Expect a hip Ottoman world revival this Saturday when Alexandra Ivanoff lets her designs loose on the Beyoğlu runway in all their sexy refinement
This classically trained mezzo-soprano who performed solo for packed houses from
Saturday night she will take part in the runway fashion show as part of Istanbul Street Style’s Şahane extravaganza party in Beyoğlu, joining a line-up of
Behind the curtain, the costumes’ history, fabric and detail had always caught her fancy. After a career on Broadway and off-Broadway, and as an arranger, teacher, producer and publicist, she started from scratch in a new craft: designing clothes. Inspired by Ottoman design and a hot entrepreneurial stage, she set out for
After five seasons with the chorus of the San Francisco Opera, she enrolled in a design school in
In fall 2007, she was one of a handful of designers chosen to participate in the Levi’s Design Challenge, a competition to create haute couture using three meters of Levi’s denim. The only non-Turk participating in the competition, Ivanoff’s kaftan – an Ottoman man’s robe – was displayed in the Levi’s store on Istiklal Caddesi. The same gown caught the eye of famous Turkish rock singer Haluk Levent, who tried it on and expressed interest in outfitting his band in her designs.
Ivanoff brings her background and life experience to fashion performance, said Dano Alexander, who runs Istanbul Street Style, a fashion collective that convenes performance-style fashion shows like the one this Saturday night in Beyoğlu. Her work shows her talent and her passion, he said. “I’m a big fan. Alexandra will seek out an old piece of fabric from
“I want to focus on clothing that is original, compelling and artistic but yet completely comfortable for modern life.” Ivanoff said, adding that she is thrilled to be in the company of Turkish designers. “My stuff is perhaps a bit different from theirs, in that it draws on fashion’s past in a more obvious way.”
Suiting next season’s fly-by-night tastes is not part of Ivanoff’s vision. With experience in an
The secret’s in the cleavage
Ivanoff’s Ottoman-style clothing brings to life women of the harem with two-piece skirts generously sliced up the side seam, lined with beads or interesting fabric.
Her strongest inspirations these days are the paintings of the ladies of the harem and the sultans’ courts in paintings (circa 1750) by Levni and Buhara in
Ivanoff’s designs will appear in the first runway show at 11:30 p.m. The second runway is at 12:30 p.m. For more information on Alexandra Ivanoff, visit www.historicalvogue.com
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Pele objects to defensive walls and throw-ins, arguing that rules should allow for more dynamism in the game. He demonstrated for the Turkish Daily News on Thursday what it is like to beat player after player only to meet them again in front of the goal
After giving a speech highlighting “team play in business” and the “luck of success,” Pele's character emerged when he sat down with writer and columnist Ece Temelkuran for an interview attended by some 2,000 people Thursday evening. He was the featured guest of Retail Days 2007 at the Lutfi Kırdar Congress and
Pele objects to the football rule allowing defenders to create a wall in front of free kicks and believes a punt, which he promptly demonstrated by kicking a ball into the audience Thursday night, should replace the throw-in. “I am an emotional man; I cry when I get emotional. I can't help it,” he said, answering a question moments later about his last match.
At 67 Pele might not exhibit the flair of his acrobatic prime, but is full of energetic goodwill and playful recollections. The legendary Brazilian football star was discovered when he was 11 and has been in demand ever since. He still speaks with nuance of his childhood in the slums of
A champion of trying to bring more goals and action to the sport, Pele was largely responsible for changing FIFA's rules regarding offsides and passing back to the goalkeeper to favor the attacking game.
“Imagine this: I take the ball from my own 18 yard box and I beat that guy and beat this guy and that guy and I make it to the other 18 yard box.” Pele was demonstrating now, fit and passionate about what he feels is an injustice in the game. “A guy fouls me. The referee blows the whistle for a free kick. All the guys I had just passed are now in front of me again. Is that fair?” he said, but as though a wall had stood between him and a goal that morning.
His opinions of players in the game today and yesterday were equally candid. He said Ziko was a more complete player than Diego Maradona. Pele, who has often been referred to simply as “God,” named Johann Cruyff “the best player of all time.” The best player in the game until five years ago was Zidane; since then it has been Ronaldinho, Pele said.
“Today players are losing their loyalty because they have a relationship with the press and they take a lot of money. They are a little different from [our generation],” he said. On the other hand, today's star football player is part of a more team-oriented game, he said, adding, “The team's trainer educates players like athletes to build a team game.”
Will Pele have a successor? “It's very difficult to have a new Pele because my parents closed the shop,” he said, responding to this question. He laughed, recalling that a Brazilian journalist told Pele his 1000th goal, which was a penalty, had to be the game's most dramatic call because God had wanted to make sure he saw it clearly himself.
Pele's father, a formidable football player in his time, once revealed his secret of success to his son. “Football was a talent that God gave him, and that success comes with good education and respect for people. ‘If you do this, nobody can hold you back,'” he said, recalling his father's words. Pele said he repeats these words to kids he sees.
During the conference his No. 10 Brazilian national team jersey was auctioned for YTL 84,000, which will be donated to schools in villages throughout
Pele will continue to educate kids and has no plans to be a football manager or a president, he said, adding, “All my life I've been a football player. I'm a perfectionist. After all that time playing football, it isn't so easy to be on the other side of it. And the other reason is that when there's a problem, the first person to be hung is the trainer."
Your TDN correspondent saw Pele play when her football team of 6-year-olds watched his team the New York Cosmos play the Atlanta Chiefs. He was 39. No longer as fast as the man who had performed black and white feats of brilliance, he was still larger than life. He always will be.
By KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News
Faces light up around the classroom when Lokum’s character explains that Little Red Riding Hood actually comes from Germany. The hood was described as part of her coat, lest the children thought she was wearing Islamic head cover
Lokum, the new muse on Turkey's EU accession train, crossed the wild waters of the Danube and guided wide-eyed Turkish schoolchildren through German and French fairytales on Tuesday, braving his charge with candor. This storybook character is helping the first Turkish generation likely to enter the European Union understand what it is to be both culturally distinct and European.
In a little more than a decade these beaming faces in an elementary classroom in the eastern Mediterranean province of Mersin will come of age as the EU's newest members, privileged partnership aside. The literary campaign was implemented in Mersin but will soon spread throughout the country, said Project Manager Oya Uysal from the Mersin Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MTSO).
Diplomats working on both sides of the current cauldron hope these kids will soon help turn the wheels of the EU, and in the meantime, boost Turkey's membership chances. The European Commission Delegation (ECD) spent more than a year preparing the initiative that began last February with a traveling puppet show, starring the narrating hero personifying the traditional “Turkish delight” sweet, called “lokum”.
Implemented by a network of local EU information bureaus in Turkey, the project has already provided 10,000 students ages 7 to 11 with storybooks – in rural areas and villages primarily. The organizers of the project want to build an intercultural base in these harder-to-reach areas especially and inform kids about the membership process. After a day of distributing books at Mersin's Viranşehir Muhittin Develi Elementary School, Uysal said the stories about EU member countries and Turkey, puppet shows, puzzles and illustrations aim to reach thousands of children in Mersin and tens of thousands of children and their families in other cities.
“Promotion of the EU accession bid through these books is part of this project,” Uysal said. “Our goal here is also to contribute to the EU's survival. Living all together is the key to not creating a separate race of people.”
All in the family
The 20-page book “Lokum'la Avrupa'ya,” which means “To Europe with Lokum,” written by Sibel Sonmaz, tells the story of the establishment and structure of the EU, founded by Robert Schumann in May 9, 1950. “We wanted the EU to be permanent in children's minds,” Sonmaz told the Turkish Daily News. She and her team worked for three months on the book combining riddles and stories to make the abstract values of the EU more accessible to children's understanding. The book emphasizes peace, solidarity, equality, being a family and the removal of boundaries as the founding values of the EU. The ECD to Turkey determined the book's content.
Another book titled “Europe in 12 Lessons” written by Pascal Fontaine, professor at the Political Studies Institute in Paris, includes questions and answers to explain what the EU is all about. “Tales from Europe” is a third book consisting of tales from Germany, Austria, Estonia, France, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland and Turkey, in addition to general information about countries such as monetary units, capitals, populations and membership dates.
“We have so [many] different foods, music, traditions and politicians but we like to see ourselves as unique,” said Marc Pierini, the head of the European Commission Delegation to Turkey, told children in Istanbul last year during the opening show of the project. The project is a means to show children the opportunities that the EU represents for Turkey and also what Turkey represents for the EU, Martin Dawson, the political counselor of the ECD to Turkey told the TDN.
“We do not want to draw children into legal issues,” said Dawson, emphasizing that Turkish children represent the future of both Turkey and the EU.
Defined by his young followers as “fun, courageous and wise,” it is clear children enjoy Lokum's unique voice in the book and when his puppet show hits the road. Covering thousands of miles, his bandwagon is already kicking up quite a bit of dust.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
A Palestinian father and son have opened a thriving restaurant in Istanbul featuring a Middle Eastern dish that has already spread to Europe and the United States while somehow evading Turkey: the falafel. Their shop in the heart of Taksim manages to offer both home-style table service as well as a take-away counter.
“So many things go into falafel and if one thing goes wrong, it's ruined,” Azzam Alherbawi told the Turkish Daily News on Tuesday. The same can be said for business, and after six months they seem to have found the right mixture on both fronts. Alherbawi, 55, a former elementary geography teacher from Hebron in the Palestinian West Bank has traveled to more than 25 countries as an importer. It struck him as a business opportunity that Turkey is virgin territory for the falafel. “I proposed to my son that I help him open a shop,” he said. Now in his fifth year studying information management at Istanbul University, his son Yousef studies all day and keeps the shop open past midnight.
In a corner of Felafel House two men tucked into plates of falafel, salads, soup and hummus. Brothers Ahmed and Anas Hajihamdou from Aleppo, Syria, who have worked in Turkey for several years, said that they come to the restaurant to be near a familiar kitchen and hear a little Arabic. “We come sometimes when we want to taste something like from home,” Ahmed said. Azzam pointed out that their main ingredients – lentils, fava and garbanzo beans – contain more protein than meat and have no trace of hormones. Falafel is a healthy and cheap anomaly in a Turkish fast food scene dominated by the ever-rotating kebab. The golden fried falafel is made from a blend of garbanzo beans, parsley and spices. Another popular item at Felafel House is ful, which is a bean stew made of fava beans, garlic, lemon and other undisclosed essentials. It takes hours of attention for Azzam to prepare ful correctly and less than a minute for many customers to empty it from handmade ceramic bowls.
Sometimes, food has a language of its own. Over the grinding sound of the blender whipping garbanzos into hummus, an attractive young woman sat down at a table for one. Soon she was negotiating with Azzam about the amount of garlic she wanted in her ful, a conversation he would have with several customers during the evening. “I come from Lebanon so I know ful,” she said, “but this is something special.” Whispering in a near-conspiratorial tone, Azzam used gestures and anecdotes to avoid giving up just what makes the recipe so special. “Every set of hands makes a different bowl of ful,” he said grinning like a Cheshire cat. Turks are not known to stray far from their own culinary tastes and carnivorous ways. With succulent Turkish-style chicken kebabs and meatballs rounding out the menu however, Yousef said the vast majority of Turkish patrons come mainly for the falafel and ful. “Why don't we have this here?” Turks often ask Yousef upon discovering the elusive simplicity of the Falafel House speciality. Others come for Azamm's spin on a Turkish classic, lentil-based soup called mercimek.
After confessing to Azzam that he had never tried falafel before, the Turkish first-timer sipped his tea and swore he was not hungry. Ten minutes later he was waiting for specially spiced coffee after quietly devouring dishes of falafel, ful, hummus and salad. “You smoke one cigarette with this coffee and you won't forget the taste for the rest of your life,” Azzam said. He rocked his head back and forth laughing in response to an inquiry about what gives the coffee that flood-your-senses kick. Another Hebron family secret is secure, but the cardamom was too proud to hide.
Yousef has big plans. During 2007, he and his father plan to open another falafel restaurant. “When I decide to do something, I do it,” said Yousef, whose dream is to run a hospital for the poor one day. Asked if he and his father were partners, the shop's young proprietor looked his father's way. A man in motion, Azzam moves elegantly and holds several conversations at once, making people feel as though they are his sole focus. Gliding past his son, he said, “Everyone wants their children to do better than themselves.”
As she pointed to pickles, peppers and sauces for her sandwich, customer Ahlam Al Borno, who was raised in Gaza City, said that Palestinians are proud of their falafel. Holding her YTL 3 sandwich delicately between her gold ringed fingers, her face reddened as she explained that she had not been able to return to Gaza since the war in 1967 that caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes behind.
“We dissolve as we watch our land dying on television,” said Al Borno, a former U.S. Embassy official in Saudi Arabia. “Turkey is friendly to Palestinians,” Al Borno said. “Countries like Egypt and Syria don't allow us to stay in their countries but Turkish authorities make the paperwork easy.”
Felafel House is located on Şehit Muhtar Cad, No: 19/1 A. The street is across Taksim Square from Istiklal Cad., past Yapi Kredi Bank and 100 meters on the left.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Amid much nuclear and gas wrangling recently, the cultural exchange between
Kabil described Iranian cinema as a treasure that Turkish audiences have not had the opportunity to enjoy during a meeting attended by Iranian Deputy Culture Minister for Cinematic Affairs Mohammadreza Jafari-Jelveh and Iranian independent film center director Mohammad Afarideh. “I hope Iranian films are screened widely and regularly in Turkish movie theaters with the help of Iranian cinematic officials and Turkish cinema owners,” said Kabil.
Statistics and theater records, however, illuminate a different image of the big screen in
Turkish film magazine Subtitle's editor-in-chief, Fırat Yücel told the Turkish Daily News that compared to other countries the possibility for Iranian films to achieve small success is larger than in many European countries. “But the small film distributors must be brave enough to put up the money to bring the productions here,” he said. You now can see foreign films in
Film critic and
During the last two decades, Iranian filmmakers have earned worldwide respect and a substantial festival following. In their poetic portraits of rural and city life, movie reviewers hail the films for tackling subversive themes of oppression with bravery and elegance. Among dozens of male and female directors, internationally acclaimed Iranian film directors Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi are popular in art house cinemas worldwide.
In a turn of fate worthy of Turkish cinema, the U.S. Consulate General granted a visa on Friday to a lead actor in Turkey's Oscar film entry -- after rejecting his application last week -- just in time for the crew of the homegrown comedy to head to Hollywood to promote its Academy Award bid. As of yesterday morning, however, the picture was not as hopeful after the consulate's initial visa denial had prompted the film's director to boycott the pre-Academy Award events.
Describing himself as press-shy, actor Turan Özdemir told the Turkish Daily News on Friday that he hasn't spoken to the press on this matter even though some fabricated comments were attributed to him in Turkish newspaper accounts this week.
As soon as the consulate in Istanbul received the invitation from the film's U.S. affiliation on Thursday, he said, they sent Özdemir's passport and visa to him. Along with director Yuksel Aksu, producer Elif Dağdeviren and the film's cinematographer, Özdemir will fly to Los Angeles on Monday to attend a week of promotional interviews ahead of the Jan. 24 nominations announcement. He said he didn't blame the U.S. Consulate General for the visa holdup.
“Ice Cream, I Scream” (Dondurma Gaymak), Turkey's “best foreign film” Oscar entry opened in theaters in Turkey and 50 European cities on Nov. 24. In the film Özdemir plays Ali, an ice cream vendor fighting to survive among big-name ice cream brands.
Reacting to the denied visa, director Aksu said it would not be right to go to the United States without Özdemir. “I won't go if my top actor cannot go to the United States.,” he told Sabah earlier this week. “The movie was a cooperation since the day we began working.” Özdemir said he was pleased with Aksu's decision not to go without him.
Aksu's patience has played its own role in the film, from character Ali's attempts to thrive despite competition from big companies to the director's own willful independence. According to the director's friend and Turkish film industry expert Ahmet Buyancioğlu, Aksu chose to forgo backing from bigger production companies because they insisted he use professional actors. For 10 years he withstood the pressure and made the film his way in the end, he said. A modest production, Aksu made the film for YTL 250,000. Özdemir was the only professional actor on the set and has spent his career in the theater. “It gives the film another dimension,” Buyancioğlu said.
Özdemir, who is from Izmir, spent one-and-half months living the life -- and dressing the part -- of a bike-peddling ice cream vendor in the southwestern Turkish town of Muğla. He decided to go the method-acting route because he believes actors can be more successful as theater players. He had town residents fooled. “They didn't think I was a professional actor,” he said. “I got so used to the town, people thought I was from Muğla.”
Özdemir said he hoped the movie would make the list of five Oscar nominees. “With this movie we've proven, and hopefully will prove again as nominees, that Turks can be successful in every aspect of filmmaking,” he said.
The “Ice Scream” clan will first meet with the international press at a reception for the film in Palm Springs, California, next Friday. The film's co-producer Dağdeviren said it would not have been possible to promote the film without its leading actor. “I've booked numerous appointments with newspapers, magazines and television stations in Los Angeles.” The party at the Turkish Consulate General in honor of the film's cast and crew as well as the interviews will continue as scheduled.
Culture Ministry spokesman Tayfun Yahşi, a fan of the fılm, said he was happy to have read so many enthusiastic reviews of the film by Turkish movie critics before it was selected as Turkey's Oscar entry. “This is a very funny film,” said Buyancioğlu, who is also Turkey's representative to Eurimages, a program of the European Council to finance European film co-productions. It also fits the character of family films popular in Turkey's thriving domestic film industry, he added.
During the weeks and months leading up to the Oscar nominations announcement on Jan. 23, films push, pull and promote with all of their resources for a shot at the golden statue. In the already-hyped Hollywood environment amplified by the Academy Awards each year, foreign films in particular must make a special effort to generate interest.
American visa problems have plagued others attempting to share their film craft in the United States, especially since visa approvals were tightened after 9/11. Internationally acclaimed Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami was denied a visa to enter the United States in 2002, after applying in response to an invitation to attend the screening of his film at the New York Film Festival. Another renowned Iranian film director, Jafar Panahi, was manhandled and sent home in chains by U.S. immigration officials during a stopover in New York City while en route from Hong Kong to film festivals in South America in April 2001.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News
The prime minister's highly anticipated run for the presidency in May should whip up a fair amount of economic instability in 2007. Structural reforms designed to advance finance, employment and healthcare are in a holding pattern until election-year risks subside and the European Union bid puts wind back in their sails.
Given the uncertainties, analysts agree that 2007 is likely to be a year filled with political imbalance and economic instability, the real effects of which will not be felt until 2008. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a chance to offer some consistency in government by winning control of Parliament for another five years, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's presidential potential throws the party's alignment into question. His approval rating has held at six points higher than that of his party, and no one has emerged from any side to challenge the charisma he possesses. But the question is for the prime minister alone: Will he take on a maverick role that could win his party constitutional clout but risk the country's political and economic stability?
Turkey's presidency, currently and historically, has served to balance the country's Muslim roots with its laic foundation, which aimed to protect the state from religious interference. At the heart of the election debate is a potential power shift on matters of state from the hands of Kemalists, the secular protectors of the republic, toward the Islamists. According to the Constitution's secular law, the prime minister's wife, Emine Erdoğan, a devout Muslim like her husband, is not allowed to enter the presidential palace in Çankaya because she wears an Islamic-style headscarf.
If elected president, the prime minister's deeply Islamist roots and keenness for privatization and foreign business in Turkey would run counter to a long tradition of resistance to religious involvement or foreign investment in the state. Perhaps this is his aim. Turkey's president is the head of the powerful National Security Council (MGK) consisting of generals and government officials. He also has the power to veto bills passed in Parliament or send them to the Constitutional Court for review. The seven-year presidential term also includes influential appointments and confirmations of high-ranking officials and university rectors.
Recent comments by top AKP officials reveal that Erdoğan will probably announce his candidacy for the presidency on April 15. Soli Özel, a political science professor at Bilgi University, said the prime minister's run for the presidency would probably weaken his party and make things more difficult in the country. He said that if Erdoğan gains the presidency and the AKP fails to win a majority in November's general elections, tensions between parties could tie up a coalition-style Parliament and increase efforts to isolate presidential powers. “Is it really worth it to him to be a symbolic president? We'll have to wait and see,” Özel said.
With a more positive outlook, he said, “If the Parliament is dominated by one party, most likely the AKP, and we have a president who is less Islamic -- one whose wife is not covered -- the prospect for a peaceful, productive five years is quite likely.”
Anchors away on reform
If Erdoğan runs for president, market expectations are likely to change, said Gazi Erçel, former governor of Turkey's Central Bank. “The quarrel over the appropriateness of his candidacy has the potential to also destabilize the military, nongovernmental organizations and the marketplace,” he said.
Finding a suitable candidate, Erçel said, “depends on the willingness of the AKP and Erdoğan to compromise with the opposition party and the public, of course.” Absent such an unusual display of political cooperation, tensions are likely to grow and negatively affect the marketplace, he said. The foreign investment flow would slow down because foreign investors do not like increased risk premium and interest rates, Erçel said. This, in turn, would affect the budget, the World Bank reform strategy and EU negotiations.
The November general elections will be much more important for the marketplace, which needs a strong prime minister and Parliament backing to thrive. If three or four parties gain power in the Parliament and form a coalition there could be troubling instability as there was in the 1990s.
2008 will be a more significant year because reforms that support the International Monetary Fund (IMF) strategy, EU conditions and the general economic program will be reshaped after the general election. In the meantime Erçel said that he hoped economic policies would be “redesigned in parallel with economic and political reforms that are already under way.”
World conditions such as the war in Iraq and the weakening U.S. economy will resonate in Turkey early in the year, when the market will already be jittery. The main economic risks to Turkey are the currency account deficit and the foreign exchange regime.
The momentum of privatization in Turkey will continue to offer relief to the government coffers as the income from sale of plants, factories and ports in the next two years could top $9 billion. Since 2005, privatizations have netted the government $20.7 billion. However, privatization in the health and education sector creates socio-economic gaps in inequality and poverty, Haluk Levent, associate economics professor at Galatasaray University told the TDN. “Instead of creating better standards for all, the government has tended toward privatization of the education and health systems.”
Meanwhile the working poor are growing in number: 35 percent of the workforce is stuck with no health care or retirement savings in Turkey's growing underbelly -- unregistered labor.
Foreign relations close to home
Earlier this month, EU foreign ministers in Brussels agreed not to open Turkey's accession talks in eight of the 35 policy areas candidates must complete prior to accession. This move was a form of punishment for Ankara's refusal to open its ports and airports to EU member Greek Cyprus, despite a customs union accord previously signed by Ankara. Ankara reiterated its stance regarding the United Nations as the sole place for a comprehensive solution to the Cyprus issue.
The EU shift has caused Turkey to diversify its foreign relations. There has been a recent push to learn Arabic at the Foreign Ministry. Relations are being expanded with Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.
On Iraq, the maneuvering space is small for Turkey's leaders because public opinion has been so provoked by the war that any cooperation with the United States would not be popular, said Nigar Göksel, editor of the Turkish Politics Quarterly. An advisor to the Prime Minister underlined this delicate matter in Turkish-U.S. diplomacy. Early on in the Iraq war, when Turkey advised the Allied Forces “not to exclude the Sunnis,” Turkey was accused of being part of a Sunni axis, said top advisor on international affairs to Erdoğan, Ahmet Davudoğlu, on CNN Türk on Thursday. “Now American analysts say that it was a mistake,” he explained.
The advisor praised the Iraq Study Group's report, released last month. “We've been making similar warnings about the situation in Iraq and Lebanon, and all of our predictions turned out to be true,” he said. “We look at the world through an Ankara perspective, not any other foreign capital.”
On any given night in Turkish homes and taverns, people gather around tables subtly dominated by tall glasses of a clear alcohol that fuels conversations, revelations and a huge Turkish market -- soon to open to the Far East by way of a new cultural concoction: rakı and green tea.
Mey Beverages announced last week that it would infuse rakı, the Turkish national alcohol, with green tea in an effort to increase sales in countries such as China, India and South Korea. "We will make rakı with green tea and try this out in the Far East,” said Galip Yorgancıoğlu, chairman of Mey's executive board. “China, India and Korea are important markets.”
Mey has offered 13 new rakı products since the Turkish State Monopolies (TEKEL) was privatized in 2004. Mey plans to present more new beverages this year. Now exporting to 30 countries, Yorgancıoğlu said that foreign sales account for 8 percent of all production. “We export 3 million liters to the United States, South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Belize and others.''
A U.S. private equity firm, Texas Pacific, bought 90 percent of the Turkish rakı maker Mey for $900 million in June from the consortium. Mey is Turkey's leading producer of rakı and other spirits with an approximate 80 percent market share in rakı. The company is also one of the largest producers of wine in Turkey.
Artun Ünsal, a Galatasaray University professor of political science and Turkish wine gourmand, told the Turkish Daily News that the export idea illustrated that post modernism is about freedom of choices and how best to market them. Like many Turkish people, he characterized the dominance of rakı in Turkey as a way of life, adding that its cultural significance is difficult to imagine anywhere else. “Imagine one-and-a-half billion Chinese people drinking rakı and arguing with one another as we do,” Ünsal said.
Around the country, one can sense the rakı environment anywhere the scent of grilled meat emanates from kebab houses or vivacious conversations spill over plates of fish and onto sidewalks. The favorite companion to white cheese and melon or small plates of olive oil-based food called mezes, rakı is best patiently sipped after mixing it with cool water in equal parts.
Historians write that Christians first manufactured rakı some three centuries ago. After the republic was founded, secularism eased Islamic restrictions on drinking alcohol in Turkey. Turks began producing it independently until the state took over as sole producer in the 1930s. In 2004, Mey Beverages, the alcoholic drinks arm of the state alcohol and tobacco company Tekel, was privatized and sold to a consortium. Since then dozens of companies have offered the market their own taste of the drink Turks affectionately call “lion's milk.”
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL-Turkish Daily News
After waiting nearly half a century for better health care, the Turkish people found out this week that they likely will sweat it out another year before benefiting from new health reforms. On Monday Turkey's constitutional court cancelled the law, two weeks before it was to go into effect on January 1.
Every Turkish government since 1963 has declared universal health insurance as a top priority, but none have made it happen. After taking office in 2002, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) issued an urgent action plan to streamline health insurance by unifying the three social security organizations that serve the workforce. This time more is at stake than the health of the people. This time, international banking agreements and national elections up the ante for this government.
Analysts are speculating that the government will postpone until 2008 the highly anticipated health reform law that would merge health care coverage for workers, state employees and the unemployed under one roof. If the law is decided after national elections in 2007, they say, political motives will not jeopardize the plan to satisfy both the needs of the Turkish population and the politically unpopular demands of the International Monetary Fund and EU compliance. This year or next, the ruling government will have to wield considerable muscle and uncharacteristic cooperation if they plan to create a health care system that can walk the walk.
Legal push and pull
With the heat on Turkey to streamline the three social security institutions and raise the age of retirement, parliament passed a law to do just that earlier this year. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer sent the law back to parliament for discussion of its articles. Despite parliament again passing the law intact, Sezer then took it to the constitutional court, where it was struck down on Monday. The government is waiting on the court's reasoning to decide its next move. Court sources said they are expected to release the reasons for the decision before the weekend. The social security high advisory commission met Wednesday evening to discuss how to address the court's decision.
Legal analysts have speculated this week that the court's cancellation of the law is related to the part of the constitution that says state worker rights cannot be combined with that of other workers. Researcher Tarhan Erdem told the Turkish Daily News that in recent years the constitution has not responded to the country's need for flexibility. To date, Turkey's constitution has only changed when the military has forced governments out and rewritten it themselves. “But this time the people must debate the issues for themselves, ” Erdem said. He cited examples from the past two years when public administration and higher education reforms were similarly blocked by the rigidity of the constitution.
Mümtaz Soysal, a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and former Turkish foreign minister, told the TDN Wednesday that court spokesmen said the decision was based on a distinction the between public servants and other workers. The decision has shocked people, he said, because the court has not defended the basic principle of treating public servants and other citizen workers equally. “If social security aims to protect a country's citizens, no one should be making any status distinctions because all citizens must be equally protected,” he said.
Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TUSIAD) said this week that the constitutional court has made a decision that is grounded in discrimination. Sources of the court said that it is not important to define officials' rights under the one law or two laws, but that the officials' rights must differ from that of the worker. Referans reporter Erdam Sağlam wrote Friday that the court's response shows that the court accepts that it discriminates in favor of state officials. A possible solution dismissed by the court, Sağlam argued, is to write two different sets of laws for state officials and regular workers. Given the court's admitted partiality to public servants, establishing equal respect for all workers' by applying different laws no longer seems possible to Sağlam.
Gone is the world's most generous state pension plan, which allowed men to retire at 43 and women at 38 only a decade ago. The rapid informalization of labor resulted after the fall of organized labor and the subsequent rise of unregistered laborers such as migrant workers, women, children and foreigners. Turkey's “welfare” system is largely informal and relies on family, friends and community ties. These days, both the informal or social security systems safety nets have come unraveled due to shifting demographics, unemployment and an insurance scheme that does not provide for some 8 million farmers in the ailing agricultural sector.
Small business owners who keep the shop lights burning after retirement are concerned about because their contribution to social security would increase from 10 to 35 percent with the new law. A butcher in the Istanbul neighborhood of Beşiktaş Metin Özkök told the TDN Wednesday that with growing competition from chain supermarkets in the neighborhood, this increase will be the reason that forces him out of business. “I just hope if my family needs it someday, the system will be able to give us good doctors and medicine with all that money I've been paying.”
Turkish parliament, health organizations and big business share the government's aim of merging the health insurance programs. Turkish Doctors Union (TTB) Chairman Gencay Gursoy said that the law must be taken off the agenda in order to rewrite it “with the consensus of all segments of society, such as associations and citizen groups affected by the law.”
The government's goals for the health sector also include increasing local control of health matters and developing primary care that is based on family physicians and privatization of services. Gursoy said that health workers are not in favor of the law because that law would incorporate family doctors system into the general health insurance scheme. “There has not been any realistic preparation process for that system, he said.
Health care is financed by the government through the Ministry of Finance, social security institutions and out-of-pocket payments. Private health insurance has enormous potential to grow but currently covers roughly one percent of the population.
As the likely accession to the EU approaches, public organizations will be held to new standards, leading to more open and democratic participation. Such an overhaul is likely to bring about more equity, efficiency and effectiveness in the Turkish health care system, politicians and judges permitting.
Turkey is among the major routes for illegal immigrants from Asia and the Middle East trying to get to Europe but the story of a flourishing informal economy here paints a more complex and permissive picture for migrants.
Turkish immigration officers on Sunday detained 254 foreigners and Turkish citizens planning to immigrate illegally to Europe. The would-be migrants were found cramped in restaurant of a four-star seaside hotel in the southern resort town of Alanya where they had been kept for three days, said local government official Hulusi Doğan, who was quoted by the Anatolia press agency. Pending legal action, the group, which was bound for Germany via Italy by sea, was placed in a local basketball arena and given medical attention. Eleven people, including the manager of the hotel, have been detained according to Alanya police. The group included 50 Turkish citizens while the foreigners came from the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Bangladesh, Somalia and Sudan.
On Monday the United Nations Human Rights Commission marked International Migrant's Day by calling on the world to take measures on illegal human trafficking. At the same time they ask countries to recognize that the immigrants are contributing to their economies and that they must not be exploited. Since 1988, 5,742 people have died along the borders of Europe, according to Fortress Europe, an immigration rights group. Among them 1,844 are still missing at sea. During the last 11 years more than 600,000 people have been apprehended in Europe and returned to their countries.
From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Turkey received approximately 5,000–6,000 asylum applications a year, according to the Interior Ministry. Turkey does not officially accept non-European refugees following a ‘geographical reservation' declared in the 1951 Geneva Convention. It became a de facto situation that almost all asylum applications in the country are made by non-Europeans. Times have changed and Turkish authorities, together with the UN High Commission on Refugees Office in Ankara, have responded to the changing nationalities of asylum seekers. They have begun “accepting the applications and trying to secure re-settlement in countries outside Turkey for accepted non-European cases,” according to a report prepared for the OECD this month by Koç University migration researcher Ahmet İçduygu.
The report goes on to explain that some of these foreigners, referred to as irregular migrants, arrive legally with tourist visas, but often drift into illegality as they overstay their right of entry, or try to enter a third country without proper travel documents. In this ‘waiting' period, most go underground and work illegally.
By recent estimates, some 50,000–100,000 foreign workers are employed illegally each year in Turkey. Empirical data has shown that many of these foreigners are mistreated or forced into labor by Turkish officials, police, intermediaries and employers. Some in authority have also been known to confiscate their documents. While work opportunities have declined since Turkey was hit hard by the 2001 financial crisis, the law on Foreigners' Work Permits (2003) has liberalized work conditions for non-nationals and should pave the way for radical changes for migrant labor in Turkey, wrote Içduyguç.
There is no contesting the fact that the foreign contribution to the informal labor sector benefits the economy. For example, the industrial sector benefits when cheap migrant labor keeps production costs down, said Ahmet Öncü, Sabanci University Economics director.The Istanbul-based Helsinki Refugee Support Project, Özlem Dalkiran, said she has seen an increase in the number of applications approved by the Interior Ministry since they began providing legal advice to asylum applicants in 2004. Currently, of the clients they have from 34 countries, the majority comes from Somalia, Iran and the Sudan.
The faces of immigration in Turkey have changed dramatically in recent decades, consisting largely of transit migrants, clandestine laborers, asylum-seekers and refugees, who have begun to arrive in sizeable numbers. Generally these foreigners overstay their visas, cross the borders illegally or apply for asylum through Ministry of the Interior. If the asylum applications are in process, they are no longer considered illegal. During the last decade, the majority of migration to Turkey has come from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.From 1995 to the late 1990s the numbers of people trying to cross into Europe illegally increased. According to Içduygu's report, some 100,000 people were apprehended at the border in early 2000. Since then the number of apprehensions has dropped to 50,000.
Of course, said Içduygu, “the real volume is higher than these numbers.”Positioned at the corner of Europe, the flow of people coming through Turkey is inevitable. They are looking for a way into the continent to make a better life for themselves. Many cannot make it across the border or decide to stay in Turkey. The EU has expressed concerns about the rate of transit migration through Turkey, and in particular has asked Turkey to bolster its efforts to prevent of human trafficking. Turkey took this criticism seriously, Içduygu said. “The numbers of illegal border crossings are declining and prison terms for human traffickers have increased.”
With globalization, migration flow is internationally diversifying and increasing, Içduygu said. Whether conditions will change based on Turkey's EU position remains to be seen. Over the last 30 years, “the numbers of refugees and people using TK as a transit country have increased,” he said, adding that the trend is likely to continue regardless of EU status.
Also affecting the labor market is the portrait of Turkish citizens emigrating out of Turkey. While emigration from Turkey was predominantly unskilled in the 1960s and 1970s, the last 20 years Turkey has experienced a radical brain drain, according to Koç University migration studies researcher Sebnem Akcapar. Içduygu said in his OECD report that Turkish emigrant labour has become increasingly highly-skilled, university trained and internationally-oriented.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Knowing that their public would vote to leave Turkey out of the European Union, French politicians have mostly abandoned the Turkish issue in the run-up to French elections. This is not such a bad thing for Turkey.
French ill will toward Turkey says more about France's own internal turmoil, say French decision makers and Turkish policy analysts. The vast majority of French politicians are against Turkey's EU membership. This attitude, which began in 2004, has now become a factor that affects Turkey's relations with the European Union. During the past year in Brussels, the French bureaucracy has continued to articulate opposition into obstacles for Turkey.
These policies overlook the fact that the stability facilitated by the EU membership perspective is a main reason French companies continue to strengthen investment in Turkey. French exports to Turkey in 2005 totaled $5 billion. Any derailment of Turkey from the EU progress ultimately hurts French business. The French would be wise to prevent this dismemberment, not the least because its economy has been choking on itself in recent years.
European ministers' approval for Turkey's membership to move forward in December 2004 came across to the French public as nothing more than the EU becoming a large wheel designed to produce consensus over controversial matters. This contributed to the French rejection of the EU constitution last year. President Jacques Chirac's constitutional amendment that introduced the requirement of national referenda to ratify EU enlargements has basically freed French political leaders from preoccupation with Turkey. If current polls hold true, the final “non” is already in the hands of the French people.
The Istanbul-based Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) released a report last month on the troubled Franco-Turkish relationship in which they asked dozens of French opinion leaders about the surge of antagonism toward Turkey. The report's author, Dorothee Schmid, argued that the Turks have certainly recognized by now that internal EU turmoil is generally bad for the health of their bilateral relations with France. The negotiation process between Turkey and the EU might be the first to hit member countries in the political gut since the first enlargement was made, she said.
While many opinion leaders interviewed for the report were opposed to Turkish membership, the authors insist that those questioned made up a community of analysts, intellectuals and prominent journalists who should be used as an indispensable intermediary between leaders and the French public.
Nongovernmental organizations should take on a bigger role engaging the French public and leaders through consortiums because the French are no longer receptive to efforts and statements by Turkish government or state players, the report concluded. The latest polls in France indicate, unsurprisingly, the left and younger populations are likely to be most amenable to outreach from Turkey. It also makes sense that interaction between French and Turkish actors should be ongoing and created in long-term contexts rather than limited to crisis and discord.
Interviewed in-depth over several months, the group agreed that history and culture, such as cinema and music, were effective ways to “market” Turkey to the French public. For instance, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is a widely read popular author in France.
French journalist for Liberation Marc Semo and France's Financial Inspector General Alexandre Jevakhoff, both sympathetic to Turkey's EU bid, have suggested that Turkey back off France and focus on establishing a pro-Turkish consensus at the European level. This could be achieved, they say, by working with allies such as the British and EU heavy hitters like Germany.
Even the leaders of the Socialist Party admit that while they feel relatively positive toward Turkey, they can't afford to ignore the deep trend of negative sentiment. According to French Socialist Party Secretary and European Parliament member Pierre Moscovici's election assessment, the political considerations reveal a pattern of discomfort over confronting Turkey. While the right has gained ground with its clear anti-Turkish stance, the left remains in a bit of a quandary over what to do. Candidates on the left are extremely cautious on the topic of Turkey because they would run the risk of compromising their generous globalist heritage by exposing a pro or anti-integration position.
Several of the report's “decision leaders” have put it rather bluntly: The less talk about Turkey, the better it is for the country. In the French polls in 2007, it is unlikely that Turkey will get much play.
Election reluctance aside, France's input on Turkey has been largely overshadowed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ambivalence toward the predominantly Muslim state. For the time being, France's leverage on issues such as EU membership is still ailing from France's "no" vote on the EU constitution last year. Cyprus is a more potent variable on Turkey than 31 million French opinions, which relegates Turkey to a diplomatic matter for the French, perpetuating a “safe distance” zone for politicians, policy think tanks and organizations. This should be avoided, the EDAM report concludes.
Only by working through civil society channels can the strategy of exclusion be countered, Schmid and EDAM representatives said. Interactions between the media, universities and business interests can help re-establish Turkey positively in the French consciousness.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
African immigrants and refugees are filing a collective complaint that Turkish police detained and forced them to perform hard labor during the pope's visit, according to the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly (HCA) Refugee Support Program.
On November 30 the government-run Anatolia News Agency reported that Turkish police detained 53 immigrants, mostly Africans, while conducting security checks in areas visited by Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday. According to African men's accounts, they were picked up in their neighborhoods, some of the poorest parts of the city, places neither pope nor foreign dignitary would likely be taken.
A man identified as H.R.M., 38, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, recounted that on November 30 Turkish police officials picked him up near his home and forced him to work through the night. After hearing rumors that Turkish police were taking blacks into custody during the pope's visit, he and his twelve roommates stayed inside their apartment all day. When he went to the corner store to buy food at 10:00 p.m., H.R.M said he was picked up by police and taken to the tourist area of Sultanahmet where the pope had visited earlier that day.
He and other African workers were told to collect large metal street barriers and load them onto trucks, H.R.M. said. “They told us 'we will not arrest you if you put these in the truck.' In Sultanahmet, he asked the man in charge why only blacks had been taken and he said nothing, H.R.M. remembered. “I felt like a slave,” he said.
Özlem Dalkıran, spokeswoman for HCA Refugee Legal Aid Program told the TDN that her office is helping their African clients and others to file a collective complaint with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Police picked up another man identified as I.J. on his way to the Helsinki aid office in Taksim, said Dalkıran on November 30. He saw two of his roommates among the 12 black men taken to load barriers in a police truck. “I'm not a terrorist,” the 30 year-old Eritrean said. “If they want me to work they could have given me money or food.” After several press inquiries, Istanbul's police headquarters released a statement last week saying that said they "do not think any response to the allegations would be appropriate."Early in the morning before the pope's arrival, and H.R.M.'s reported detention, photographer for the Turkish daily Akşam, Cem Türkel, began taking photographs of another group of black men unloading barriers from a truck. According to Türkel, an out-of-uniform police officer ordered him to stop, saying, “Now you will go and write under those photos that we made these foreigners carry barriers. I fed them. I even gave them 20 YTL ($15).
The Istanbul security director's office issued a written statement saying that a private loading company provided the barrier service. Dalkıran said she wondered how they will respond once they see the photo that supports dozens of Africans' claims that they were used to load metal barriers.
Dalkıran said this police practice of collecting Africans for work purposes began about a month ago. Some have been forced to clean roads or move police officers' belongings to new homes. While the police have denied these accusations, Ms. Dalkiran said this time it is different, “because photographs show what was going on.”
Considering the trauma, detention and torture that the men left behind in their countries, they are left with little recourse to disobey a police order. “There have been house raids, deportations… the fear is established,” she said. Currently, said Dalkıran there are 811 cases in their folder representing cases that have are approved, rejected or pending.
Turkey is quickly becoming a major transit route for African migrants trying to reach Europe to escape economic misery and war. As a European Union candidate, the pressure on Turkey to stem the illegal migration flow to Europe will increase, potentially preventing even more of these immigrants from moving on.
The informal sector of the economy, or unregistered business, is the richest in Europe and shows no signs of subsiding, economist and Sabanci University professor Ahmet Öncü told the TDN in a telephone interview. “With Europe's low employment and new employment restrictions on foreigners, Turkey is becoming a haven for unregistered labor.” Of the 132,000 foreign nationals with residence permits and thousands of others without official permission, an OECD report estimates that some 50,000–100,000 foreign workers annually employed illegally in Turkey.
Addressing Helsinki's reports about the detention and forced labor of the African men two weeks ago, Koç University migration studies program director Ahmet İcduygu told the TDN that a specific racism exists here because immigrants are generally new to Turkey. “Most Turkish people haven't had sustained contact with black people or many foreigners,” he said.
In recent decades migrants have been looking for a way into Europe. Clandestine laborers, asylum-seekers and refugees have begun to arrive in Turkey in growing numbers. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Turkey received approximately 5,000–6,000 asylum applications a year. A report prepared by migration researcher İçduygu for the OECD this month notes that the numbers of asylum-seekers coming from several African countries increased slightly since 2003." In Turkey there were 183 Somali and 64 Sudanese citizens seeking asylum in 2003. The report goes on to explain that without working permits, asylum-seekers whose applications are rejected often look for illegal forms of employment because they are reluctant to return home.
To manage the rising number of foreigners who will come to Turkey and remain, the government has formed a task force of ministries, institutions and organizations. This committee plans to harmonize legislation, asylum-related projects and migration systems that need to be aligned with EU regulations.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
A Palestinian Muslim, who teaches Palestinians that their stateless situation is linked to the Holocaust, believes Iran's leaders denial of the Holocaust does further harm to his people. Iran rejected Khaled Mahameed's visa application to travel to Tehran for this week's international conference questioning the Holocaust in Tehran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued to elicit a charged international response Tuesday when he told delegates at the conference that Israel's days were numbered. Earlier this year he referred to the killing of six million Jews in World War II as a "myth" and called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map."
Palestinian Israeli Khaled Mahameed set out on a lonely mission last year to teach fellow Palestinians about the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany put to death an estimated 6 million Jews. Mr. Mahameed's Holocaust Institute in the biblical Israeli town of Nazareth is a modest operation, with a few thousand visitors in the past year and occasional lectures. Some 60 photos documenting the genocide are the museum's central feature. Paragraphs written in large-script Arabic serve as captions below large black and white photos. Mahameed says his is the only center focusing on the Holocaust in the Arab world, where the massive loss of Jewish life at the end of WWII often is played down or even denied. Underlying Mahameed's lack of popularity in the local supermarket or at family weddings is competition over victimhood, said Tom Segev, an Israeli author on the Holocaust. "Arabs often feel that if they acknowledge the Holocaust, they give up their claim of being the real victim of this conflict," Mr. Segev told The Associated Press. Arab attitudes on the Holocaust are mirrored to some extent by an abiding Israeli indifference to the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians as a result of Israel's creation.
“The Iranian president and all deniers of the Holocaust know the significance and centrality of how the Holocaust continues to shape countries' policies toward Israel,” Mahameed said to the TDN. “Ahmadinejad tries to neutralize the facts because he knows they fuel Israel's power.” This doubles the cost for Palestinians, he continued. “The weight of the Holocaust burden now falls on the shoulders of Palestinian children.”
One photo in his museum shows a Nazi officer pointing a gun to the head of a Jew who squats at the edge of a mass grave. "Men like this man settled our land," Mahameed told five Arab visitors to the museum last year. "We have to understand the very deep trauma of this man." His museum has provoked strong opposition among Palestinians who say Israel used the Holocaust as an excuse to take Arab land.
Mahameed bought the photos from Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and reprinted some in 2,000 glossy booklets and on his Web site (www.alkaritha.org), which offers a discussion forum in Arabic. He has recently finished writing a book in his native Arabic, “The Palestinians and the State of the Holocaust.”
Sunny relations between Turkey and the Vatican continued on Wednesday, when the Vatican gave the thumbs-up to Turkey's plan to promote itself abroad by publishing an image of Pope Benedict XVI waving the Turkish flag during his public relations-packed visit to the secular but predominantly Muslim country last week.
With Turkey sidelined as EU membership negotiations slowed to a glacial pace, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced this week that it would promote the country in Europe using images of the pope with the Turkish flag, visiting the Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque in Istanbul and praying in Turkish at the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, Turkish daily Vatan reported. To boost such a campaign in Europe, the ministry said it wanted to take advantage of the fact that the pope's four-day visit to Turkey had been broadcast live to 70 countries.
A spokesman for Archbishop Antonio Lucibello, the papal nuncio in Turkey, had only good things to say about Turkey's use of the flag-wielding pope to generate positive images of Turkey abroad. “When the image of the pope is public, there is no question about using it in this way,” he said. “It is a good message, no?”
Monsignor Georges Marovitch, the official Vatican representative in Istanbul, said that featuring Benedict's photo on the front of Turkey's tourism brochures was “a very good idea.” Marovitch added that the pope's visit to Turkey had been “wonderful” in every way and that the success of the trip would only grow so long as “Turks can manage to capture the spirit of his trip.”
Also in the business of making images, state-run Turkish Airlines (THY) told daily Milliyet it was proud to have ushered the pope to and from Turkey aboard a turquoise-colored aircraft, the much-celebrated 100th aircraft in its fleet. Noting that they were honored by the pope using their services, THY General Manager Temel Kotil added, “This flight was a big promotion for us all over the world.”
Analysis by KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
The press typically makes much pageantry of papal trips, and Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Turkey this week surpassed the spectacle and was a highly anticipated chalkboard of analytical play-by-play that did not disappoint. However, with broad-sweeping strokes, the coverage abroad focused primarily on the pope's friendly appeals to Muslims and his more pointed call for more rights for Christians in Turkey. The foreign press missed one important point: This is secular country, and over here neither God nor pontiff holds the clipboard.
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Although the Turkish Constitution guarantees them the same rights as Muslim citizens, Christians in Turkey have long complained about the legal obstacles they face. Surrounded by a working-class neighborhood, the small compound of the Orthodox Patriarchate is the frequent target of nationalist protests. Numerous Orthodox properties, including schools and cemeteries, have been confiscated by the state.
Istanbul has been home to the spiritual head of Orthodoxy since the Byzantine era and was abuzz in Constantinople. Meeting with the world's Orthodox leader, Patriarch Bartolomeos, the pope was able to appear as though he was moving toward unifying the 1,000-year divide between the two sides of Christianity. Perhaps more importantly, Bartolomeos would like Turkey to recognize more rights for Christians as well as the title he holds in the rest of the world: ecumenical patriarch. The pope, no doubt, would like to help a spiritual brother in trouble.
The challenge buried in the pomp and circumstance this week is that he is not alone. The vast majority of people in Turkey are practicing Muslims, some of whom claim their religious freedoms are denied under a state with a near pious devotion to its secular roots. In Turkey the history and strength of laicism, often misinterpreted as Western-style secularism, runs deep. Laicism is understood in Turkey not as the separation of church and state but as the protection of the state from religion. The military and judiciary, with support from other members of the country's secular elite, continue to wage a private and public campaign against Islamic fundamentalism, which they view as a threat to the secular republic.
The reason Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was able to jumpstart a republic where an empire lay smoldering was precisely because he saw the need to keep religion at bay in a world turned upside down by fanaticism and killing in the name of God. As a legendary military hero, he had witnessed the 1915 Ottoman Empire's call for jihad, or holy war, in support of the Islamic Caliphate. He knew that millions of shoeless, malnourished Ottoman soldiers fought for and clung to the battle cry “God is Great” just before their bloody deaths. Atatürk said that his people could not join the civilized nations of the world if they continued to follow what he believed were rigid religious traditions of village Anatolia. In the name of progress and protection against Islamist special interest groups, he outlawed religious involvement with the state as well as practices such as women wearing headscarves and men wearing the fez in public institutions.
Turkey's majority identifies with Islam and is far from radical as a populace, supporting the pope's cause to safely begin his make-up session with the Muslim world. On the other hand, it is because of the laic safeguard against religious interference that the pope's appeals to Turkey's leadership about religious freedom fall on deaf ears.
In a timely example of the contrasting principles missed in the press, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer vetoed on Wednesday a key piece of legislation expected to enable foundations to improve property rights for non-Muslim minorities living in Turkey. One day after assuring the pope that all religions have equal rights under secular law, Sezer said that foreign funding of foundations in Turkey goes against the basic principles of the Turkish Republic and violates national interests.
When the pope or the European Union applies pressure to grant more religious freedom for minorities, the state is concerned about two things. If it allows minority religions to operate freely, the state fears it would be imperiled by mainstream Islamists fighting to get the same rights. Some people in Turkey -- Kemalists in particular -- interpret religious freedoms, even headscarves, as a threat to democracy. They think fundamentalists would hide behind mainstream Islamists and use the freedom as a way to impose their outlook on others. Currently those educated in Islamic schools are denied access to military schools, and Islamic groups are denied permission to set up foundations that support their followers. The state fears a momentum would grow out of minority religious rights that would eventually help usher in the establishment of powerful Islamic groups in this country.
The second fear is that by recognizing the top Orthodox Patriarch as “ecumenical” with the rights and privileges he wants, a mini-Vatican would grow and take over a corner of Istanbul, replete with all the trappings of Orthodox Christian money and influence from abroad. This kind of official religious center of power in Turkey might also set a precedent for Muslim groups to create the same sort of thing. Breathing life into a theocratic environment is the last thing the Turkish state or its military would allow. As recently as 1997 the army pressured the government into submission by what many have called a “post-modern coup” in a move to prevent what they believed to be a rise of Muslim influence in matters of the state.
In short, Turkey is all too aware of the fragile balance it must bear. Muslim groups have many advantages over other religious minorities, and their influence is vast in spite of the resistance they face. While Islamic power is gaining ground in Anatolia as well as in the big cities, the extremists, while also growing, are still few in number. Members of the Islamist Saadet (Happiness or Contentment) Party (SP) only accounted for 3 percent of the vote in the last election. Only 7 percent of the Turkish population subscribes to Shariah Islam, according to the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation's (TESEV) latest survey. However, if minority religions generate momentum or if precedent allows, Turkey's extremist Muslim groups might land some real political control. If this were to happen, Turkey's protectors believe the dam might break and groups like Hezbollah could rush in or others would find fertile ground for similar grassroots following.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Pope Benedict XVI visited neighboring Christian and Muslim historical sites Thursday, hours after making fresh statements in an apparent dig at European Union-hopeful Turkey that secularism has weakened Christian traditions and ensuring religious freedoms should be a condition for EU membership. The pope's actions were scrutinized under the watchful eyes at Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom) and the Sultan Ahmet Mosque of those concerned about the level of respect he showed inside the historically Christian and Muslim monuments, separated by only a long manicured courtyard. Depicting this diplomatic and political divide are the histories behind two significant landmarks.
Built some 1,500 years ago, the Hagia Sofia– a beacon to early Christendom as well as the Ottoman victory over the Byzantine Empire – mirrors the city's complex identity. The building's conflicted history has been especially palpable this week during the pope's controversial visit there yesterday. After a nine-century lifespan as the world's premier Christian cathedral, it was converted into a mosque in 1453 when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, today's Istanbul.
Known throughout the world as central to Christian Orthodoxy, the colossal pink and grey-hued basilica's beginnings were anything but humble. Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I built the current structure, rededicating it in 537 after Roman Emperor Constantine I had built the original cathedral 2 centuries earlier to punctuate his ‘New Rome.' Constantine built the initial structure after he was the first emperor to legitimize Christianity, which until then had been outlawed by the Roman Empire, and its followers subject to persecution.
Following Sultan Mehmet's triumph over Constantinople in 1453, he went to the church and prayed, turning it into a mosque. According to historical accounts, Byzantine women and children were spared after seeking refuge in the basilica while the surprise onslaught raged around them.
The sheer size and architectural magnificence of the Hagia Sofia is still evident today, despite its near mystical survival of war, earthquakes and fires that have periodically devastated the city. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk secularized the conflicted edifice turning it into a museum in 1934 as part of the drive to modernize Turkey.
When Pope Paul VI prayed at the museum in 1967, nationalist and Islamist Turks were outraged, creating a diplomatic incident. With a small group of protesters opposed to Benedict's visit to the Hagia Sofia near the landmarks, which are within shouting distance of the former palace and seat of the Ottoman Empire, thousands of police created a conspicuous presence in the area.
A group of some 50 protestors gathered at Istanbul University Thursday morning, representing the same group of Islamist nationalists who were arrested after occupying and praying at the Hagia Sofia Tuesday. The activists claim that if the pope prays there, it will become a Christian shrine.
In a break with tradition, the pontiff stopped by Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque in what was considered to be a conciliatory gesture toward Muslims. Pope John Paul II visited a mosque in Syria in 2001, the only other visit to a mosque by a pope.
In the 17th century Ottoman Sultan Ahmet I commanded famed architect Mehmet Aga to build the mosque in his honor to match the grandeur of the adjacent Byzantine-era Haghia Sophia. Elaborate blue tiles from Iznik in northwestern Turkey filled the structure, said by sailors over the centuries to light the dome incandescent blue. A series of domes and six minarets add to the unique and complex style of the mosque.
Today, the site is popular among worshippers, many of whom travel great lengths to pray there. It is also one of the rare mosques in the world that opens its doors to tourists and a prominent landmark in Istanbul's ancient district. Tourists are supposed to enter through a different door than worshippers to preserve the sanctity of the mosque.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
As more than a billion Catholic and 250 million Eastern Orthodox followers look on, Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartolomeos I will make history today when they unite under a single shared faith for the first time since 1054.
The two churches have been divided for a millennium by a dispute over whether the pope outranks the patriarch, who is considered the “leader among equals” among the patriarchs of Eastern Orthodox religions. For Turkey's Orthodox Christian minority of 100,000, this schism with the Catholic Church takes a back seat to their hopes for greater legitimacy under Turkish law -- a true leap of faith in a country founded on secular principles.
Last year Benedict planned this trip to meet Bartolomeos. Healing the divide in Christianity between the Vatican and Orthodoxy, which split in 1054, has been in the works since a historical meeting in 1964 and is a priority for both Benedict and the patriarch. Overshadowing the meeting, which the Vatican has referred to as the “heart of the visit” to Turkey, the media and Muslim world are keenly focused on reconciliation of a different sort. As anticipated, the pope has sought to defuse anger sparked on Sept. 12, when his citation of a 14th-century dialogue triggered protests from Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.
The pope's September speech in Germany, rather than intending to focus on the citation that cast Islam in a negative light, actually set the tone for today's joint intention to reconcile a millennia-old rift between the two churches.
The speech talked at length about the theme of reunion, how two sides, when working within the same rules of reason, can only benefit by coming together. Criticizing the Reformation for removing Greek influences from Christianity, the pope said, “Biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level.” Benedict went even further when he said that a “de-Hellenized” Christianity could come dangerously close to identifying God with violence.
Over the centuries there were no serious efforts towards reunion until 1964, when the two church leaders, Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI, met in Jerusalem to re-ignite a friendship. Since then Paul VI, John Paul II and now Pope Benedict have visited the Patriarchate in Istanbul.
“Until today, the dialogue has been moving very slowly. The Patriarchate believes that with Pope Benedict XVI's deep theological and historical knowledge, the dialogue will now progress more quickly,” said Patriarchate Press Officer Reverend Father Dositheos.
University of Thessalonica theologian Miltiadis Konstantinou emphasized that the meeting with the Turkish leadership is not the main focus of the pope's trip. Konstantinou said that the meeting between the two religious leaders “launches a new practice on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, to live out what John Paul II had often proclaimed, that Christianity breathes with two lungs, one of which is the Orthodox church.”
The visit also indicates a firm decision from by churches to put behind them the tensions that arose from the religious cold war that followed the fall of communism and engage in a new dialogue. For the Orthodoxy, the Patriarchate is a central symbol. In the Eastern Church there is no legally imposed unity as each bishop is independent: “Thus the ecumenical patriarch is the symbol of their unity,” said Konstantinou.
The root of the 1054 schism between the two churches was the long-term estrangement of Rome and Constantinople, and was deepened by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the fourth Crusade.
At the patriarch's headquarters, the two religious leaders will deliver a common prayer followed by the unveiling of a monument commemorating the last three papal visits. The meeting will conclude with a joint declaration by the pope and Patriarch Bartolomeos. The pope will also visit the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate, the Syrian Orthodox archbishop and several heads of Protestant communities today.
In a homily last year, the pope said he was “prepared to do everything in his power to advance the fundamental cause of ecumenism.”
While the pope's comments on religious freedom risk pitting the Vatican against some Islamic nations, who restrict rights and worshipping practices for non-Muslims, the challenge in Turkey is clashing with a strictly secular state that rules over all religious institutions and practices -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
And while Turkey does not recognize any ecumenical status for the patriarch, it accepts a limited right of the Greek Orthodox Church as a legally recognized local religious authority. The Catholic Church, however, like other Christian branches, recognizes the patriarch as ecumenical, and the pope will address him as ecumenical patriarch when the two meet. The date of the occasion, Thursday, is St. Andrew's Day, so named in remembrance of the apostle who became the first bishop of Byzantium, a role that would later become patriarch of Constantinople.
KRISTEN STEVENS
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
As billions tune into Pope Benedict XVI's visit here this week, Benedict's plans to embrace the ecumenical church while appeasing Muslim discontent could well unleash another tempest inside one of this country's biggest debates: the power of secularism over religion.
Meeting with the Greek Orthodox patriarch today, the pope brings attention -- unwittingly or not -- to the claim that the Turkish state maintains a firm hand of control over religious freedoms. This exposure could feed the flames of internal debate over secularism here, especially as radical Islamists become increasingly vociferous ahead of elections next year.
Meanwhile, the Turkish people are generally unwelcoming of the pope. Among the masses, however, is a quieter ecumenical Christian minority whose millennia-old schism with the Catholic Church takes a backseat to their hope of securing greater legitimacy under Turkish law -- a true leap of faith in a country founded on secular principles.
For practicing Muslims who make up the majority in Turkey, the vastness of the struggle to gain their own rights in matters of religious freedom is of greater concern than the claim that Turkey does not extend sufficient rights to religious minority groups. Thus, any assertion of religious minority mistreatment is best addressed when looking through the lens of Turkey's staunchly secular government. As the pope ventures into religious territory, he also implicitly enters into Turkey's secular domain, the only officially secular state in the Muslim world.
To maneuver this delicate terrain successfully, the pope, a lifelong scholar of scripture, will have to summon the diplomatic tact of a veteran statesman. His main purpose for coming to Turkey is to meet with the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in a show of ecumenical solidarity. Overshadowing this part of the journey, however, the media and Muslim world are keenly focused on a display of a more conciliatory nature. Interpreting the need for reconciliation with the Muslim world over the pope's negative references to Islam, Vatican representatives said that the pope's journey to Turkey “is an invitation to overcome the conflicts between Jews, Christians and Muslims that have taken place over the centuries.”
Last year Benedict planned the trip to meet the ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Bartolomeos I. Healing the nearly 1,000-year divide in Christianity between the Vatican and Orthodox churches, which split in 1054, has been in the works since a historical meeting in 1964 and a priority for both Benedict and the patriarch.
By traveling to Istanbul, the consequences of the Vatican's message seem to encompass more than unifying the two churches and making good with Muslims. By focusing attention on achieving solidarity with the ecumenical church in the Patriarchate's own spiritual heartland, the pope will likely shed light on the charge that Turkey extends limited rights to its religious minority groups --- Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
According to a Vatican statement, part of the pope's mission here in Turkey is to pressure Islamic nations to offer greater rights and protection to Christian minorities. Last week the Vatican suggested that Turkey recommit itself to its traditions and history of secularism and religious tolerance. The Vatican Web site stated that Turkey, situated between Europe and Asia and home to various religious traditions, “is a balcony looking out on the Middle East, from which the values of inter-religious dialogue, tolerance, reciprocity and the secular character of the State can be reaffirmed.”
However, some commentators point out that it is precisely the “secular” nature of the Turkish state that creates problems. It is Turkey's uniqueness that creates this complex challenge for the pope, because unlike in many Islamic countries, the rights of “Christian” or “Jewish” minorities are not threatened by a dominant theological view, but rather by an anti-theological ideology. Secularism is understood in Turkey not as the separation of church and state but as the domination of the state over all religious institutions and practices. The military and the judiciary, with support from other members of the country's secular elite, continue to wage a private and public campaign against Islamic fundamentalism, which they view as a threat to the secular republic.
Even the term “minority” presents unique problems here. Turkey bowed to western pressure in the early days of the republic to designate certain non-Muslim groups, principally Armenians, Greeks and Jews, with a special and protected status. However, the Syrian Orthodox Christians, for example, who live in Turkey's East and who felt more comfortable with the tenets of the new republic, essentially said “no thanks” and were left out of the “minority” category. Many have regretted the decision. Today, while the European Union demands that “minority” status be accorded to the Alevis, there is sharp division among the Alevi community itself over whether this is desirable.
Despite the intended protection, non-Muslim minorities as well as the Muslim majority are critical about an overall lack of religious freedom. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals argue for more religious freedom for all, including the non-Muslims. Muslim groups such as Sufi orders and millions of followers of the Alevi, religious groups, offshoots of Shi'ism, are not permitted to establish their independent mosques or religious centers. Secularism “watchmen” ensure that Muslim women who wear the headscarf are not permitted to attend state or private universities or work in state institutions such as Parliament and hospitals.
For a dwindling group of the once-thriving Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul, the same secular rules apply. The Turkish state's denial of legal rights to operate churches or religious schools under the churches' authority and without state permission reflects those limitations. While Turkey does not recognize the ecumenical status of the patriarch, it accepts a limited right of the Greek Orthodox Church as a legally recognized local religious authority. By default, interactions between the patriarch and the government become a political or diplomatic matter.
Most of the 100,000 Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other Orthodox denominations. Despite Turkish law recognizing these groups as minority communities, churches face hurdles in rebuilding, making repairs, and new groups have a difficult time establishing new churches. Property ownership restrictions have allowed the Turkish state to confiscate buildings in these communities. Facing adversity since the beginning of the republic, Christians, advocates say, have been unable to develop their communities. The Greek Orthodox population, for example, has fallen to 2 percent of the community's size in the 1960s, or less than 3,000.
As a rancorous brew of Islamic fundamentalism and nationalism grows, violent eruptions this year have led to the killing of one priest in Trabzon, the beatings of two others and the burning of a Christian place of worship. Christian historical ruins and tombstones are sometimes vandalized.
"More needs to be done to promote religious freedom for all denominations," Ali Bardakoglu, head of Turkey's powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, told the Los Angeles Times. Defending the government's treatment of minorities, however, he contended that Christians and other religious minorities do not face severe circumstances in Turkey.
In recent years, the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development (AKP) running the government has undertaken reforms that have improved the environment for minority religions. Last Friday, in a case that is likely to set a precedent in rulings on mandatory religion courses, a leader in the Alevi religious community won a legal battle in Turkish court to exempt his son from mandatory religion courses in public school. Since 2002, Protestants and others have been permitted to establish churches under the name of a foundation in Istanbul.
Historical reality during the last years of the Ottoman age evokes pain for many Christians. Ruling the region for more than six centuries, the Ottoman Empire was relatively tolerant of Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims. Western powers then joined forces with Christian and other minorities before and during World War I to wrest control from the Ottomans. The ensuing bloodshed that followed left as many as 1.5 million Armenians dead, a similar number of ethnic Greeks expelled and one million Turks deported from Greece. Turks experienced millions of losses, as well, during that bloody period, and attribute the tragedies on both sides to war and the inter-communal violence that erupted during the demise of the empire. Complicating any tally of atrocities if the fact that all sides suffered and died from three years of vicious famine wrought by the interruption of planting and harvest during World War I.
Ahead of his visit, the pope's provocative citation of a Byzantine emperor relating the Prophet Mohammed to violence and evil struck a nerve among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. Public opinion in Turkey this month reflects equal parts disapproval and indifference for the visit. Thirty-eight percent of Turks were decidedly against the pope's visit while another 38 percent were indifferent, according to Turkish Information Research and Consultancy findings in 14 Turkish cities. Only 10 percent of Turks approved and 14 percent preferred not to express their opinion about the four-day visit.
Vatican spokesman Monsignor Georges Marovitch, who has served the Catholic community of some 33,000 in Turkey for decades, hopes that the pope's visit will help restore peace between Christians and Muslims. He said the pope's statements were misunderstood. “I'm sure that he will now find words of conciliation for those that have been hurt so that the dialogue between the two biggest religions is resumed as the world's peace depends on it,” said Marovitch, who is widely recognized in the country as a good friend to Turks and Islam.
Observers continue to worry about the pope's word choice. When asked if it wasn't arrogant to insist that Christianity is superior to all other religions, the pope once gave a candid reply: "But what if it's true?" The Muslim world -- and Turkey's majority -- will likely require a more sensitive approach to mending fences. When conveying to the Turkish government that they should improve their brand of religious tolerance, arrogance and browbeating are not recommended. During the young life of the republic, and this past year in particular, Turkish leadership has met foreigners' suggestions about minority rights and recognition with a certain amount of intractability.
Turkey's failure to make more progress on freedom-of-religion issues has been an obstacle in its years-long campaign to join the European Union. Handled with care, the visit could come as a break in the Turkey's public relations storm. If the pope can tap at the problem softly enough, Turkey might be compelled to take further steps toward changing laws that restrict the rights of minority religions. However, the most recent progress report from the European Union, while pointing to Turkey's weaknesses on religious tolerance, acknowledged progress for the Christian community.
With Turkey's EU membership negotiations on the ropes, war on the rise in the Middle East and mounting tensions over Islam's presence in Europe, this week's visit will require all the diplomatic intervention Pope Benedict XVI can find.
As the World Economic Forum's Istanbul parley -- where gender was among the pillars of debate -- drew to a close Friday night, Turkey's lone female minister did a political pirouette on her long-held stance against quotas to balance a male-dominated Parliament, while a female EU commissioner blasted Islam as a religion that stunts educational opportunity and achievement. It was that kind of "mini-summit"
A two-day “mini-summit” under the flag of the World Economic Forum (WEF), “Davos” for short, ended here on Friday with head-turning moments for which this gathering of the world's rich and powerful is famous.
At a forum dedicated to women's equality in the Turkish economy, a European Commission member shocked more than a few when she declared flatly that Islam prevents the education of women. “When you're wearing a burka, you aren't recognizable,” said Neelie Kroes, a Dutch citizen who heads the male-dominated commission's competition directorate. “We are an open society.”
If Kroes' comments drew quiet gasps from more than a few women in the Turkish audience, in a country that has more women executives in the sectors Kroes regulates than any other in Europe, they were in for more surprises.
Nimet Çubukçu, Turkey's minister for women's affairs and the lone woman in a male-dominated Cabinet, underwent a sudden and public conversion from her controversial stance against any quota system to draw more women into Turkey's masculine politics. Not only did Çubukçu part from her stance against quotas but she also announced to the Davos gathering that it is time for Turkey to create a new ministry devoted specifically to gender equality.
These are the sorts of social and political palpitations during the two-day event, part of a “Davos-style” regional summit strategy, which met organizers' hopes that it would broaden perspectives after political and business leaders left the fine china and Bosporus views behind yesterday.
In addition to her announcement of support for affirmative action in Turkish politics, Çubukçu declared her support for the establishment of a new ministry for gender equality. “We are too few in number, so women cannot be well reflected,” she said.
“If you stay in politics for a long time, women start to think like men because the rules are made by and for men,” said Çubukçu. Late-night political meetings need to be held earlier, she added. “For example, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds meetings at 11:00 p.m. This should be changed in order allow more women to participate.” To put an end to wars, she said, “Women's contribution to decision making at the highest levels of national leadership is crucial.”
The panel agreed that to improve political participation and employment, education is critical. While only 51 percent of girls in Turkey are enrolled in school, 71 percent of those who graduate from university find employment. Çubukçu proclaimed that by 2010, “Girls' enrollment in school will reach 100 percent.”
Kroes said that if Turkish women wanted to make such changes, they must take an active role in being part of the solution, which she said includes education reform and gender quotas in politics. A proposal currently in the Turkish Parliament would require that women make up at least 30 percent of political representation. Addressing an audience full of well-heeled Turkish business executives she said: “If you're critical of the condition of women, you must participate. Otherwise you lose the opportunity to be critical.”
Women for Women's Rights' Foundation chief Ýpek Ýlkkaracan called on the private sector to support women's advancement in Turkey not only through nominal charity and small-scale giving but also on the nonprofit level, where the vast majority of women are working in communities. With 36 percent of the population imperiled by poverty, millions of women are working in the informal sector, trying to support their families through mostly home-based small businesses. For Turkey to close the gap between women living in rural areas operating outside of the economy and cosmopolitan women who direct the fortunes of major corporations, it will need to reduce the costs of tax registration and collateral necessary for small business loans, according to Belgin Güzaltan, project director with the Foundation for the Support of Women's Work, based in Istanbul.
Ýlkkaracan said that dramatically expanding Turkey's childcare capacity is essential to creating a stronger workforce. In a country with 13 million housewives and millions of women whose work hours are limited by caring for children, only 10 percent of families have access to childcare. One of the biggest divides between Turkey and developed countries, according to Ýlkkaracan, is the maturity of Turkey's women's movement, which only got off the ground in the 1980s. Since 1993, however, the number of women's groups has quadrupled.
Sunday, November 23, 2006
KRISTEN STEVENS
DIYARBAKIR/Turkish Daily News
It is dawn in the heart of Hasirli,
Since her husband has been ill and unable to sell vegetables, Kabak, 50, has used three micro credit loans to increase bread production. These days, her sons sell the bread after school in the market and bring home $75 to $100 each day. Working the dough with her whole body, Kabak said, “This is a great job for me.”
Kabak’s family is one of more than 10,000 in
In the wake of
In
Social and economic empowerment for poor women is the aim of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus, winners of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for establishing microfinance projects for poor women around the world. Grameen first began working in
These women live in some of the poorest areas of
To help curb the effects of poverty, women clients receive microcredit loans from $50 to $800 to set up a shop or manufacture goods. They can receive additional loans every six months based on meeting attendance and timely repayment.
According to a
In
One topic discussed at a recent meeting was how business can prosper and extend beyond immediate family to friends and neighbors. A regular attendee of weekly meetings, Bedia Kaya, 35, recently increased productivity of her sock-making business in
Part of the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work, the Maya Enterprise has been lauded as a microfinance pioneer not only for doing it first in Turkey but also for being one of the first organizations to grant individual credits to poor women like Kaya. Following the earthquake of 1999 in Kocaeli, Maya opened its first branch there in 2002 in an effort to help.
Kocaeli’s former Deputy Governor Metin Yahsi said the women who started businesses with Maya’s micro credit have played an important role in the city’s healing. Yahsi said that the city tried to implement a similar microcredit program but could not make it work. Maya’s project, he said, is more specialized and more expensive than what a government organization can offer.
By collecting 15 percent interest, Maya is able to sustain its staff, and, according to Maya’s project director Belgin Güzaltan, clients feel increased responsibility toward repayment. They have “an incentive to become productive sooner and we guarantee another loan if she succeeds,” she said. Güzaltan said many of their 1,600 clients sought micro finance instead of asking their relatives for loans because they felt more comfortable with a payment schedule and a business agreement.
One of Maya’s most successful clients is retired postal manager Semra Üstündağ, 52. She makes and sells candles from a small stand but does big business with bars, discos and hamams in central
Güzaltan said that with the low education and literacy level among clients, loan officers make adjustments that are more “personal than business. They don’t hesitate to ask us questions because no one laughs or ignores them,” she said. A Maya loan officer recently showed one client how to take a child’s temperature.
Nearly 80 percent of these businesses in
Detractors of replicating micro finance in the banking sector argue that a low repayment percentage might damage the banking system. Statistics prove otherwise. Güzaltan, a former banker, points out that micro credits used by low-income borrowers have a return rate of 99 percent. Most important factor is setting the proper limit for the credit being issued, she said.
Micro credit not only can improve economic status but can bring about social changes as well. Loan officers observed that their clients are more likely to keep their daughters in school, despite cultural and economic pressures. “If they don’t begin sending their daughters to school, we don’t grant a second loan,” Güzaltan said.
Nahiyet Kaya said her husband, a pistachio and hazelnut vendor in
It feels good not asking her husband for money, Nahiyet said. Laughing, she added, “He isn’t angry anymore if dinner isn’t ready when he comes home.”
With a piece of chalk, Nahiyet’s daughter Leyla, 12, had covered the doors of the family dresser with hundreds of mathematical formulas. She said she wants to be a math teacher but is not sure what the future holds: “This life is so difficult for women: building a house, cleaning, working… I don’t want to do these things all over again somewhere else.”
One woman returns local industry to the people
Sunday, November 23, 2006
KRISTEN STEVENS
Diyarbakýr/Turkish Daily News
In a small factory on the outskirts of Diyarbakýr, Nejla Pirizade works from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. to produce 2,000 kilos of natural yogurt everyday. Soon she hopes to sell her yogurt to the largest supermarket chains. When she plunged $40,000 savings – hers and everybody’s she could find – into this business, she knew she had to come with a vision.
A university graduate with a degree in architecture, Pirizade, 27, could not find work in Diyarbakýr. It was then that she noticed no yogurt was being produced locally. Today she co-owns and manages Diyarbakýr’s lone yogurt producing business.
Pulling up to the pink factory site in a wasteland full of dust and children, Pirizade, said women in Diyarbakýr have good opportunities for work. In fact, co-owner Halil Bayraktar remarked that Pirizade sells 10 times the product he does.
“I’ve been lucky,” Pirizade said. Gesturing to the children outside, “This is the real problem,” she said, referring to 61 percent of Diyarbakýr’s children who do not attend school.
On the women’s front, however, she maintains her optimism. “Ten years from now more women will be working in the industrial sector and running their own businesses,” Pirizade said. As for her own progress, she said she wants the company to reach the next level before she starts a family. Until then, she said, “The factory comes first.”
Pirizade said with free training offered by the state-run Small and Medium Industry Development Organization (KOSGEB) she learned how to sell to vendors and market her product.
It is easy to find women in Diyarbakýr who are doctors, lawyers, teachers, policewomen, even soldiers, but not many are in business for themselves. General director of the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work, Þengül Akçar, recommended recognizing the informal sector and reducing registration fees and taxes to help women start and sustain businesses.
More general issues also must be addressed in this region if a businesswoman – or anyone – is to succeed. Much of the agriculture and infrastructure disappeared when the conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish separatists caused some two million people to abandon their farms and villages.
Mustafa Ayzit, an attorney specializing in administrative law in Diyarbakýr, called on the local municipality to help local industry “by supporting local markets with locally produced goods rather than establishing upscale markets full of expensive imports most locals can’t buy.”
Wearing a long tweed coat and a headscarf revealing only her face, Pirizade said, “The government must support these villagers. Even the dairy industry has disappeared.”
With her help, it will rise again.