An Armenian lady, Hrant and April 24

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

There is a story that Hrant Dink used to tell on many different occasions that I would like to share with you. Let us listen to the story from Hrant:

"An old Turkish man called me from a village in the region of Sivas and said: 'Son, we searched everywhere until we found you. There is an old woman here. I guess she is one of your people. She has passed away. Can you find any relative of hers, or we will bury her with a Muslim service.'

Read more »

Across the Armenian-Turkish divide

Michael Krikorian

For years, the genocide fueled my anger at all things Turkish. Then I met Murat Kayali.

In 2001, I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times about April 24, the annual Armenian Day of Remembrance, that had this lead: "The Armenian genocide."

That was it, the entire first paragraph.

I was proud of it because it didn't say "the alleged genocide" or "what the Armenians consider a genocide." It just called the 1915 massacre of a million Armenians what it was, even though the U.S. government — in deference to official Turkish denials and our air bases in Turkey — won't use the word.

Read more »

Every American Muslim's Fear After the Boston Bombing

Charles King

The Tsarnaev brothers are Muslim. They are homegrown jihadists. But careful, writes Charles King, are these terrorists really any different from Adam Lanza and other mass murderers?

Tsarnaev bothers in an image taken
before the explosion at the
Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
(Handout/UPI, via Landov)

The naming of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured alive last night, have made the nightmare scenario for many American Muslims come true. The Tsarnaev brothers will forever be the poster children for a particularly American fear, reflected in everything from blockbuster films to popular fiction: that the English-speaking, dark-haired young men with unpronounceable names, who wear baseball caps, win scholarships, and garner wrestling trophies, are also the ones who could blow you up.

Read more »

Fethullah Gulen Named in TIME Magazine’s “World's 100 Most Influential People” for 2013

“Gulen preaches a message of tolerance that has won him admirers around the world.”

Pacifica Institute  today celebrates Mr. Fethullah Gulen, an inspiration for many of our volunteers and donors, being named as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2013. TIME recognized Gulen for “preaching a message of tolerance that has won him admirers around the world.”

The 2013 “TIME 100” includes other noted world leaders such as President Obama and Pope Francis. In the past, TIME has honored global leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Pope Benedict XVI and Aung San Suu Kyi in TIME 100 lists. Last year, TIME’s honorees in education were Salman Khan and Cami Anderson.

Read more »

Transnational Conspiracy Theories and Vernacular Visual Cultures: Political Islam in Turkey and America

Pelin Gurel, Ph.D.*

“Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth,” states an epistemological folk theory. Successful theories of conspiracy – those that are ultimately true as well as false – all depend on what Stephen Colbert would call “truthiness”: “the quality by which you know something purely by feeling, without regard to logic, evidence, or intellectual examination.” While visual documentation, including photographs and charts, has long been used as “proof” in conspiracy theorizing, the role unrealistic images might play in generating feelings of truthiness has not been subjected to sustained analysis. This gap is even more jarring in the case of contemporary conspiracy theories regarding political Islam, given the importance of “looking” Muslim to both hate-crimes and conspiracy theorizing. An even larger gap in scholarship exists in terms of images and conspiracy theories regarding political Islam in Muslim-majority countries like Turkey.

Read more »

How Turkey is emerging as a development partner in Africa

Prof. Alpaslan Özerdem*

A displaced Somalian man walks away with food
 at a centre run by Turkish aid agency in the
Howlwadaag district of southern Mogadishu.
Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

Turkey has emerged as a generous donor for humanitarian crises across the world over the past five years, especially in the context of Africa.

In 2011, while official development assistance (ODA) fell in 16 DAC countries, Turkey's net ODA increased by over 38%. Following the 'Turkey – Africa Co-operation summit' in Istanbul in August 2008, the African Union declared Turkey a 'strategic partner' and in May 2010, Istanbul was the venue for the 4th UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

Read more »