Global Voices – Chris Rickleton – Jun 26, 12:31 PM
Calling for peace is still considered a crime in Turkey Three-and-a-half years have passed since the Academics for Peace (AfP in short: Baris icin Akademisyenler in Turkish) boldly told Turkey’s government “we will not be a party to this
Judge Arslan said in his dissenting opinion that it is not the Constitutional Court’s duty to approve different views on the Gezi protests whether it was a criticism of the government or a foreign-sponsored insurrection.
What I understand is that Trump is the only person who prevents any substantive measures to be taken against Turkey, or more specifically Erdoğan regime, in the context of S-400 crisis. Hence comes the Trump love among the AKP elites… However, since Trump is not always predictable who knows what may happen next…
The Financial Times – Laura Pitel in Istanbul – Jun 20, 5:02 AM
Turkey will take delivery of a Russian S-400 air defence system in the first half of July, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, striking a defiant tone as he insisted that the US would not risk damaging relations with a key strategic
open Democracy News Analysis –by Hugh Williamson /
“Kavala and the 15 other defendants are up against a state apparently determined to usurp the judicial system for the political end of silencing its critics.
ANKARA, TURKEY – MAY 22: Turkey’s PM Ahmet Davutoglu accompanied by his wife Sare Davutoglu, greets members of his party as he arrives for the second Extraordinary Congress of the ruling AK Party (AKP) in Ankara on May 22, 2016 Turkey. Turkey’s Transport and Communication Minister Binali Yildirim is the sole candidate to head the AK Party and is the new Prime Minister of Turkey. (Photo by Gokhan Tan/Getty Images)
After a decade of repressive rule, Turks are beginning to believe President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is vulnerable. The Turkish economy is in bad shape, his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) candidates recently lost in elections to lead
Huseyin Sahnaz remembers well the day his daughter Safiye was born — as well as the day she was imprisoned. ‘She was born on a Friday. A day later, we were forced to send her and her mother to prison,’ he tells DW. Sahnaz’s wife,
My longest digital experiment/ playground is 15 years old today!
There will be a party but around October. I had decided to postpone. The 10th year party was a big hit and I feel like the 15th one should be even a bigger hit. Let me first settle in Istanbul.
Nowadays are so hectic I could not even prepare a good post. However, I should still note this important date. I owe the origins of this blog to Prof. Chris Kelty who set up the first version at a Rice University subpage. Archive.org keeps the first pages here. Blogging may be passé for many but not for the die-hard bloggers like me.
This blog became more than a research tool; it had its own life and it transformed my academic orientation eventually. If I am known to be a new media scholar, I owe it to this blog to a large extent. It is also a digital record of what happened in Turkish politics with occasional personal commentaries.
I had several fantasies about the blog, such as making it a multi-authored nationwide site. If I had a more commercial logic, I could do that in the early 2000s. But now there are many sites already and without substantial financial support, it is hard to that. People do not have the stamina or have petty ambitions. We could still do it but in the end, it remained to be my own playground. In the end, I am happy to maintain it in one way or another. I know that despite its relatively low traffic, it has an impact, I have lovely readers and I managed to meet some of them all over the world in these 15 years. Both in diplomatic terms and human terms.
The very first posts…
So I decided to give a facelift to the blog. After 9 years, I had recently changed the WordPress template (I started with the Movable Type, then used Yahoo hosting software before switching to WordPress for good). I have tried to provide information to my all digital dealings. Nearly all public digital existence is linked to Erkan’s Field Diary. Harun Vedat Şahnacı, a former student of mine, assisted me in some SEO settings. Thank you, Harun! So, some of the wiki-like projects I give priority are linked at the very top. That includes The Gezi Archive and SeçimTürk. Under the blog title, there are links to my most favorite social media accounts in addition to About pages. You can reach my continuously updated CV and media appearances. The features posts, which I give priority, cannot be missed under the banner. In fact, I have switched back to less frequent but more personal posts. Still, I can not stop posting lists of news links on current affairs. On the right-hand side under the subscription by email box, there are links to back up blogs. Some of them might be interesting like the Beşiktaş news blog. I have decided to insert the Archive box again. Maybe you would like to see the old posts. Unfortunately, I could not transfer the earliest posts.
When I act like a teenager
I have implemented WordPress ads. I guess I would be grateful if you click on these ads from time to time. However, I am not sure if it is worthy. Let me know if should delete all the ads for the sake of simplicity. In 15 years, I have once earned more than a thousand USD in a year many years ago, but since then virtually nothing. But I still assume the site not necessarily a commercial place. So far so good. I am happy.
The Facebook Page for the EFD
On the upper right-hand side, there is the email subscription box. I believe email subscriptions to the blog posts may be the most reliable method to follow if you do not use an RSS reader.
It is hard to miss posts as they are automatically shared by my Twitter, Facebook page – which has sometimes bigger reach than the blog itself, Medium, and Linkedin accounts. It thus reaches to more than 18 thousand accounts.
So happy readings and please drop me a line whenever you would like to recommend something!
Over 200 000 people protesting in Prague, demanding the resignation of prime minister in biggest protests since Velvet Revolutionhttps://http://bit.ly/2WV1ZHm
For example, Germany’s primetime TV news reported that 47 percent of political social media discussions were related to the extreme-right AfD party, when in fact this was the case only for Twitter – used by only four percent of Germans.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s main opposition claimed a decisive victory on Sunday in Istanbul’s re-run election, dealing one of the biggest blows to …
Bu akşamki Beylikdüzü, bana Gezi'deki bu unutulmaz akşamı anımsattı. 6 yıl öncesinin hissi var şu an. Ve bu daha başlangıç, mücadeleye devam, güzel günler göreceğiz pic.twitter.com/H5x13CQ1Y0
Various data gathered from recent studies point to a decline in Istanbul’s quality of life, which has made the city uninhabitable in 25 years of Islamist
The Financial Times – Laura Pitel and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul and Funja Guler in Ankara – Jun 23, 9:51 AM
A political gamble by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan backfired spectacularly on Sunday as the opposition won a resounding victory in the repeat of an Istanbul mayoral election according to early results. Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition
On June 23, Istanbul will hold new mayoral elections. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the original election on March 31, appealed to overturn the results on a technicality, and won. The ruling was only the latest and most
Ruling party in Turkey set to lose city of Istanbul after re-run mayoral election in big blow for President Erdogan This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest
This week in Istanbul, people gathered in parks and at ferry stations, their eyes trained on large, inflatable screens. On leafy residential blocks, the …
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