I meant to write this entry last week, but my own laziness coupled with the fact that I had midterms in both of my classes on the 22nd and the 27th got in my way. Let's just say I'm aiming for quality over quantity in this journal.
Unfortunately, I don't have any updates on Cellat. However, a few weeks ago, there was a protest in Taksim Square (which is only a short bus ride from Boğaziçi) of the current censorship laws. It obviously wouldn't be appropriate to participate, and it only occurred to me the next day that I could just go and watch. That is probably my biggest regret about my entire trip to Turkey. Anywho, I do have a couple comments regarding the protest based on what I've read in the news.
First, a comment about numbers. The OpenNet Initiative's post on the protest claims that “thousands” of people were involved in the protest. While there doesn't appear to be a source in the post for that number, it may well be from a post in Cyberlaw Blog (which is on ONI's blogroll) where a reporter at the protest states that there were “approximately 2000” protesters at the march. However, the articles in Hürriyet and Today's Zaman say that the number of protesters was close to a thousand and in the hundreds, respectively. I'm not trying to minimize the protest, but I am more inclined to believe the numbers from these two newspapers, especially Hürriyet's. Doğan Media Group (which owns Hürriyet) has had quite a feud with the Turkish government, and I can't see any reason they'd want to downplay the size of the protest.
Second, I'm a little concerned about the way the protestors seem to view their side of this issue. The press statement read at Galatasaray Square stated that “The Internet is the good news of a full attentive utopia of democracy being possible without a hierarchy.“ I hope that this does not reflect how the anti-censorship people plan to “organize” their movement. Just because the new Web 2.0 platforms have made it much easier to organize large-scale grassroots protests does not mean that fundamental facts about leadership and movements are now obsolete. Evgeny Morozov made this point much more eloquently than I just did in a talk at re:publica 2010 and, to paraphrase him, everyone can't be Atatürk. If Turkey is going to stop blocking parts of the internet, it will take something like what Joost Lagendijk described at the end of a really good op-ed in Hürriyet: “Why not think out of the box and imagine a coalition between the platform, President Abdullah Gül,...and main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu who...could take the lead for once in defending freedom of speech and make Internet freedom one of his campaign promises?”
When it comes to real-life internet usage in Turkey, I just spoke with one of my Turkish friends, and I mentioned that I could access Youtube without a proxy. I also passed on the rumor that the Telecommunications Bureau (TIB) has an exemption for university networks. She hadn't heard anything about this. When Lagendijk calls the TIB “an opaque body that is difficult to control”, this is just another example.
I'd like to finish this post with a little discussion about the use of the headscarf as I have observed it here in Turkey. Journeyman Pictures has a short video on the use of the hijab in universities, and while it doesn't name Boğaziçi as the school where a short-lived headscarf ban was relaxed after student protests 2 years ago, it's obvious from the footage. I want to speak to one of the arguments made in the video in favor of the ban, that essentially allowing the hijab in a country that is 99% Muslim will cause young women who don't wear the hijab to wear it due to peer pressure. As I said, it has been two years since the headscarf ban was lifted at Boğaziçi, which, by the way, had never had a headscarf ban before. While I only just started paying attention to this when I saw the Journeyman Pictures video a few days ago, of the approximately seven girls in my Operating Systems class; I have never seen one come in wearing a hijab. While there are girls on campus who wear it, they seem to be fairly well mixed in with those who do not. I for one am glad that I came to a university where all students can come together in support of religious freedom...and the BBC would like to apologize for how sappy that statement sounded. The appropriate people have been sacked.
I'm roasting here. Constant 80+ degree weather is no fun when you don't have ac.
PS. Since I had way too much time on my hands, I looked up the fan pages of a couple political/religious figures on Facebook to compare them with Atatürk's following. Keep in mind, this was done somewhat quickly and in some cases (poor Ike) I'm sure I didn't find the page with the most fans. Here I have the figure and the number of fans
Sarah Palin: 2,015,560
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: 1,835,170
Martin Luther King, Jr.: 790,990
Jesus: 148,097
Ronald Reagan: 59,189
Abraham Lincoln: 31,419
Bobby Kennedy: 24,962
George Washington: 18,829
John F. Kennedy: 8,825
Franklin D. Roosevelt: 6,254
Dwight Eisenhower: 597
First, I see this as just one way to look at the fact that there is no figure in American political history that can be even remotely compared to Atatürk. George Washington was only one of the Founding Fathers, and he has been dead since 1799. Second, let's hope Atatürk catches up to Sarah Palin.
PPS. Non-Mainahs can click here for an explanation of being "from away".
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