My Letter to the New York Times

Well, more than a week has past since my rant about a front page article in the New York Times about Turkey's election, and the paper hasn't responded to the letter I sent in. So, since nothing came of it and the rights return to me, I'd like to share it with you right here:

American news organizations rarely report on Turkey – studies indicate that Americans know very little about Turkey. Therefore, on the rare occasion that Turkey is in the news, it should not be misrepresented as it was in Wednesday’s article praising Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan often capitalizes on the Western media’s ambivalence towards Turkey, most notably when he jailed many leftist journalists at the same time China was famously arresting foreign reporters. News organizations didn't even notice amid their fervor about China. This sort of under-the-radar politics is only possible because the world’s attention is elsewhere.

Wednesday’s article also neglects religion’s vital role in Turkish politics. Erdoğan’s opponents believe that he uses religious sentiments to manipulate people into voting for him and his party. Many Turks fear the country is headed towards becoming another Iran, ruled by theocracy.

Erdoğan is indeed a visionary, but not in the way we think.

Slideshow

I figured out how to embed a slideshow on my blog. The small one on the right is still having trouble playing in the order I'd like, but it's functioning at least. If you want to see the photos a little bigger, click on the "Slideshow" tab by the blog title.

Also if you're looking at this on your cell phone, I've formatted the blog to be more streamlined for devices. However, the tab on the left that you see if you're on a computer doesn't show up when you're on an iPhone or Droid or Blackberry or whatever. In that case, you can't see the miniature slideshow at all. Sorry, folks.

Sick Day

Yesterday, with only 8 teaching days left in the school year to go, I took my first sick day of the year. It's a little disappointing that I wasn't able to go the entire year without taking a day off - it's a personal goal of mine to have a better attendance record than any of my students, just as I had a better attendance record than my professors in college. But my voice just wouldn't work and it made me really crabby in a situation that should be more fun than work. Exams are over and many students have started early vacations, bringing many of my classes down to 12 or even less students (I had a wonderful class of 7 the other day).

In a normal work environment I would have taken many more sick days, but the culture here looks down on taking time off for illness. For example, I was feeling terrible on Monday and decided I'd try teaching to see if I could make it through the day and take off if I couldn't. When I decided I needed to leave half way through the day, my department head convinced me to stay for the rest of the day, where I strained my voice so badly that I didn't even have to wait for the next morning to announce that I wouldn't be coming in. If I had just taken my half day off, I would've been able to work yesterday.

This mentality is in line with the students who, with a spot of scrapped skin that's not even bleeding, throw a tantrum until they're allowed to go to the nurse's office, from which they return 15 minutes later with their hand wrapped in gauze. When you're sick, even just a little bit, the answer is similarly 0verblown: medicate, medicate, medicate, but don't stop working! When I was sick earlier in the year with a normal flu I was given 3 separate antibiotics. Now that's just unnecessary.

Now let's see if I can make it through the rest of the week without making myself any worse.

Another English-Language News Source on Turkey

Keeping with the political theme of my last post:

My coworker just turned me on to a website that provides English translations of foreign newspapers from around the world. Many of their partners are French, but you can also read some of the newspaper giant Hürriyet's coverage.

I think everyone should take a look at the Hürriyet website if only to browse the headlines. That should give you a clue that the coming election is much more complex than the New York Times made it out to be in their Wednesday front page article.

I find this editorial very interesting. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan's biggest triumph in the eyes of moderates has been his ability to keep the country's economy in the same place despite the crises in Europe and America. However, this article suggests that by refusing to publicly release the IMF report on Turkey the government is saying that the economy here isn't as stable as people think.

Here's an article about the silencing about the left-leaning press in Turkey, which has barely received any attention at all in America. This article focuses on the censorship's effect on the European Union, although in my experience most of the Turks I know aren't interested in joining the Union, unlike when I first came to Turkey 2 years ago (before the Wall Street collapse). Still, if you only read American papers you'll most likely never know about the silencing of the press here.

Just some food for thought.

The Depths of Ignorance About Turkey

An AK Parti advertisement


Welcome to June, everyone.

The election is looming large here in Turkey: flags are flying over all the streets in Istanbul, giant posters of the Ataturk-posed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan decorate buildings here and there and the smaller parties clamoring for a larger part of the minority jostle for name recognition advertisement space along the city streets. The election's on June 12, and the New York Times decided it would be a good time to feature an article on the election, which ended up being an article about Erdoğan, who is more than likely to take an even bigger majority (though one of my coworkers cited a recent poll saying the CHP, Erdoğan's rivals, was leading 34% to 32%, a poll I have a hard time believing).

This article has me incensed, not just because it's a complete misrepresentation - he's "arrogant and populist to detractors"? Everyone I know who doesn't like him thinks he's turning the country into another "populist" Iran; " "Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AK"? No one in Turkey would ever call the AK Parti by "AK." But my real grief about this article is that this misinformation is the only thing many Americans will ever read or learn about Turkey all year long.

I encourage you to look at the journalist who wrote the article, Anthony Shadid's profile page on the New York Times website. Not to detract from his qualifications as a journalist - his activities in Lybia are truly amazing and commendable - but it's obvious why he would subconsciously write such a one-sided representation.

I did a research in university that showed that news media constantly under represent Turkey in the American media (I actually still have that research, which you can read here). In one study, only 2.7% of participants had "higher degrees of familiarity with the country," and many other studies indicate that Turkey is generally not talked about in America. It is rare that an article about Turkey will capture the headlines - in the past there might be something about the headscarf ban, which has since been lifted in Universities and ending many foreign journalists' interest in the country. This article is some of the only publicity Turkey's ever going to get in America, and it's terribly disappointing.

Erdoğan knows how uninterested the Western media is in his country, and the brilliant politician uses that to his advantage; I'm sure that in addition to the religious value of lifting the headscarf ban Erdoğan knew it would distance him from the Western media even further. The most egregious instance of how he and the AK Parti have taken advantage of Western blindness is how he threw many leftist journalists in jail at the same time China was arresting foreign reporters (that's when my blog got censored). The news didn't even notice Turkey in its fervor about China. As my favorite Turkish English-language blogger has been pointing out over the last couple of days, the government's controls on the Internet have been tightening lately, and their excuse is to limit pornography consumption. Sound familiar? Remember what China said to justify its ban on Google? You should read this blog post if you want a different take on the AK Parti.

This is particularly scary for my Turkish friends because the AK Parti seems to want to amend the constitution in order to solidify its control - after the 12 of September special election a constitutional amendment granted Erdoğan an immense power boost. My friends are afraid that the country will be turned irreversibly theocratic.

Which brings me to another failing of the New York Times article by Mr. Shadid. He claims that the opposition to Erdoğan believes him to be "arrogant and populist," while stating that the "deeply pious" man's latest speech was "short on religious fare" (perhaps he knew he was being watched). In reality Erdoğan's agenda is deeply religious and it is those who sympathize with that message (the "migrants and downtrodden" that Shadid writes about) who vote in throngs for him. Those who have lived here longer than I have told me that the country has gotten much more religious throughout his leadership, that here in Bahçeşehir it used to be frowned upon to wear a headscarf in public while it's now commonplace. I've also heard that the AK Parti pays women to cover their heads in order to make the country appear more religious than it really is. Many of my friends complain that the AK Parti uses religion and fear to manipulate Turks into voting for them - I haven't met a Turk who didn't share that opinion with me when the opportunity came up, except one in America.

We have to realize that the ruling party in Turkey has been tricking us, and our Western media has been falling for it for 10 years. Erdoğan is indeed a visionary, but not in the way we think.

Look for a short-form version of this post in the New York Times letters to the editor.

Enjoy your June.