Turkey: wordpress-blogs banned

Aber man wird nicht sagen:
Die Zeiten waren finster
Sondern: Warum haben ihre Dichter geschwiegen?
(Bertolt Brecht)

However one will not say:
Those times were dark
But: Why did their poets keep quiet?


Replacing poets by bloggers, it's easy to know what to do after having read the following:

Turkish bloggers are being banned from access to wordpress.com!

There does not exist any official statement, yet, nor did Turkish
newspapers like TDN and Today's Zaman mention the fact.

For the beginning, a little more information here and here and here.

Turkey and Europe: The Way Ahead

The International Crisis Group has published its Europe Report No. 184.

The "Executive Summary and Recommendations" you find

in English here

in Turkish here


The full report is available as a pdf-file.

Man ... kind ... less

Writing this post took five days.

Right now, before setting the link,
by reading this article
for the third time since Monday,
suddenly I felt what ought to be done:

Cancelling all I had written.

Each word an empty one.

Güle gidin!

Being distracted from posting by my closest friend who unfortunately managed to implicate me in a discussion without any emotional blockade about prophets, quad negations, pleonasms and redudancy, I leave the field to the first Flann O'Brian Prize Winner.

Your turn, Mr. Bekdil!


And now
The Peace of the Night.

Güle gidin!

False prophet's surprise

In the dusk a man entered a village and claimed to be a prophet. The countrymen did not believe him, yet. "Prove it", they demanded.

The man pointed at the opposite wall and asked: "If this wall spoke and affirmed I am a prophet, would you believe me, then?"

By Allah, then we shall believe you", they shouted.

The man turned to the wall, put forth one hand and commanded: "Speak, oh wall!"

And the wall began to speak: "This man is no prophet. He's fooling you. He is no prophet."


As to my knowledge there does not exist an English version of Zülfü Livaneli's "Engereğingözüdeki kamaşma", published 1996 by Can Yayinlari Ltd. Sti, Istanbul,

I tried to translate the perhaps most amazing and sophisticated beginning of all novels I came to read within the past couple of years.
The author may consider my humble attempt a kind of hommage.

No need to dig up Gogol

Just to make sure that Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol will not posthumously being accused of insulting Turkishness, and - in order to serve his sentence - digged up:
When writing his "Diary of a Madman", Gogol did neither think of any future Ex-leader of the CHP who's tongue would be as swift as six arrows as long as its not about responsible politics, nor of any future Ex-Prime Minister who would call people complaining about having no water for eleven days, exaggerating; nor any future Ex-Mayor of Ankara who would rather ask those still believing in a God to pray for rain instead of retiring and henceforth humbly living in his water-tanker; nor any prosecutor keen to always - or at least ONCE - find his way in the limelight; nor . . .
[ ah, what a pity the English language does not know the word Profilneurotiker!]

Having written this, you may leave this site to learn a little more about the Turkish art of self-irony in general and in particular, here.