MER Article Music, Fate and State In a violent act of vengeance, the kind of crime of honor which fills Turkish jails and the pages of the tabloids, a lorry driver in Istanbul catches his wife and boss in flagrante delicto, shoots them both and flees to his home village. The police surround the village house. The man surrenders and Martin Stokes • 12 min read
MER Article Turkey: A Primer The People Turkey’s population, about 54 million, is growing at a rate of 2.5 percent -- higher than European countries, but lower than most Third World nations. Birth rates vary widely, from no more than two children among middle-class families in western cities to as many as 17 in rural families Martha Wenger • 9 min read
MER Article Constructing a Cinema of the City Turkey’s much vaunted “return to democracy” suffered an embarrassingly visible setback at last year’s Istanbul International Filmdays when censors banned four of the 92 films invited for the foreign section: three on grounds of obscenity and a fourth -- Georgian filmmaker Tenguiz Abouladze’s 1968 cl Miriam Rosen • 8 min read
MER Article Turkey's Other NATO Link Ostensibly multilateral, NATO is often merely the framework for bilateral relations in which the United States is the commanding partner. Nowhere is this more the case than with Turkey, separated geographically from the other NATO allies by its main adversary, Greece, and heavily dependent on the US Diana Johnstone • 4 min read
MER Article A Visit to the Tombs When Nevzat Helvaci, president of the Turkish Human Rights Association, visited New York City in December 1988, he asked to visit a US prison. “There is no reason why these visits should be always one-sided, with foreign monitors visiting Turkish prisons,” he commented. “We also want to visit and ob Sebnem Atiyas • 3 min read
MER Article Prison Conditions in Turkey Herman Schwartz is a professor at the American University law school in Washington, DC and is a contributing editor of The Nation magazine. In late March he visited Turkey on behalf of Helsinki Watch to investigate prison conditions in that country. He has done similar missions to Poland, Cuba, Czec Ömer Karasapan, Joe Stork • 8 min read
MER Article Talking Up Turkey No one can say that the Turkish government does not know the importance of public relations. In Europe, where Turkey’s candidacy for membership in the Economic Community is hampered by the government’s poor human rights record, Ankara has hired the top-ranked British advertising firm of Saatchi and Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article Turkey and US Strategy in the Age of Glasnost On May 20, 1989, a top-of-the-line Soviet MiG-29 fighter evaded pursuing Soviet interceptors and landed at Trabzon airport in northern Turkey. An apparent intelligence bonanza had literally landed in NATO’s lap. Though a regular exhibit at Western air shows and sold to India, Iraq, Yugoslavia and ot Ömer Karasapan • 22 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1989) Visiting Ankara in early December 1981, at a time when the European Common Market countries had halted more than $600 million of aid to the new Turkish junta for its human rights abuses, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger told General Kenan Evren that “we admire the way in which the order and law h The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Harlow, Resistance Literature Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen Press, 1987) Resistance Literature is a wide-ranging and impressive critical study of the literatures of contemporary “Third World” liberation movements as they confront and alter the literary and political categories of the “West.” It is not Mary Layoun • 3 min read
MER Article Art Review: "It's Possible" It’s Possible, A Joint Exhibition of Palestinian and Israeli Art “It’s Possible” is the theme of an exhibition by Palestinian and Israeli artists currently touring the United States. Twenty-four artists -- 12 Palestinians and 12 Israelis -- are displaying their works together in the first such effo Zeina Azzam Seikaly • 2 min read
