The U.N.’s human rights chief endorses the Gladstone Report, which accuses both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants of committing war crimes during last winter’s conflict in Gaza.

Turkish police detain 50 suspected members of the Islamic Jihad League, a group linked to Al Qaeda, who were allegedly plotting attacks on NATO installation sin Turkey and Germany.

A 48-year-old France Telecom engineer hangs himself, becoming the 25 employee of the company to commit suicide in the past 20 months. Many of the employees have left notes blaming stress at work as the company undergoes major restructuring.

One of the most wanted fugitives from the Rwandan genocide is arrested in Uganda. Idelphonse Nizeyimana, the former Rwandan intelligence chief, directly ordered and organized massacres during the genocide, and more recently was top commander of a rebel group causing terror in eastern Congo.

More that 250 people are killed and at least 25 villages destroyed in monsoon flooding in the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

Turkish police use tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators protesting IMF and World Bank meetings in Istanbul. At least 50 people are arrested.

The United Nations closes all of its offices throughout Pakistan for an indefinite period following yesterday’s bombing of the U.N. World Food Program compound in Islamabad.

An Italian court begins reviewing a law passed in July 2008 that gives Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution. If the law is overturned, Berlusconi could face prosecution in a number of cases, including one for corruption.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown helps initiate a raid on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan that frees New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell. The journalist and his interpreter, who was killed in the raid, were kidnapped on Saturday. Britain offers to host an international conference on Afghanistan to set targets for transferring security responsibilities from foreign forces to Afghan authorities.

The only son of the late president Corazon Aquino announces he will run for president of the Philippines in next year’s election. Benigno Aquino III adapts his mother’s signature color of yellow when he reveals his candidacy.  Current president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is in her final term and cannot run again.

Three days after China’s government proclaims coal mine safety to be a priority, a gas explosion at an unlicensed mine in central China kills at least 35 workers and traps 44. Officials respond by arresting and suspending 13 officials and mine managers.

Japan’s new ruling Democratic Party finalizes a deal to form a coalition with two small parties whose help it needs to pass laws quickly. The Democratic Party of Japan needs the backing of the Social Democrats and the conservative People’s New Party to maintain control of the nation’s parliament. The coalition is set to launch next week.

The Iranian government offers an updated nuclear proposal ahead of talks in Frankfurt, Germany by members of the U.N. Security Council. The five countries and Germany are meeting Wednesday to discuss Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

Libya celebrates the 40-year anniversary of the military coup that brought Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to power. The celebrations come amid widespread controversy over the early release of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

A court in Guatemala sentences an ex-paramilitary officer to 150 years for the disappearance of six civilians during the country’s 36-year civil war. The officer is the first person to be jailed for complicity in such disappearances, which a U.N. truth commission estimates at over 45,000 civilians from 1960 to 1996.

The North Korean government relaxes restrictions on border traffic with South Korea. Officials in Pyongyang had severely limited the flow of South Korean workers to the Kaesong industrial estate in the North to protest the policies of South Korea’s conservative government.

Pakistani troops kill 15 Taliban militants in fresh fighting in the Swat Valley. The army began an offensive in April that it claims has killed over 2,000 militants. It estimates that 312 soldiers have died in the fighting.

That this story became news is partly the accomplishment of an award-winning Jordanian journalist who broke the silence about honor killings with her reports for the Jordan Times.

“The most surprising thing to me is how a person can kill a close relative,” Rana Husseini told WIDE ANGLE. She chronicles 15 years of her reporting and the resulting push for social and legal reform in Jordan in her new book, “Murder in the Name of Honor.”

Honor killings are relatively rare – numbering about 25 a year in Jordan, and about 5,000 a year worldwide (13 women a day). But the crime is one of the most brutal practices in the modern world. It occurs when a family feels its female relative has tarnished its reputation by her “immoral behavior” – which can range from being raped to having an unrecognized phone number on her cell phone – and is often carried out by the woman’s brother or father.

Husseini’s effort to report on the crime met resistance in Jordan when critics accused her of hurting the country’s reputation and of trying to devalue its culture by imposing Western values.

“I’ve been accused of being a Western agent,” said Husseini. “Its unfortunate, but you can’t stop, you have to fight.”

Her work received another blow in 2003, when an Iranian-American published a misleading book about honor killings, “Honor Lost,” that tells the story of the author’s childhood friend who was killed by her father after he discovered she was in love with a Christian. Husseini said the book was rife with errors and stereotypes (she counted eighty errors) about how Muslims treat women, and hurt efforts to change Muslim attitudes about the crime when Western conservatives in the United States and Australia used it to support an attack on Iraq. The publisher, Random House Australia, later acknowledged doubts of the author’s veracity and offered refunds on all returned books.

In fact, honor killings are most commonly associated with Muslims, but as Husseini notes in her book “while some Muslims do murder in the name of honor – and sometimes claim justification through the teachings of Islam – Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others also maintain traditions and religious justifications that attempt to legitimize honor killings.”

In addition to Jordan, the practice occurs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Egypt, Syria and even Israel, where honor killings have been documented among both Muslims and members of the Druze faith, although Hussieni notes they are “not in high numbers.”

Husseini has lent her support to campaigns in Jordan to amend laws that outline lenient punishment for perpetrators of honor killings. Article 340 of the country’s legal code mandates that “he who discovers his wife, or one of his female relatives with another in an adulterous situation, and kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, benefits from a reduction in penalty.” The campaign yielded a temporary amendment of a related law, and a longer lasting change in public awareness.

“The voices that oppose these crimes are getting more attention than before,” said Husseini.

As recently as this month, Jordan’s Justice Minister, Ayman Odeh, said perpetrators of honor crimes would get no legal exemptions. “A crime is a crime. There is no such thing as honor crimes. All people are equal before the law,” said Odeh.

Husseini says one of the most satisfying results of her reporting has been the change in attitude among men who feel pressured to defend the honor of their family.

“Two years ago at a public lecture in a full auditorium, I opened the floor for discussion,” Husseini recalled to WIDE ANGLE. “I had two men ask me in front of everyone, ‘I know killing my sister is wrong. What can I do to avoid committing this act if I’m ever put in this situation?’ This is a major shift.”

In this week’s WIDE ANGLE episode, Contestant No. 2, a young Druze woman who pushes the limits of her conservative culture in Israel faces a threat on her life from her uncle when her community expresses concern that her participation in a beauty pageant could damage her family’s honor.

Some Mexicans lighten the mood by decorating their face masks.

In the midst of the global financial crisis, annual May Day protests take place in cities across Europe, turning violent in Berlin and Istanbul.

Another 60 Taliban militants are killed on day four of fighting in Pakistan’s Buner district.

Before heading to Iraq, Obama spent two days in Turkey, where he addressed the Turkish Parliament and met with Turkish university students.

The toll climbs to 207 dead, 15 missing, and 17,000 left homeless after yesterday’s earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, 60 miles outside of Rome.

Rwandans mark the 15th anniversary of the genocide in which nearly one million died, mostly minority Tutsis killed by majority Hutus.

Our world today is so interconnected that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. has led to a global financial crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Here’s a round-up of how the countries around the world are dealing with the economic meltdown.

Europe

The 15-country eurozone is officially in recession for the first time since its formation in 1999. From French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s newly announced economic summit to Iceland’s collective sigh of relief over a bailout (the International Monetary Fund’s first loan to Western Europe since Britain got a helping hand in 1976), Europe is struggling with its own brand of turmoil as the financial crisis tears through the continent.

But in the German cities of Eisenach and Bochum, residents are feeling a special empathy for the U.S. Both are home to Opel car plants, shut down as parent company General Motors pleads with Capitol Hill for a loan.

Opel has approached the German government in an attempt to secure liquidity should GM go bankrupt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to consider a loan, but immediately faced resistance even within her own party from lawmakers concerned that funds might find their way back to Detroit to prop up the ailing American parent company. All this comes at an inopportune time for Opel. Their Insignia model just won the title of European Car of the Year for 2009 — the first time in 22 years that a GM car has taken top honors. Perhaps the Insignia is a bit more stylish than 1987’s Opel Omega…

As the head of Europe’s second largest economy, French President Sarkozy announced a $25 billion investment fund yesterday. The bailout is part of a plan launched last month aimed at protecting French companies from foreign take-overs. Despite payback clauses and caps placed on executive pay, the bailout has angered France’s powerful unions who are staging massive strikes this week in air and rail travel, and postal and telecom services.

Sarkozy, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the E.U., has been so vocal about the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the necessity for better market regulation, that The Economist semi-jokingly questions whether the global financial crisis has turned him into a “closet socialist.” Sarkozy was instrumental in arranging the recent G-20 summit, but returned from Washington disappointed by its outcome. On Tuesday, he announced that he and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will co-host another meeting of world leaders and financial experts in January 2009 in Paris to continue looking for ways out of the crisis.

In 2001, two-fifths of Turkey’s banks failed after an irresponsible lending spree. Taking over the banks and restructuring them cost the state a crippling 30 percent of GDP and plunged the economy into a deep recession, triggering one of the I.M.F.’s biggest-ever loans. At the G-20 summit in Washington last weekend, Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan announced his country may be close to reaching an agreement to receive yet another emergency loan from the I.M.F. But Prime Minister Erdogan has warned the Turkish business community not to expect a government bailout this time: “Nobody should expect everything from the government. It’s not like the government is going to inject cash into the emptied safes of companies. Let me put it clearly, such a thing is out of the question.”

Asia

After months of avoiding the global financial crisis and years of excess money in the banks, Japan has also slipped into a recession. The world’s second largest economy has seen a recent appreciation of the yen and consequently, a decline in the demand for exports, especially among its most loyal customers. In the United States, the world’s largest auto market, the price of Japanese vehicles is rising and sales are dropping. Japanese car manufacturers Honda, Nissan and Toyota are reporting steep declines in sales and profits. Sony is also predicting a 59 percent plunge in profits due to deteriorating sales of gadgets and flat-screen TVs.

Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a $51 billion stimulus package last month, which included 2 trillion yen ($20.3 billion) in special benefits to all households. Aso hoped to encourage domestic consumption by distributing $600 to each family of four. Some economists predict that the worst is yet to come in Japan, but the bleak outlook hasn’t stopped Japanese consumers from snatching up an entire stock of diamond-encrusted mobile phones. Studded with 537 diamonds – a total of 18.34 carats – and a price tag of 13 million yen ($134,000 dollars), the line of 10 phones sold out within three days.

South Koreans have begun to fear a repeat of their 1997-1998 economic collapse, when the I.M.F. had to step in with a $58 million bailout. The government of South Korea responded to the current downturn by setting up a $30 billion currency swap with the Federal Reserve of the United States, which was designed to alleviate the pressure on the country’s banks. On November 14^th, China and Japan also agreed on a currency swap with South Korea, contributing $4 billion and $15 billion respectively.

Despite a slowdown in garment exports and tourists, Cambodian Prime Minister Sun Hen sees the silver lining. At a summit with Thailand and Vietnam earlier this month, Sen said, “’The rich people in Europe, the buyers in America, will not buy expensive clothes produced in Europe anymore but the cheaper goods produced in Cambodia and Vietnam.”

In the first weeks of the global financial crisis, China — the world’s fastest growing economy and largest holder of foreign-exchange reserves — was hopeful the slowdown would pass it by. But figures released in mid-October showed growth dipping to its lowest in five years, down from 11.9 percent last year to 9 percent this quarter, confirming that no nation is immune. With foreign exports and investments shrinking, Chinese unemployment is on the rise, and could reach up to 2.7 million laid-off workers by January 2009. Time Magazine calls it “China’s worst nightmare,” due to the labor unrest that might result. This week, Chinese authorities issued an order to companies in the big manufacturing regions of Shandong and Hubei provinces: they must now seek government consent in order to fire more than 40 people at a time. To shore up domestic growth and market confidence, on November 9 President Hu Jintao announced a 2-year $586 billion stimulus package — four times as large as America’s current bailout plan — focused on tax reform, increased spending on education, health, and housing, and major infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, airports, and the power grid.

China suffered from two major recessions in the past 30 years, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989 and during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, when it last adopted a big stimulus plan. The Economist argues that this time China might “genuinely avoid a hard landing: the underlying economy, while far from perfect, is in better shape, and the government has more room to boost its spending… [M]ost economists think the stimulus package will be enough to keep growth at 7.5-8 percent for the year as a whole. If so, of the world’s eight biggest economies, China will be the only one to enjoy any growth next year.” Chinese consumers may help keep the rest of us afloat.

As the West increasingly relies on China to help it weather the storm, geo-political compromises may be in the offing. The U.K. is rumored to have secured a Chinese donation to the I.M.F. by agreeing to reverse its century-old position on Tibet: since late October, Briatin no longer recognizes Tibet as an autonomous entity but rather as a part of the People’s Republic of China.

The Middle East and Central Asia

Iranian hardliners have hailed the economic crisis as divine punishment for the perceived greed and corruption of the West and its allies. “The oppressors and the corrupt will be replaced by the pious and believers,” according to Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sees the downturn as signaling “the end of capitalism.”

He’s not the only one to see this crisis as a turning point in the culture war between East and West. Dubai’s once-booming economy has been hit hard, but some see the downturn as a chance to save the local culture. Traditional Bedouin culture has been all but lost in Dubai’s rush to become an international center of business, media and tourism. “The city needs to slow down and relax,” says Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s good for the identity of our country.”

The U.S. is expected to spend close to $200 billion on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year alone. With the economic crisis wreaking havoc in the homeland, something has to give. Peter Beinart, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations says that “the economic environment is making a speedy drawdown of U.S. troops [in Iraq] more likely.” That might sound like good news to some. But experts warn that the financial crisis might fuel instability in fragile nations from the Middle East to Pakistan. On November 15th, a struggling Pakistan reluctantly accepted a $7.6 billion loan from the I.M.F. But still, there is fear that economic troubles will hinder Pakistan’s ability to fight the Taliban insurgency in the country’s tribal regions.

Africa

Last month, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan said that we cannot use the global financial crisis as “an excuse for inaction” in combating poverty and food shortages in Africa. In times of financial crisis governments often renege on promises of financial aid. In fact, the U.N. Food Agency reported that only a tenth of 22 billion euros in food and agriculture assistance pledged to the U.N. for 2008 has actually been paid.

But there are some who feel the time is ripe for Africa to excel as an economic force. Kuseni Dlamini, the South African head of the multinational mining firm Anglo American, said that now is the “great era of opportunity for Africa to rise and shine in the global scheme of things and be met as an economic giant.” Kuseni cited Botswana as a “shining example” of a country that has managed its natural resources (diamonds) in a responsible way, which has delivered long term benefits in education, infrastructure and healthcare to the country. John Simon, U.S. ambassador to the African Union has called Africa “the new frontier” in the global economy.

According to Antoinette Sayeh, director of the I.M.F.’s African Department, growth in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent’s poorest region, will remain strong. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced one of its highest growth rates in decades in 2007, growing at a rate of 6.5 percent. In the midst of the global financial crisis, the I.M.F. projects that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will fall by only half a percent in 2008 and 2009. However, Sayeh warns that sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth could weaken with a lower inflow of capital, i.e. through foreign aid, and a reduction in commodity pricing. The I.M.F. has also identified eight sub-Saharan African countries — Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia – as having enough growth and investment to be considered emerging markets.

Latin America

With oil dropping below $50 a barrel, the Venezuelan economy may be at risk. More than 90 percent of export revenue and more than half of the government’s budget derives from oil. With these economic risks come political risks for a government whose extensive social programs are funded with oil revenues. Venezuela holds regional elections on Sunday, November 23, and economic troubles could reduce outspoken President Hugo Chavez’s hold on power. Among other challenges, Chavez allies will have to compete with Chavez’s ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez (she has since married her tennis coach).

Like Venezuela, Mexico relies heavily on oil revenues. The country also relies on remittances sent home by Mexican migrants abroad. Both have declined in response to the international financial crisis. In August, the collapse of the U.S. housing market (which employs many Hispanic immigrants in construction jobs) and increased illegal immigration raids contributed to a 12 percent drop in remittances, the largest monthly drop on record. Fortunately, September figures were more optimistic. Mexico receives the third-largest amount of remittances worldwide, and receives by far the largest amount coming from migrants based in the U.S. Interestingly, the decline in remittances has not been seen (pdf) in other Latin American countries that rely on them.

Mexico is also strongly connected to U.S. investment, which could prove problematic in weathering the financial crisis. Colombia, perhaps the strongest U.S. ally in South America, is less entangled with investments, but will be affected now that U.S. banks are reducing loans to developing countries. In addition, a trade agreement that would open some areas of trade between Colombia and the U.S. could be threatened by the the recent U.S. election. One outcome of the 2008 U.S. election was the ascendance of legislators advocating “fair trade” platforms, as opposed to “free trade” platforms. President-elect Obama, for example, has advocated for stronger labor protections in the Colombia agreement, citing violence against Colombian labor leaders. President Bush and out-going Republicans, however, have pushed for the deal to be signed as soon as possible.

The Planet

There may be some surprise winners and losers in the financial crisis, but the outlook for the planet seems to teeter back and forth between the two poles. U.N. climate honcho Yvo de Boer fears renewable energies and conservation will suffer from sinking oil prices, while countries will spend less money on protecting the environment as they fork over cash to rescue banks. Validating his concerns, at a recent E.U. summit, some Eastern European countries talked about backing away from CO2 emissions targets, citing the expense. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi added, “We do not think that now is the time to be playing the role of Don Quixote, when the big producers of CO2, such as the United States or China, are totally against adherence to our targets.”

But what’s bad news for some may actually make climate change activists pleased. With high rates of unemployment and foreclosure, populations are commuting less and shifting away from areas of suburban sprawl. Until the economic downturn, California was not set to meet its ambitious and trend-setting greenhouse gas emissions target. Now it seems as though they’re back on track. Less consumer demand likely translates into lower energy use – fewer road trips, fewer flights and a greater willingness to utilize public transportation. And, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, “One silver lining of the financial crisis is that investment decisions may not be as short-term as they have been.” Renewable energy and green technology projects might attract investors as safer bets for the long term.

WIDE ANGLE has also reported on the economic crisis in Ireland and Argentina.

Yesterday, on a gray rainy New York afternoon, Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum hosted the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his first public speech in the United States outside of the United Nations Security Council.

Security was tight, complete with metal detecting wands and bomb-sniffing dogs, as the 200-plus faculty and students filed into the packed venue. A motorcade of black SUVs with blaring sirens and flashing lights dropped off the guest of honor and some twenty other Turkish dignitaries.

The instant Prime Minister Erdogan appeared at the podium, flanked by secret police, a Kurdish activist student unfurled a handwritten banner reading “Turkey Out of Kurdistan” – and was promptly escorted out of the room by Columbia security. This small incident averted, Erdogan commenced his keynote address in Turkish, with a simultaneous interpreter translating into audience headsets.

In his opening remarks, Erdogan congratulated President-elect Barack Obama for his election victory, and expressed confidence in U.S.-Turkey solidarity under an Obama administration. “Leaders may change, governments may come and go, but relations between our countries will continue,” the Prime Minister affirmed.

He then turned to discussion of the global financial crisis – the reason for his present visit to America being this week’s G-20 meeting in Washington. Evoking the gravity of the present crisis with a stark image of global interdependency and the necessity for multilateral solutions, he said: “All countries are passengers on the same ship… If we sink, we will all go down together.”

Erdogan called upon the G-20 leaders to also turn their attentions to other “ticking timebombs” around the world that are at the top of Turkey’s foreign policy agenda: the unsettled border disputes between Turkey’s neighbors Russia and Georgia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan; achieving stability in Iraq, which the Prime Minister predicted could take “up to 10, 20, or even 30 years”; resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and preventing Iran from developing weapons of mass destruction. Although critical of Iran’s nuclear program, Erdogan also pointed to the hypocrisy of America’s policies: “Nuclear weapons are being harbored in many countries,” he said. “Taking a stand against one country and forcing them to disarm is not an honest approach…. It needs to be across the board. Let’s eradicate these weapons once and for all.”

The speech comes just days after Erdogan officially volunteered to serve as mediator between Iran and the United States, in the aftermath of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter to Barack Obama. As both a member of NATO and a Muslim country, Turkey sees itself as uniquely placed to act as a bridge between the West and the Middle East.

Elaborating on this theme, Erdogan expressed continued ambition to join the European Union, and dismay that Turkey has yet to be accepted as a member state: “We are doing our homework and are further along than many of the 27 member countries.” Turkey has been working toward E.U. membership for over four decades, but is the first Muslim nation under consideration. Ending on a more upbeat note, the Prime Minister rejoiced that Turkey has been accepted to serve as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2009 and 2010 – the first time in the U.N.’s 47-year history.

Erdogan concluded poetically: “We want to make new friends rather than enemies, and be a pro-active agent of peace…. We want to be a country that harvests not hatred but rather harvests, and therefore reaps, love.”

As the motorcade pulled away, audience members were overwhelmingly heartened by Erdogan’s message of peace and harmony, and his vision of Turkey’s growing role on the international stage. But a few skeptics pointed to a bumpy road ahead given the country’s position as a secular yet pious society, caught between the West and Islam.

WIDE ANGLE’s Turkey’s Tigers reported on the tensions between Islam and Western-style capitalism in Turkish business circles.

LESSON PLANS:

Accountability for Human Rights Violations

This lesson plan provides an opportunity to explore human rights violations and international courts of law. Students focus primarily on the case study of Slobodan Miloseviç’s regime.

Are All Children at the Same Starting Gate?

In this lesson, students learn about the differences in education systems in developing and developed nations, explore the factors that impede schooling, examine efforts to ensure universal access to education, and undertake a project that supports these efforts.

China’s Rule of Law: Changing with the Times?

Students identify and analyze the positive and negative effects of China’s changing legal system and build on their findings to design a program to promote a just and efficient legal system in China.

The Effects of Globalization

Use this lesson to explore the theme of global economics. Students investigate the impact of the World Trade Organization in developing countries.

Exploring Freedom of Expression

In order to understand what freedom of expression is, students first need to be able to define expression and recognize its various forms.

Gang Violence from L.A. to El Salvador

In this lesson, students will look at the harsh realities of gang life, the impact of gang life on Salvadoran society, and what is and isn’t being done to resolve the issue.

The Growth of Business and the Rise of Conservative Islam in Turkey

In this lesson, students explore the changes taking place in Turkish society and the Turkish economy.

Human Rights Basics

This lesson is designed to help children conduct a human rights discussion and understand the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rwanda: A Nation Recovering and Rebuilding

Students will learn about the history of Rwanda and the genocide that killed 800,000 men, women, and children.

Something’s Fishy in Scotland

Explore the plight of fishing families in Scotland by researching the impact of the European Union’s fishing policies on the social, personal, environmental, economic and political realities of a small community.

Suppression or Liberation: Islam, Hijab and Modern Society

Students will explore basic beliefs and practices of Islam and examine the different views of women’s modesty and hijab among Muslims and in modern society.

Violence as a Means of Resistance

With this case study, students will explore the question of whether violence is an acceptable means of resistance to oppression or whether diplomacy and political solutions must be pursued instead.

From the late thirteenth century until 1922, Turkey was the heart of the Ottoman Empire, encompassing much of the Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe. 1919 Following the end of WWI, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — the “Father of the Turks” — leads a military uprising against the occupying Inter-Allied Commission in what is known as the Turkish War of Independence. 1920 Turkish revolutionaries under Ataturk’s leadership form a parliament and declare Turkish sovereignty. 1922 The Sultanate is abolished, marking the official end of the Ottoman empire. Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdettin leaves the country. 1923 On October 29, Ataturk proclaims the Turkish Republic, and the westernization of Turkey begins. 1928 Turkey officially becomes a secular state. 1934 Turkish women are granted the right to vote. 1945 Turkey joins the United Nations. 1952 Turkey becomes a member of NATO. 1960 The Turkish Armed Forces stage a coup d’etat. Military rules lasts until 1961. 1964 Turkey becomes an associate member of the European Community. 1971 After three years of political violence, the Turkish government is overturned by a coup. 1974 The Turkish military intervenes after Greece sponsors a coup on the island country of Cyprus. Today, Turkey continues to occupy more than a third of Cyprus. 1975 The U.S. freezes its aid to Turkey due to its occupation of Cyprus. 1980 General Kanan Evren leads a military coup. Three years of military government rule follow. 1982 A new constitution of Turkey, modeled on the French Constitution, is enacted, making Turkey a secular republic. The constitution also provides for a strong president (elected for a seven-year term) who appoints the prime minister and who can dismiss parliament. 1984 The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) begins a bloody insurgency, fighting the Turkish army for an independent Kurdish state. The war lasts 15 years and claims more than 30,000 lives. 1993 Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey’s first female prime minister. 1994 The Islamic Welfare Party sweeps mayoral races across the country. 1997 A “post-modern” military coup removes Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and his Welfare Party government from power. Dec. 16, 2004 TA massive earthquake strikes Turkey. More than 15,000 people die, and another 40,000 are injured. 2001 Turkey experiences a banking collapse and a devaluation of its currency. 2002 The Justice and Development Party, with its roots in the Islamist Welfare Party comes to power. Tayyip Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, who was jailed for four months in 1998 for reciting a religious poem, becomes Turkey’s prime minister and concentrates on Turkey’s bid for full E.U. membership. 2005 A Turkish court ruling upholds restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in and around public schools. 2005 In response to his remarks about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is charged, ex post facto, with violating a new law making it an imprisonable offense to “publicly denigrate Turkish identity.” After an international outcry, charges against Pamuk were dropped in early 2006. 2006 Turkish lawyer Alpaslan Aslan is charged in the shooting of 5 judges, which resulted in the death of one. Prosecutors claim that Aslan was protesting a controversial ruling which denied promotion to a public school teacher due to her wearing of a religious head scarf.

Sources: : CIA World Factbook; NEW YORK TIMES; ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA online; NEWSWEEK; JURIST; THE NEW YORKER; BBC; TURKEY UNVEILED: A HISTORY OF MODERN TURKEY by Nicole and Hugh Pope.

by Christopher Caldwell

Excerpted by permission of THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, ©2005.

On a warm Saturday night, beneath the cable car that runs up into the mountains from a quiet neighborhood in the historic Ottoman city of Bursa, the Teleferik Family Tea Garden is mobbed. Whole families from the farthest reaches of Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey, are crowded around tables in front of glasses of tea, watching a pair of guys with a keyboard sing arabesques and rock songs in Kurdish. The families have arrived in the past few years, a cashier explains, from Tunceli, a town at the epicenter of the terrorist campaign against the Turkish state that Kurdish guerrillas waged from 1984 to 1999. Most of the young women wear the loose-fitting headscarves traditional in Turkey; others, the more elaborate and constraining ones that are a mark of newer currents in political Islam. Still others are on the dance floor, uncovered, bare-armed, dancing in an implausibly immodest way they have probably seen on videos. None of the boys are far enough removed from village mores to dare join them. Watching the dancers impassively, their mothers, in headscarves and long rain jackets despite the heat, smoke cigarettes and chatter on cellphones

Modern Turkish women dress in styles from the East and the West. Credit: Stanton R. Winter

This jostling together of European fads, age-old rural folkways and Islamic fervor has been a fact of Turkish life for a long time, especially in big provincial cities like Bursa. Imitating Europe was already an Ottoman project when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic in 1923. But thereafter, the Europeanization of its citizens became the state’s mission, its raison d’tre even. This meant modernizing industry, mores and the Turkish language. Mostly it meant pushing Islam out of the public square. There were bans on headscarves in university classes and at state jobs. There were government-trained imams who gave government-issued sermons on Fridays. Elites tended to approve Ataturk’s vision; when they didn’t, a huge standing army could be summoned to defend it.

The Cultural Contradictions of Kemalism

Since the end of the cold war, the lid has come off Turkish life. Turkey’s population is growing by nearly a million people a year, even as emigration to Europe continues. Suat Kiniklioglu, who heads the Turkish office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, says, “Urban Turkey is being overrun by the countryside.” Take Bursa. In the 1980s, the city had fewer than a million people. Now it is at 1.5 million and swelling daily with newcomers from both the surrounding villages and places like Tunceli. The western edge of Bursa is as modern and European as any place in Turkey, with malls, trimmed lawns, “Beware of Dog” signs and the Renault and Fiat plants that are the backbone of the country’s auto industry. But some of the newer apartment blocks near the Teleferik Family Tea Garden are home to people who work for village-level wages, practice a village-level piety and give their votes to the three-year-old Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party.

Pious Muslims have begun to establish successful international businesses. Credit: Jon Alper

Maybe “Islamist” is a simplistic way of putting it, but maybe not. What Erdogan has sought to do since his party came to power in 2002 is to resolve some of the cultural contradictions of Ataturk’s republic. The Turkish state has always tried to imitate the ways of Western democracies, but without giving the country’s Muslim middle and lower-middle classes much voice in the matter. Turkey’s masses are pious even by the standards of the Islamic world, though their piety has mostly been a private one, bearing scant resemblance to the authoritarian fundamentalism of the Saudi Wahhabis or the Iranian Khomeneiites. For almost all of the last century, they were too distant, too poor and too disorganized to demand a hearing. Yet whenever society has reclaimed a bit of power or freedom from the Turkish state, it has done so in the name of Islam or, at the very least, of traditional Turkish values. In a Turkish context, more democracy generally means more Islam.

Freedom and the Headscarf

Since Sept. 11, the West’s biggest question about Turkey has been whether it forms part of the problem of an increasingly militant Islam or part of the solution. The E.U.’s rationale for welcoming Turkey into its councils and its economic sphere used to be a matter of “strategic rent,” compensation for its position at a crossroads of continents and military blocs. Today, says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Bilgi University, what Europe sees in Turkey is “an example that a modern, secular democratic state and capitalist society is compatible with a Muslim population.” Europe has come to value Turkey not just for where it is but for what it is.

About a third of the Justice and Development Party’s support comes from liberals who joined it in hopes that Erdogan’s commitment to the European project would bring them visa-free travel, investment opportunities or equality for women. It is an open question which part of Erdogan’s coalition is the dog and which the tail. He has shown signs of wanting to coax hard-line Islamists into the modernizing consensus. He has also shown signs of using Europe as a means to weaken the army to the point where he can pursue untrammeled an Islamist agenda of the sort he espoused a decade or two ago.

Two women working in Tekbir, Turkey’s largest Islamic-style clothing chain. Credit: Stanton R. Winter

One of Erdogan’s notorious pronouncements during his term as Istanbul mayor was that democracy was like a streetcar: “You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.” In the old days, he was one of those Islamist politicians who would not shake a woman’s hand. Turkey’s secular order still poses problems in his personal life – there have been state functions that his headscarf-wearing wife could not attend. And even as he has sought to Europeanize Turkey’s political structures, he has lost few opportunities to Islamicize its social ones. Weeks before his visit to Brussels last December to make the final push for the start of Turkey’s accession talks, he tried to change Turkish law to criminalize adultery. The A.K.P. has all but destroyed Turkey’s fledgling wine industry with punitive taxes. And Erdogan has decriminalized “clandestine” Koran courses, even though they have been a meeting place for radicals of the Iran-backed Turkish Hezbollah movement.

Erdogan harps on the need for religious freedom — American-style religious freedom. Last year he explained to a German newspaper that secularism as the French understand it (i.e., as a state ideology) was not the Turkish way. “We Turks,” he explained, “are closer to the Anglo-Saxon understanding of secularism” (i.e., as religious freedom). As regards the government, this assertion is preposterous: the Turkish system was not just inspired by, but copied from, the French. As regards the public, he is probably right. The increasing visibility of religion in Turkey has many of the same sources that it does in the United States. In a recent Pew poll that asked why Islam’s role is increasing, the largest reason cited (by more than a third of Turks) was the “growing immorality in our society.”

Young Turkish women walking in a commercial center. Credit: Stanton R. Winter

Erdogan opposes abortion and contraception, both of which are legal. But Turkey’s hot-button issues of religion and state concern whether university women and civil servants should be permitted to wear the headscarf and whether young men who attend religious schools should be allowed to transfer their credentials to nonreligious programs. These pit the parliamentarians of Erdogan’s party against the Higher Education Council, which appoints rectors who can veto laws that threaten universities’ secular orientation. The council was established by the military government in 1980, when radical leftist and radical rightist students were murdering one another by the literal thousands. But over time, public patience with such supervision erodes. “Suppose the scarf is a political symbol against the secular republic,” says Nazli Ilicak, a newspaper owner and columnist and an ally of Erdogan since before his A.K.P. days. “There is still no harm in their going to university. If you are against religion, let them go! They’ll get more emancipated and have their own jobs.”

More and more Turks share Ilicak’s view that Islam and its symbols are compatible with modernity, are perhaps even a sign of modernity: a woman who aroused no comment on a goat path migrates to a city and stands out when she takes a computer class or sits in Starbucks. “It’s not that people are more religious,” says Can Paker, a businessman and analyst at Tesev, an Istanbul policy center. “It’s that they are more free.” And free, upwardly mobile women may choose to wear the veil for a variety of reasons. It can be a sign of solidarity with the family or small town left behind. It can be a marker of membership in a new rising elite. It can be simply chic. After all, the prime minister’s wife wears one.

Christopher Caldwell, a contributing writer for THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, is writing a book about immigration, Islam, and Europe.

CIA World Factbook — Turkey
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tu.html
The current assessment of of Turkey’s geography, economy, politics and culture from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Women attending prayer at a local mosque. Credit: Jon Alpert

U.S. Government Country Studies — Turkey
http://countrystudies.us/turkey/
Includes sections on E.U. accession, relations with the United States, Turkish government and policy, and the role of Islam in state and society.

Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.
http://www.turkishembassy.org/
Web site of the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Washington, D.C.

Turkish Embassy in London, England
http://www.turkishembassylondon.org/
Web site of the Turkish Embassy in London, England.

Republic of Turkey — Ministry of Foreign Affairs
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/mfa
Contains consular information, diplomatic archives, and detailed summaries of Turkey’s foreign policy stances.

Washburn University School of Law — Turkey
http://www.washlaw.edu/forint/asia/turkey.html
A collection of legal resources regarding Turkey, with links to the Turkish Constitution, Turkish law firms and law schools, and other legal Web sites.

BBC NEWS — Turkey Quiz
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4305656.stm
Test your knowledge of Turkey.

Business and Economy

Turkish — U.S. Business Council
http://www.turkey-now.org/Default.aspx
Includes information on economic relations between Turkey and the United States, the economic climate, and current economic developments in Turkey, as well as historical background on Turkey as a business and trading center.

THE ECONOMIST — Turkey Country Profile
http://www.economist.com/countries/Turkey/
Includes a country profile and links to recent ECONOMIST articles about Turkey.

MUSIAD
http://www.musiad.org.tr/english/about/identity.asp
Founded in 1990, MUSIAD is a partnership of mostly Muslim Turkish businessmen working to further goals of economic, scientific, and technologic development in Turkey.

Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD)
http://www.tusiad.us/
Founded in 1971, the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) is an independent, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting public welfare through private enterprise.

Heritage Foundation
http://www.heritage.org/Research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Turkey
The Heritage Foundation’s assessment of Turkey’s economy in its 2006 Index of Economic Freedom.

International Monetary Fund
http://www.imf.org/external/country/TUR/index.htm
A listing of all recent news releases regarding Turkey’s dealings with the IMF.

Turkey and the European Union

Euractiv
http://www.euractiv.com/en//eu-turkey-relations/article-129678
A Web site on Turkey’s bid for membership in the European Union from Euractiv, an independent web media portal to E.U. policies and developments. The site includes extensive information on the history, developments, and issues faced pertaining to Turkey’s candidacy for E.U. membership as well as links to governmental, media, and private organizations playing a role in negotiations for Turkish accession.

Islam

FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/portraits/turkey.html
Web site for FRONTLINE program “Muslims,” which includes a portrait of Muslim women in Turkey. The Turkey section discusses the current debate over the wearing of headscarves in public spaces in Turkey. The site includes video conversations with three women in Turkey, an essay by a Turkish female scholar, background information on the debate, and related web links.

BBC World Service: Religions of the World: Islam
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/world_religions/islam.shtml
Web site about Islam from BBC World Religions. Site features include the history of Islam, Islam as it is practiced in different regions, and a section on contemporary Islam, including its practice in Turkey.

Traveling Museum Exhibit — “Urban Islam”
http://www.urbanislam.ch/www_en/home.html
Originally created in the Netherlands, this exhibit is now on display in Basel, Switzerland. Through the stories of five young people around the world (including a young teacher from Istanbul, Turkey), the exhibit explores the daily lives, decisions, and challenges faced by young Muslims around the world.

The Web site features photos, music, and other multimedia to illustrate the lives of each character in the exhibit. There is also an explanatory section on Islam.

Turkish Culture

Turkish Cultural Foundation
http://www.turkishculture.org/index.php
The Web site of the Turkish Cultural Foundation, which seeks to preserve and promote Turkish culture in Turkey and abroad. Features articles, photos, and other detailed information about a range of cultural topics in Turkey, including sections on architecture, music, philosophy, and the history of Turkey.