Mustafa Akyol

Articles de cet auteur (25)

The nightmare of the generals
21 June 2011
Last weekend, I had coffee with a young Turkish lady who is, besides other things, the daughter of a general in the Turkish military. She was very polite and articulate, but not very cheerful and happy. For her beloved father has been in prison since last January, when an Istanbul court decided to arrest nearly 200 officers. They were all accused of having taken part in the “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) scheme, a 2003 military meeting in which a military coup against the Justice and Development (...)
La Turquie reste un pays laïc
24 mars 2011
Gouvernée par le parti islamique AKP depuis neuf ans, la société turque n’a pas pour autant changé son mode de vie libéral. Depuis que le Parti justice et développement (AKP) est arrivé au pouvoir en Turquie, à la fin de 2002, les médias ont eu du mal à trouver un qualificatif adéquat pour le désigner. Tandis que l’AKP tient à se faire appeler “conservateur” et affirme clairement qu’il “n’est pas un parti religieux”, les définitions courantes adoptées par la presse vont de “légèrement islamique” à (...)
Turkey : not all quiet on the eastern front
25 May 2011
Let me give you a rule of thumb about Turkey: If you want to focus on the deadliest conflict in this country, forget the tension between the conservatives and the secularists. Dismiss the culture war between those who define themselves “Muslim first” and “Kemalist first.” For all those “central” issues are trivia when compared to the most lethal trouble in this country: the Kurdish question. That is the case, for, despite all the political tension and the cultural brouhaha, the Islam versus (...)
Turkey : where is fundamentalism ?
1 June 2007
Yesterday’s Turkish Daily News had a piece by Mr. Faruk Loğoğlu, former Turkish Ambassador to Washington, titled “The apologists are wrong, dead wrong about Turkey.” The “apologists” included Suat Kınıklıoğlu (of the German Marshall Fund), Fareed Zakaria (of Newsweek), The Economist magazine, and me. And what we “the apologists” have been doing, according to Mr. Loğoğlu, was defending “moderate/liberal Islam” and the “conservative Muslim democrats” of Turkey against its secularist establishment. It has (...)
Bomb the Kurds, curb the Muslims, save the Republic !
6 août 2008
Have you seen the news about how the Turkish military plans to restrain Turkish society ? If you haven’t, here is the gist : bomb the Kurds, purge the conservative Muslims, manipulate the judiciary, and create a military-friendly media. This exposure came out when daily Taraf, a newly-established liberal newspaper that has fast become a staunch critic of the Ankara autocracy, published a secret military document called “Lahika-1.” (Lahika means “document.”) After Taraf published the document (...)
Why I am turning my face East
3 June 2011
It has been argued lately that Turkey is "turning its face to the East." The country’s traditional "Western orientation," real or perceived, has claimed to be replaced by a different direction, including the all-scary Middle East. Some blame the incumbent Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and its "covert Islamism" for this shift, whereas others point to tectonic changes in the world’s political economy, to which Turkey is only adopting. I have my humble opinions about this debate as (...)
A requiem for Armenians—a sequel
6 May 2010
My latest piece in these pages, “For the fear of God: A requiem for Armenians,” proved to be quite controversial. And I, as usual, was blamed by some readers for being a bunch of nasty things. (A “traitor” to my own nation who is funded by evil foreigners, a “fake” Turk who hides his crypto-Armenianness, or a deceitful Islamist hell-bent on destroying secular Turkey.) I am not going to waste my time by trying to explain that I am really not the man in these caricatures — or that I really don’t (...)
The Islamization of Turkey (through nudist hotels, gay bars, etc)
15 May 2010
One of the interesting stories I recently read in this paper was about Turkey’s first “nudist hotel,” opened in Marmaris, a beautiful town on the Aegean coast. Here was a place where “nudist tourists will be able to work on their full-body tan” on their “private naturist beach.” This would be, the story added, “a small revolution in Turkey’s conservative society.” If you look for such “small revolutions” in this conservative country, you can find other ones. Gay bars and lesbian clubs, for example, (...)
Why Turkish women can’t drive ?
15 January 2008
It is the culture of the passive female that makes most Turkish women horrible drivers. This might not be the most politically correct thing to say, but I cannot resist the temptation to proclaim the truth : Most Turkish women are horrible drivers. You will see what I mean if you spend a couple of years, or even months, in Turkish streets. If there is a car in front of you which is too slow, too undecided, and too paralyzed, there is 95 percent change that a lady will be sitting in its (...)
A day of infamy
16 June 2007
Islamism arose in Turkey not because its Islamic tradition was prone to it. No. It arose because the secular fundamentalist establishment kept on suppressing even the most moderate and progressive expressions of religion. And, well, they can do the same thing again. Today is the anniversary of a tragedy in Turkish political history. Eighty-two years ago, on this day, Turkish democracy was crushed and an authoritarian regime was introduced. And the legacy of that moment has continued to (...)