asiaminor:

aleynasaidso:

asiaminor:

asiaminor:

goes to show that victims of terrorism who were just passing by are “martyrs” while victims who were drinking and celebrating new year’s eve in a nightclub are “dead”. everyone who endorses ideas about celebrating new year’s eve being against islam has blood on their hands, from the presidency of religious affairs to politicians to demonstrators

like this is an attack on a lifestyle and even though i am not a rich person who goes to nightclubs i (and everyone i know) are from a kind of lifestyle that was attacked (secular, not against alcohol consumption, non religious or accepting of atheism, valuing culture and arts, lgbt or pro-lgbt rights, etc) like we are all considered immoral and deserving of punishment

not saying victims of the last attack should also be called martyrs obviously but the way they talk about all deaths are political and it’s very transparent and again, this is more reminiscent of fascism than most things

No but on CNN they were called Martyrs, anyone who survives a violent attack is. I’m sorry for anyone you know who’s had to experience discrimination for their personal views, I wish they’d understand that Islam has never said “If they don’t think like you, kill them”. People are just so stupid and the amount of radicalists in every political group are rising and sometimes I feel like there’s no hope :/

Anyone who survives an attack is not a martyr. You are not a martyr (nor dead) if you survive anyway, that could make you a gazi at most. By martyr I mean the word “şehit” which has religious/nationalist connotations and I saw many sources which refer to them as “ölü” as I have followed the news all day on TV and the Internet. It is political whether they call someone şehit or ölü.

People who die in terrorist attacks are not şehit. They are not supposed to be, they were not fighting a war, they did not die in battle but they were murdered as a result of negligience and poor govt policy (and also terrorism). The choice of the word şehit romanticises this death and makes it look like a holy and admirable act to be murdered, absolving government of responsibility to an extent.

This has nothing to do with what Islam says and does not say, and it’s not something that exists in all groups. You do not see other groups gaining social dominance and a free pass to be violent in the past few years. The results of political Islamism cannot be separated from Islam itself, that is simplistic and helps nobody. People are not stupid, they are hateful and violent, and they are being instrumentalised and they gain social dominance through the suppression of dissidence (“alternative” lifestyle choices/tastes/allegiances = political dissidence in a fascist/totalitarian society) and polarisation of society (the deepening and militarising of existing social cleavages). It is not discrimination or whatever, it is literally the fact that we are not allowed to live as we wish anymore.

“I was subjected to violence and sexual abuse. I was interrogated day and night for eight days. They [police officers] questioned me while they were drunk. When the court process began, I was sent to prison. Later, they put me in a cell, in solitary confinement… I’m afraid I’ll be forgotten here.”

Read these words not with your eyes but with your heart, your wisdom and your conscience, for these words are from a letter by 24-year-old Ayşenur Parıldak, a reporter from the now-closed Turkish daily, Zaman. She has been under arrest since 11 August, 2016.

She is lucky in a sense, having managed to secretly send a letter to a Turkish daily via her lawyer and make her desperate situation heard by the outside world. Dozens of her colleagues are silently living out their lives behind bars, under very poor conditions and under ever-increasing government persecution across Turkey.

Political oppression of Turkey’s media and Turkish journalists has always existed and has often been covered by many media outlets around the world. However, the mass closure of newspapers and TV stations, the arrests of journalists, editors and columnists and the allegations of ruthless torture in prisons have come to the fore only in the recent past.

cennetelmasi:

whenever something like the bombing yesterday happens in turkey most people go “this government turned turkey into a middle eastern country!” and like, it’s strange to see how people reject any classification as middle east, not because of any of the problems with the classification “middle east” but because they associate it with chaos and terror.

and this is interesting because it shows the image they have the image of turkey as a modern, relatively stable, peaceful and westernized country, a country they would more easily classify as european than not. and the way they see it, it got worse over time. which isn’t completely wrong, as in it has been getting progressively  more unstable over the past few years, but imo this isn’t due to the fact that it was okay and peaceful always, but the country had enjoyed a brief time of safety and peace before the recent rise in such events. 

also, people make this comment regarding attacks in the west of the country, but not about the state and military terror that’s going on in cizre, sur, and other towns right now where kurdish people are being killed and tortured, and this has been going on in varying forms and extents since the state was established. i don’t think i’ve heard anyone call the inhumanities in the east “becoming middle eastern”. maybe they consider conflicts in kurdish areas as “usual” as they’ve been consistently happening and not an anomaly, not something damaging their view of their country. like, they see state violence against kurds as usual, as a part of the regime, almost as necessary?

and i don’t have a particular point here, but i think it’s really interesting to see how people disconnect themselves from “the middle east” because of the connotations of the term and a false perception of their country that’s being hurt now, and how they distinguish between deaths and tragedies, and their mourning, which is reflected in their rhetoric. also about identifying as european or middle eastern, and not being fully a part of either, and the problematic classification of “middle east” in itself..

tomarzatsi:

i hate turkishness, to be clear, and the politicized identity that exists to the physical and cultural detriment of other peoples, that many people subscribe to. i hate turkification, the imposition of a supposed superior identity on others and the elimination via genocide and ethnic cleansing of those who cannot conform. i hate turkey, a country whose original sin is great and unrecognized, a country that owes its wealth and homogeneity to the destruction of entire peoples.

sapphicidyll:

• highest electoral threshold in the world
  
• worldwide number 1 in imprisoned journalists
  
• highest number of cases against it in the european court of human rights
  
• high incidence of police violence
• continuing hate crimes against ethnic and religious minorities
• genocide denial
• iç güvenlik yasası 
• mandatory military service for men (unless u can pay tons of money)
• no proper legal framework or implementation to prevent democracy, (x)
• anti lgbt hate crimes, ex: police attack 2015 pride parade
• internet censorship and monitoring

i have more points to add and more sources but like. u get the point :))

tomarzatsi:

this is the third in a string of high-profile attacks on leftist demonstrations in turkey–first a hdp rally in diyarbakır was bombed (4 dead; more than 100 injured); then a leftist (pro-kurdish, pro-kobanê) rally in suruç was targeted (33 dead; 104 injured); now, a peace rally (supported by the hdp) in ankara was the site of a terrible massacre (87 dead so far; 180+ injured so far). terrorists in turkey have gone out of their way to kill (and let’s be honest here, there is a common denominator to all of these attacks) kurds. it is more dangerous than ever to be kurdish in turkey. kurdish persons living in turkey and turkish-occupied northern kurdistan are victims of hate crimes (like the beating and humiliation of a kurdish man in muğla) and murders (warning: extremely graphic images at the link). anti-kurdish racism and violence are part of the very fabric of turkish political culture, and have been since the declaration of the turkish republic in 1923.