MER Article "They Say There Is Democracy in This Country?" “Unless you allow our sons, the journalists that you beat up, to come back here, you will have to move my dead body from this spot. They say there is democracy in this country -- where? As if what they do to our people inside weren’t enough, they drag and beat us up, 70-year-old mothers and all. If Altan Yalpat • 1 min read
MER Article Torture in Turkey Political prisoners in Turkey have long confronted a chilling reality: once arrested, they face almost certain torture. Based on thousands of reports over many years, Amnesty International has concluded that “anybody detained in the country for political reasons is at great risk of being tortured, a Martha Wenger • 1 min read
MER Article Turkey: Reading the Small Print In early April, the president of the banned Turkish Peace Association invited friends from END (European Nuclear Disarmament) and other peace groups across Europe to join him and the TPA executive in Istanbul in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the TPA. They planned to hold a pub John Mepham • 16 min read
MER Article The Fate of the Family Farm Samir Radwan and Eddy Lee, Agrarian Change in Egypt, An Anatomy of Rural Poverty (London: Croom Helm, for the International Labor Organisation, 1986). Alan Richards, ed., Food, States and Peasants, Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986). These t Karen Pfeifer • 8 min read
MER Article Turkey's Armaments Industries Turkish government officials project spending some $15 billion over the next 12 years to bring Turkey’s military forces up to NATO standards. This would make Turkey’s arms industry one of the major growth sectors over the next decade. Military industries now employ over 40,000 people directly. Once Ömer Karasapan • 16 min read
MER Article Turkey's Super-Rich Turkey’s big businessmen are getting the best press they have had for decades. Their profiles are a regular feature in a number of publications. Nokta, the country’s most popular weekly, runs a yearly feature on Turkey’s 100 richest families. Businessmen exude a new self-confidence in public and are Ömer Karasapan • 17 min read
MER Article Local Elections Set Turkey's Political Configuration The local elections held last March 25 decided the political future of Turkey -- barring any further military intervention -- until 1988, when the next general election is scheduled. This is why these elections were more important than the general election of November 6, 1983. This time all the poli Feroz Ahmad • 3 min read
MER Article The Immigrant Experience in Sweden Mahmut Baksi was born twice. The first time, in Kozluk, a village in Turkish Kurdistan, in 1944. His left-wing and nationalist activities brought him into conflict with his landowning family and with the Turkish authorities. Mahmut chose to leave, and he sought political asylum in Sweden in 1971, wh (Author not identified) • 10 min read
MER Article Kemal, Anatolian Tales Yaşar Kemal, Anatolian Tales (trans. Thilda Kemal) (London: Writers and Readers, 1983). As the problems of Third World countries have intensified, modern Third World writers, committed to a realistic literary style, have been playing an important role in providing a more comprehensive view of their Shouleh Vatanabadi • 2 min read
MER Article Turkish Regime Pursues Journalists On February 29, 1984, the Ankara correspondent for United Press International, Ismet Imset, was visited just before midnight by an acquaintance from the Security Forces. The visitor warned him that he and his wife (presumably along with their three-year-old child) were about to be taken into detenti (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Uncorking the Genie The awakening of interest in human rights and democracy in Turkey is very welcome and long overdue. It is striking, though, that most accounts of this problem completely omit the question of Cyprus. This is a serious lacunae in the analysis of Turkey, because Cyprus has been the proving ground for t Christopher Hitchens • 9 min read
MER Article Turkey's Economy Under the Generals In September 1981, on the first anniversary of the military coup, the Economist summarized the succession of events that set Turkey’s critically ailing economy of-the late 1970s on its new course. The first step was an economic package announced on January 24, 1980. Designed by the government of Sü Altan Yalpat • 27 min read
