Turkish Accent

A Gift for Obama from a Turkish girl

2009-04-05T12:51:00.000-04:00

President Obama will be in Turkey tomorrow. It is the biggest news item for a few days. Police is getting ready, municipality is getting ready, reporters are getting ready. You can feel that tomorrow is an important day, if you are living in Istanbul.

One Turkish citizen, a girl named Alya decided to prepare a gift for Mr. Obama and his wife. It's a handmade lamp. They call it the "Light of Hope". I liked the idea and the way it is presented and I hope it will attract the attention of Obama's crew.

You can visit agiftforobama.com to see it.

A Gift For OBAMA - Light of hope! from alya esat on Vimeo.

Local elections in Turkey

2009-03-29T16:43:00.000-04:00

It seems like the democratic arena gets better with this elections. AKP, the religious party in power had 541 municipalities (12 of them being metropolitan areas and 46 of them province capitals). Current situtation indicates that the number of AKP municipalities will drop to 495 (10 metropolitan and 36 capital).

On the other hand, the main opposition party CHP will increase its presence from 138 municipalities (2 metropolitan, 6 capital) to 183 (3 merto area, 10 capital).

Also a third party will emerge during the local elections: MHP (nationalist party). They double their presence from 76 to 135 municipalities. One of them is a metropolitan area municipality in the south of Turkey. It is ironic that the only nationalist metropolitan city is the home of Incirlik Air Base, that is used by the USA.

Turkish election results 2009

2009-03-29T04:36:00.000-04:00

I am quite shocked to see that many people are searching for "Turkish elections" (and Google indexes my blog so quickly.) I decided to update this post as results start to come in.

Now, voting is open for Turkish Local Elections 2009, which will elect mayors for all the municipalities in Turkey. Drinking and selling alcohol is prohibited today, to make sure that voters are sober :)

Turkish elections 2009

2009-03-28T17:39:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow there are local elections in Turkey. I would like to say that that something will change, but it isn't likely. All the big municipalities (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa) will remain in the same domains maybe with smaller margins this time.

There are mainly three parties in the arena: AKP (religious, populist) with more than 50% share, CHP (Ataturk's party with an unwanted, unsuccessful current leader) with 25% share, and MHP (nationalist party) with around 15% share. In such a democratic arena, AKP will win in almost every city because of the undemocratic, mass dominance.

Hello World!

2009-01-05T03:53:00.000-05:00

I believe in local culture and local values. That's why I insist on writing and blogging in Turkish, my mother language. However, sometimes I feel the urge to write something in English so that a greater audience will hear my uber-important comments.

This blog will include my humble opinions about Turkey and Turkish online culture.