Tag Archives: Turkey

Can Turkey’s Prime Minister represent each and every citizen?

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: September 12, 2010
“There are approximately 72 million people in this country,” AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told me soon after he was elected in 2003, “and I represent each and every one.” Given the vituperative and angered reaction from Turkey’s “secularists” following today’s “yes” vote to bring the country’s 1982 constitution further into [...]
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Be careful what you wish for

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: June 11, 2010
The Turkish-based charity Insani Yardim Vakifi, known by the initials IHH, has come under heavy scrutiny since Israeli commandoes attacked the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara last week.  It was IHH funds that bankrolled the Mavi Marmara’s “humanitarian” voyage to deliver relief supplies to Palestinians in Gaza.  Was there more to it? Israelis believe so.  “The IHH..is [...]
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U.S. to Iran: Let’s be friends

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: June 6, 2010
Barack Obama shocked the Washington foreign policy establishment when, back in 2007, he said, “we’ve got to talk directly to Iran.”  It was a policy prescription that beltway insiders may have considered but certainly none openly discussed.  To do so would have been “naïve,” which is exactly what then candidate Obama was called. In his [...]
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Dialogue 2010: I’ll take my anger with me

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: March 20, 2010
A few weeks ago I stayed up until 1 AM (this is a big deal) to talk on the phone with a group of women scattered around the world. We were all part of Dialogue 2010. Dialogue 2010 is the brainchild of Rose Deniz, an artist, writer and designer from Wisconsin, now living in Turkey.  In [...]
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Wonderment Economics

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: February 14, 2010
Why do I care that the Greek economy is in crisis?  Call me crazy, but I believe it can potentially heighten European xenophobia against Muslims, particularly Turks in Germany.  And we don’t need any more anti-Muslim/anti-foreigner sentiments in Europe. Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy.  As a member of the European Union, and more [...]
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Good Muslims, Minus Women

By Elmira Bayrasli | Published: January 5, 2010
Osama bin-Laden, al-Qaeda, 9/11, Iraq, the Taliban, Afghanistan, and Ft. Hood or what some would describe as terrorism and murder have become the symbols of Islam in the West. They have shaped, sadly, what Americans know about Muslims. And that has led to our increasingly irrational and overemotional, “you are the enemy” policies toward the [...]
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