MER Article Document: Forced Evictions and Destruction in Villages in Turkish Kurdistan This document is excerpted from a longer report by the Netherlands Kurdistan Society, Forced Evictions and Destruction of Villages in Dersim (Tunceli) and the Western Part of Bingöl, Turkish Kurdistan, September-November 1994 (Amsterdam, 1995). (Author not identified) • 8 min read
MER Article Turkish Women and the Welfare Party After the victory of the Welfare Party in the municipal elections of March 1994, the newly-elected mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thanked the disciplined and devoted Islamist women who had campaigned door-to-door until election day. Islamist women also gave the same determined performance Nukte Devrim-Bouvard • 6 min read
MER Article Turkey and the European Union There are three kinds of people in Turkey who most look forward to the country’s membership of the European Union. The first group, most obviously, comprises big businesses -- “Istanbul” capital as opposed to small and medium domestic market-oriented Anatolian capital. The other two groups are rathe Ronnie Margulies • 3 min read
MER Article "Should I Shoot You?" The stark black letters on white stone in the cemetery are all that remain of rioting that left 17 dead last year in Istanbul’s Gazi neighborhood. The shattered glass has been replaced, the burned cars swept off the streets, the angry leftist slogans on walls painted over. What remains of those two Aliza Marcus • 8 min read
MER Article Turkey's Death Squads The emergence of legal Kurdish parties and the frequent occurrence of death squad-style political assassinations were two developments in Turkey’s political life during the 1990s. For the first time in Turkey’s history, there was a group in the parliament that represented -- if only implicitly -- Ku Martin Van Bruinessen • 12 min read
MER Article Turkey's Elections and the Kurds It is now a dozen years since the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, launched a protracted guerrilla war against the Turkish state. Today Turkey’s Kurdish crisis seems to be deadlocked. Both of the warring parties seem to have reached their limit in terms of their Hamit Bozarslan • 12 min read
MER Article Turkish Islam and National Identity Turkish Islam is tied up with Turkish nationalism in a unique fashion, the product of Turkish history and identity. Turkey’s brand of Islamist ideology challenges the secularist components and the European identification of Kemalism, historically the dominant form of Turkish nationalism, but retains Sami Zubaida • 17 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 1996) Abdalla, Ahmad. Parliamentary Elections in Egypt: What Elections? What Parliament? And Which Egypt? Amsterdam Middle East Papers 1/3 (Amsterdam, 1995). Adelson, Roger. London and the Invention of the Middle East: Money, Power and War, 1902-1922 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Appiah, The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Marion Farouk-Sluglett We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Marion Farouk-Sluglett on March 1 in Salt Lake City. Marion had been diagnosed with cancer just a year earlier, but up until a few weeks before her death she continued to teach and write. In early December, she traveled to Washington for the MESA meet Isam al-Khafaji, Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article Singerman, Avenues of Participation Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton, 1995). Clarisa Bencomo • 5 min read
MER Article A New World Order, A New Marcel Khalife Marcel Khalife has always demanded a certain respect for his formal compositions when performing, interspersing his most popular songs featuring the phenomenal voice of Omayma al-Khalil with more symphonic, purely instrumental pieces. But during his last tour of the United States this insistence on his status as a composer was Robert Blecher, Elliott Colla • 7 min read
