always came up on top through some kind of peasantly cunning in his immensely popular movies despite their epic stupidity.

death and measures of stupidity

radikal's lead story on monday recounted how a 12 year old girl in urfa hanged herself and suffocated after telling her sister and cousin that she would come back from the dead as she had watched in a show aired on samanyolu tv, a decidedly religious and conservative channel. "i'm going to rise again, too", she reportedly said.

the next day, the "secular-ist" press mused that the child's death "caused" by the samanyolu program put the state's regulatory body of communication, rtük (the superior radio and tv committee) which in practice is a board of censors for tv and radio stations, in a quandary because they were reluctant to impose sanctions on a religiously oriented channel, much less one affiliated to the rather popular and politically influential fetullah gülen hoca, but the direct reference of the deceased girl to the show made some action mandatory.

what else would you call a delusion of grandeur but the assumption that some tv show can carry the power of life and death? the media have blown their own industry so much out of proportion that they can presume and pretend to possess such might.

since psychoanalysis was foregone by mechanized and digitalized squads of intellectuals in search of scientific idiocy instead of idiosyncracy, we have been condemned by a mediated collective obtuseness to suffer such aetiological nonsense as demonstrated by the editorial command of radikal, not differently from any other member and manager of the media.

there exists no shred of evidence that can conclusively assign blame for any act of violence on viewing visual material which contains or suggests violence. the homo sapiens sapiens is an aggressive breed by nature and seeks the cultural material that suits such urges. violence prone individuals, depending on their level of intelligence among other factors, either derive cathartic pleasure from vicarious violence or at the very worst, learn from movies or tv shows the methodology of venting brute force and if necessary, making moronic excuses for it. "normal" people, as they are called according to statistics of rule-obedience, devise methods of sublimating their destructive drives or simply get married and beat their spouses or offspring.

at the same time, by nature, the homo sapiens sapiens is a nice, benevolent, altruistic creature but nobody attributes its generic goodness to religious, moralistic, educative etc. electronic evangelism on air or online. one could almost be led by the alleged correlation between tv and aggression to assume that there were no wars before moving pictures were invented. nor was there charity.

war was one of st. john's horsemen of the apocalypse. then, too, as at all times, the personality of an individual was shaped by the exigencies of a cultural environment one had to adapt what he could of his personal potential to. in other words, personality was a structure that evolved for adaptation of survival means and skills to a social milieu. some employed violence and/or generosity to survive, others turned their aggression within, to themselves and who was theirs. the rate of suicides to population and various causes of death was probably still the same at the times of lion heart and saladin as it was when emile durkheim was writing his famous study. rape or murder were probably no more uncommon than it was in west manhattan of the eighties.

in short, death lives with and within the human individual. depending on the degree of obstruction and frustration that the individual feels life imposes, death may become a pseudo exit or relief from the tensions of life. master sigmund freud said it represented a wish to return to the inorganic state of matter, with zero level of stimulation on one's psychic apparatus. if idiosyncracy had dominated intellectual thinking instead of (digitalized) idiocy, even radikal could discern and perhaps inquire into why and how a 12 year old girl in urfa, incidentally, a region where women are suppressed and restricted into quite frustrating and restrictive social roles from very early on, wanted to die that much so she could be reborn.

what was it that made her want to leave this particular life in the hope of coming back to another?

how, then, could a mentally debilitated tv show encourage her to die? or was it other features of life as she knew it that generated and raised her interest in death so that she sought the methodology of dying in that idiotic episode?

death and measures of stupidity

radikal's lead story on monday recounted how a 12 year old girl in urfa hanged herself and suffocated after telling her sister and cousin that she would come back from the dead as she had watched in a show aired on samanyolu tv, a decidedly religious and conservative channel. "i'm going to rise again, too", she reportedly said.

the next day, the "secular-ist" press mused that the child's death "caused" by the samanyolu program put the state's regulatory body of communication, rtük (the superior radio and tv committee) which in practice is a board of censors for tv and radio stations, in a quandary because they were reluctant to impose sanctions on a religiously oriented channel, much less one affiliated to the rather popular and politically influential fetullah gülen hoca, but the direct reference of the deceased girl to the show made some action mandatory.

what else would you call a delusion of grandeur but the assumption that some tv show can carry the power of life and death? the media have blown their own industry so much out of proportion that they can presume and pretend to possess such might.

since psychoanalysis was foregone by mechanized and digitalized squads of intellectuals in search of scientific idiocy instead of idiosyncracy, we have been condemned by a mediated collective obtuseness to suffer such aetiological nonsense as demonstrated by the editorial command of radikal, not differently from any other member and manager of the media.

there exists no shred of evidence that can conclusively assign blame for any act of violence on viewing visual material which contains or suggests violence. the homo sapiens sapiens is an aggressive breed by nature and seeks the cultural material that suits such urges. violence prone individuals, depending on their level of intelligence among other factors, either derive cathartic pleasure from vicarious violence or at the very worst, learn from movies or tv shows the methodology of venting brute force and if necessary, making moronic excuses for it. "normal" people, as they are called according to statistics of rule-obedience, devise methods of sublimating their destructive drives or simply get married and beat their spouses or offspring.

at the same time, by nature, the homo sapiens sapiens is a nice, benevolent, altruistic creature but nobody attributes its generic goodness to religious, moralistic, educative etc. electronic evangelism on air or online. one could almost be led by the alleged correlation between tv and aggression to assume that there were no wars before moving pictures were invented. nor was there charity.

war was one of st. john's horsemen of the apocalypse. then, too, as at all times, the personality of an individual was shaped by the exigencies of a cultural environment one had to adapt what he could of his personal potential to. in other words, personality was a structure that evolved for adaptation of survival means and skills to a social milieu. some employed violence and/or generosity to survive, others turned their aggression within, to themselves and who was theirs. the rate of suicides to population and various causes of death was probably still the same at the times of lion heart and saladin as it was when emile durkheim was writing his famous study. rape or murder were probably no more uncommon than it was in west manhattan of the eighties.

in short, death lives with and within the human individual. depending on the degree of obstruction and frustration that the individual feels life imposes, death may become a pseudo exit or relief from the tensions of life. master sigmund freud said it represented a wish to return to the inorganic state of matter, with zero level of stimulation on one's psychic apparatus. if idiosyncracy had dominated intellectual thinking instead of (digitalized) idiocy, even radikal could discern and perhaps inquire into why and how a 12 year old girl in urfa, incidentally, a region where women are suppressed and restricted into quite frustrating and restrictive social roles from very early on, wanted to die that much so she could be reborn.

what was it that made her want to leave this particular life in the hope of coming back to another?

how, then, could a mentally debilitated tv show encourage her to die? or was it other features of life as she knew it that generated and raised her interest in death so that she sought the methodology of dying in that idiotic episode?

know thine enemy

well, it's always nice to be able to say "i told you so", especially when it supports a life-time decision you have made. i have reached the conclusion on the morning of 12 september 1980 that kenan evren, the leader of the putsch that cost turkey at least a century of civilization right on the edge of a breaking point, is my sworn enemy. i do not mean an enemy in the millitary or feudal sense of course, or even target my hostility at his person - his person is ephemeral, what he stands for is eternal in an oriental despotism. i rather harbor an undying opposition executed through intellectual and democratic means to whatever he stands for, which invariably perpetuates that despotism.

i said in one of yesterday's posts about evren's suggestion of a federated turkey that he would never aim for more liberty but for increased control through a series of cloned minor and junior ankaras, all flawed by the same festering ailments.

even in that form, his outburst was blown back to his face by the majority of the polity quorum - a gung ho prosecutor even attempted to bring the ex-junta-leader to court, we'll see how he sits back in his chair -. turks are apparently so much in love with their defunct, archaic and totally dysfunctional system of state that they consider it a taboo and a crime to discuss, much less to alter it.

the ex-dictator reportedly called m. y. yılmaz of hürriyet who was also outraged at his suggestion of a federated turkey and told the columnist that he did not have in mind a "federation" but a system of districts whose administration depends on the "principle of appointed regional governors".

know thine enemies. little chance you can beat many of them, but they do tend to trap themselves by the reason of the obvious, so that you can slip by the thrashing dragon on your way to freedom.

not humans, properties!

the recent hot topic is the sad death of the little girl who fell into a sewage drain, was dragged for a mile and emerged drowned from another outlet of public un-hygiene. the incident reminded our esteemed press and good public of similar "accidents" caused by such atrocities of management by our local and national government institutions where eventually, the victim was virtually found to blame. nobody recalled, however, that one of turkey's most popular and best known poets, orhan veli had died the same way, half a century ago.

in the last case, too, the lawyer of the contractor firm (which is apparently related to such dignitaries as the prime minister, the justice minister and other notables of the genre) attempted to blame the child for falling in the drain where she died. that did not wash in the media but the courts may still uphold the lawyer's claim.

anyway, that is not the point here. the issue is that a city becomes an urban space only through its citi-zens. if the denizens of an urb are totally and also proudly ignorant of a city-sense, the organic mathematics of thriving in tandem, not only are lives in jeopardy, but the jeopardy will persist as well, because there exists no system to indicate the right course of action for urban survival when the mathematics of space is not organic to the mind of its "occupant".

as always when peasant or schooled-peasant (diplomé, as the french call them) minds are at work, some researched how european cities cope with the problem of underground public works. photos appeared of london where the danger zone was segregated by fences, distinctly marked and lighted. so far so good, but the research, or at least attention to the results of research came after-the-fact-of-death: not before-the-fact-of-construction. the media commmented: "see how human life is valued in the west and how it is valued here".

wrong! there is no "human life" in peasant societies because there are no humans. "human" is not a biological or evolutionary category that classifies all specimens of the homo sapiens-sapiens as such. "human" is a derivative and function of "individual" which is the historical and historic product of the process called freedom. freedom is the last concern of peasant societies where lack of control means loss of status, power, holdings and the means of holding on. therefore, there are few free, individual human-persons in peasant societies.

there exist mainly subjects - of the state, of the prophet, of the imam or the priest, of the political leader/party, of the father, of the family, of the football team, of the street gang etc.

the chief characteristic of a "subject" is its expendability in inverse proportion not to its merits but its usefulness to the "owner".

am i being too harsh? exaggerating?

here, let me recount two lines from a childrens' march (yes, march as in military marches) from the 40's which is still sung collectively at schools:

children are sacred properties of the motherland
each a tree of the august tree
who should be cared for and supplied with aid.

set the controls federated-ly

kenan evren, head of the 1980 putsch who got himself elected president in polls "guarded" by soldiers and guns in 1983 came forth and made a correct comment for once... old age must be lifting the inhibitions on his wisdom caused by military training, apparently. he suggested that turkey can be run better if divided into some sort of federated states that he says must number eight.

for some reason, the akp government spokesmen who, normally, would stand to gain the most from decentralized rule in turkey were the first and harshest to respond - perhaps simply because they hate evren as much as the (ex) communists do. all in all, the ex-strongman's suggestion sems to be swept into oblivion.

ask me, a switch to federated state structure is one of the very few measures, short of a total and unconditional democratization, de-statization and capitalization (which look impossible), to keep the country "unitarian" - a nondescript ideal that recently seems to have acquired religious fervor. however, such a federative system, too, must be accompanied by liberalization and democratization, in-situ rule and administration, due autonomy etc. in order to function. otherwise, it will just replicate the centralized, control freak, non liberal despotism of ankara in secondary or auxillary centers. just as the 80 odd years of republican experience shows, any centrality tends not to liberate but increase control. in the chaotic and unpredictible dynamics of a capitalist world, that results in decapacitating doses of anomie. a federated cloning of ankara without copenhagen criteria liberties will simply aggravate the malady becaus it will bureaucratize the state regionally and locally.

i got a feeling that evren actually yearns for that option. instead of ankara's diminishing hold on the country, he wants tighter reins strongly held by bureaucratic sub-despotisms. why else does he not campaign for "elected provincial governors" for instance, if his (impossible and incredible) goal is freedom?

people sketches 1 - yavuz tanyeli, the artist, part II

in order to keep it short, i cut down on the post about yavuz tanyeli in the first people sketches. then i simply procrastinated. naturally, a few posts can hardly say much that is significant about the artist in turkey. he deserves this second page of the sketch book at least.

yavuz has an ongoing exhibition in the karşı sanat gallery in galatasaray, accross from the church of san antonio on istiklal caddesi (beyoğlu) that will close on march 3. if you visit it, i think you'll aggree with me that he is the most interesting painter alive in turkey.

art criticism is an art in itself, so i am not pretending to know about paints, tints, thinners, techniques etc. but art appreciation is a direct derivative of one's capacity to perceive and represent the world mentally. so, what i write about yavuz's work pertains to content, which, in the context of plastic arts, also comprises form.

you cannot just look at yavuz's paintings. you watch them. what at first seems to be an abstract blotch of colored oil, sometimes literally splashed on the canvas, slowly reveals a very defined form that appears through the contours of colors. from the contours, form jumps to the contrasts. thereafter, the whole canvas, often larger than an ordinary living room wall, assumes a life of its own. it guides you through its own tale interspersed with myths and questions while
after the initial shock you realize that there is nothing in the picture that is abstract; only secret messages and meanings that lurk in every twist of the brush.

the main form is a story - whether it shows dead horses under the debris of an earthquake stricken town, a jazz band blowing wind instruments under the vine, kurds "cooking" heroin in a cave, it depicts an odd cross section from life that contains elements presumed contrary. but the story unravels. a colorful handkerchief sprouts from a trompet player's pocket, a cat juts its head into the picture like an indifferent self-critic, somewhere in what is supposed to be the background, another story breaks from an immorally brazen play of solidifying shadows
that links straight to the other acts in the picture (sometimes, even onto another picture). so, the apparently static frame grips you and drags you into multiple adventures at once. the overall effect is mesmerizing : looking at the whole, you see a complete picture. looking at the parts, you see a number of complete pictures which also are complementary to the whole, a sense of a tumultuous placidity that belies infernal action, which resembles standing at the edge of an abyss at once quiet, deadly and alluring.

i once spent a whole week gazing and watching only the hieronymus bosch and pieter brueghel collection in the kunsthistoriches museum in vienna - this is not meant as a comparison of artists and their art but the feeling of being in flux with the picture is the same. a sensation of something sweeping up your spine urges you to think again, that your mind is gathering cobwebs and is hungry for new knowledge, which indeed, is synonymous with a new reality and a plethora of experiences awaiting to be savored; what existentialist/phenomenologist jargon calls noemases.

the color expressions and the shapes yavuz likes to paint are also often bizarre and ominious at first - he has switched to livelier colors recently but the majority of yavuz's paintings tends to be dark. then, all the mockery and humor emerge from the brush lines and the macabre feeling goes away like watching a suspense movie.

i think of art as an exploration for the artist and as a journey of expedition for the viewer. yavuz and i have been on too many travels together, maybe it is not so surprising that his pictures can take me away on never-ending-trips-everywhere. however, after all those years, i have come to the conclusion that if you dig art and after looking at yavuz's work long enough, are still where you started, you are either beginning to "know the place for the first time" as t.s. eliot said or you have not the courage to launch on a voyage into your own void.

we are talking here of an artist who not only has a distinct style, but the class and competence that can establish the parameters of that style as a school of art. yavuz' s art is universal in quality. few contemporary galleries abroad carry few pictures that are as rich as his in content and strong in technique. furthermore, his work is unique, inimitable, inventive and original because of the particular path of creativity he has chosen and carved. yavuz's pioneering style takes not only its inspiration but also its matrices from the orient. he applies the orient to the practice of an art that is occidental to the last spark of its spirit, rather than repeating the third world mistake of applying the west's techniques to reshape the east's unmalleable soul.

guess that makes him the artist in turkey.

emre the intellectual football racist

oh no, i am not going to wallow in that simplistic media guagmire debating "whether turkish nationalism is racist or ethnicist". like atoms that form a molecule and molecules that form a mole, all particularisms accrue and attach to complementary particularisms. just as a mole reacts differently from constituent molecules in different circumstances, the resultant particularism at times may even seem to exclude some constituent - the hottest dixie soldiers fought under the old glory along with 'em yanks and even the "niggers" toward an american victory in two world wars. see what i mean? no? go back a decade then and look at rwanda; the end 20th century showdown of colored racism between the tutsi and the hutu.

i just want to touch on the case of emre belezoğlu, a turkish footballer playing in england for newcastle united. i heard of emre when he made front pages due to allegations that he voiced racist remarks about his teammates. he is supposed to have called a black player a nigger (or negro) and racially insulting an arab player. he reportedly defended himself saying he is a muslim and therefore cannot be a racist and that the word "zenci" which corresponds to negro or nigger in turkish is not an insult. actually, he is mostly right on that latter one - zenci is part of a relatively upper class vocabulary and is not necessarily insulting. however, turks' lack of differentiation intervenes in favor of racism in a worse form: black and colored people come from the south, and hence are assumed to come from arabia, more familiar because it is the land of pilgrimage. thus, they are called arabs. arab, can be and is used very commonly as a derogation.

my favorite is not that however: emre said in defense "my best friend has black skin". poor ballhead, he does not know that in the unspoken language of discourses, he has thus sung the rhyme chanted by all notorious whites accused of racism: "some of my best friends are negroes..."

well, i don't know what kind of football he plays but i am willing to bet he has not read as many books in his life as the goals he has scored this half season in britain.

hi, folks

it's weird but apparently blog writing, which is supposed to be something totally volitional and therefore spontaneous and capricious rather than consistent and routine, is also subject to "writer's block". in the last week or so, althougth i did desire to scribble a few words here, i could not bring myself up to do it.

nevertheless, i see that the mass of readers who gaze at these virtual pages have not abandoned me. in more than two months, i have curried almost 500 (480+ to be more exact) readers, averaging seven persons per day despite my truancies.

i never intended to make this a popular blog, rather a loose journal to log loose opinions to track the passage of days - a reference (maybe) to come back to in the future with the record. of course, that not just gives me the right to say "i told you so," it also enables others to point out to how my wisdom flopped.

so thank you folks, for your visits. i hope i'll soon pull up the energy and write outrageous entries that will to keep you interested.