this week in turkey (bad news and good)
The jealous earth couldn't be content to shake the Himalayas alone; today there were three fairly strong earthquakes (the largest 5.9) just off the Aegean coast of Turkey. They gave İzmir a good shaking but caused only minimal damage and injuries, and no deaths that I know of so far. People in the coastal areas are apparently very scared right now, though, having been watching coverage of the Pakistan quake all week, and many have spent the day outside, refusing to re-enter buildings they fear to be unsafe.
Also, there was an explosion at a petrol station here in İstanbul on Saturday that is thought to have been caused by a car bomb (albeit a rather inept one, as there were only five injuries and no deaths.) It follows another explosion last week in an apartment building, which apparently occured when a bomb went off during assembly. (I've gotten oddly used to this; there were several bombings while I was here last summer too, most of which caused few or no casualties. The domestic militants--i.e., Kurdish and extremist leftist groups--that set off bombs in Turkey seem incapable of or unwilling to cause really widespread causalties; only the Al Qaeda-linked bombings in autumn 2003 killed large numbers.)
On the bright(er) side, though, the authorities assure us that the kuş gribi--bird flu--is now under control, after a massive cullling operation in the part of Western Anatolia where sick birds were found last week. That hasn't stopped me from going around telling my flatmates I've come down with it, though.
Finally, a unequivocal victory--the state prosecutor has very firmly rejected the Ankara deputy governor's attempt to shut down LGBT group KAOS GL, which is a major triumph for queer rights in Turkey. And a bitter victory: the brothers of Güldünya Tören, who was shot to death in an "honor killing" last year for having a child out of wedlock, have been found guilty of her murder, and under new, strict laws that disallow "honor" as a mitigating factor, have been sentenced to life imprisonment and an eleven-year term respectively. Their unprecedented punishment is the result of many years of feminist campaigning (and of recent EU-encouraged legal reforms) and is a clear sign that honor killings--which still persist, especially in rural and conservative southeastern regions--will no longer incur mere slap-on-the-wrist penalties.
Also, there was an explosion at a petrol station here in İstanbul on Saturday that is thought to have been caused by a car bomb (albeit a rather inept one, as there were only five injuries and no deaths.) It follows another explosion last week in an apartment building, which apparently occured when a bomb went off during assembly. (I've gotten oddly used to this; there were several bombings while I was here last summer too, most of which caused few or no casualties. The domestic militants--i.e., Kurdish and extremist leftist groups--that set off bombs in Turkey seem incapable of or unwilling to cause really widespread causalties; only the Al Qaeda-linked bombings in autumn 2003 killed large numbers.)
On the bright(er) side, though, the authorities assure us that the kuş gribi--bird flu--is now under control, after a massive cullling operation in the part of Western Anatolia where sick birds were found last week. That hasn't stopped me from going around telling my flatmates I've come down with it, though.
Finally, a unequivocal victory--the state prosecutor has very firmly rejected the Ankara deputy governor's attempt to shut down LGBT group KAOS GL, which is a major triumph for queer rights in Turkey. And a bitter victory: the brothers of Güldünya Tören, who was shot to death in an "honor killing" last year for having a child out of wedlock, have been found guilty of her murder, and under new, strict laws that disallow "honor" as a mitigating factor, have been sentenced to life imprisonment and an eleven-year term respectively. Their unprecedented punishment is the result of many years of feminist campaigning (and of recent EU-encouraged legal reforms) and is a clear sign that honor killings--which still persist, especially in rural and conservative southeastern regions--will no longer incur mere slap-on-the-wrist penalties.
posted by kitabet at 1:35 PM
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