something turkish

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:08:02 +0300

(via Turkey Immigration and In-Migration Urbanization Rate is...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:58:52 +0300

(via Turkey Immigration and In-Migration Urbanization Rate is 70%)

Turkey Immigration and In-Migration Urbanization Rate is 70%

Muslims from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan flock to Istanbul to get good jobs in a Muslim-friendly and economically viable city. Turkey is 70% urban while the rest of the world is only 51% urban.

Mollatasi Street in Istanbul reminds me of a 1940s set for a movie about immigration. The street is choked with immigrants primarily because the detention center for immigrants is in this neighborhood and many of them are waiting for family members to be allowed into the country. These people often settle near where they are released. This looks like the old Istanbul before the two million turned into twelve million. Turkey is primarily affected by internal migration and is also a spinning top for migration to Europe from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Sudanese go first to Libya and then on to Turkey. Turkey is very late to the party as far as effectively managing immigration, which is one of the factors they must deal with for EU membership. They are still operating with a 1951 law that limits immigration to only wealthy west European countries. Meanwhile Africa receives more refugees than Europe. 250,000 foreigners seek a better life by moving through Turkey, but few want to stay. But according to the head UNHCR immigration lawyer, if you are Muslim you tend to stay longer.

Part 3 of what has inadvertently turned into a series on Turkish women in academia. New APPS’s...

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:03:53 +0300

Part 3 of what has inadvertently turned into a series on Turkish women in academia.

New APPS’s analysis of ‘why’ women are better represented in Turkish academia than elsewhere:

04 May 2013

Why are there so many female academics in Turkey?

Feminist philosophers drew attention to this THE article on gender equality in academia. The article highlights striking differences between countries on gender participation in academia, with a 47% female participation rate in Turkey, and an abysmal 12.7% in Japan as two extremes (see the map through the link). For most of my academic career, I have studied and worked in Belgium, where gender participation is very poor (it’s one of the red countries on the map). Only 13% of full professors in Belgium are women. In the EU, only Cyprus and Luxembourg do worse. In this post, I want to examine causes for the disparity (the high % in Turkey; the low % in Belgium), drawing amongst others on personal experience, and on this highly relevant article on Turkish academia.

First, some preliminary puzzling observations. Turkey has overall a low participation of women in the labor market (e.g., only 28% compared to Belgium’s 48% - that is not very high, but significantly higher than Turkey). Turkey scores lower than Belgium on the gender inequality index (i.e., more gender inequality): Belgium is ranked 12, Turkey 68. Turkey also has a lower proportion of females graduating from college (42.9%) than the EU countries, including Belgium.

So why does Turkey have better academic representation of women, even compared to countries with a high egalitarianism, such as Norway or Sweden? Healey et al. rely on historical data, qualitative interviews and comparative data analysis, finding that there are various historical and contextual factors at work.

There is a long history of state ideology that promoted increased participation in the Turkish academic labor force. In the 1920s, the new Turkish republic sought to secularize and reform higher education, leading to an entry of female lecturers in Turkish higher education as early as 1920-1930. Although there were few explicit gender equality policies in place, the Kemalist principles promoted gender equality against a strong tradition of sex segregation originating from the Ottoman times. Compare this to Belgium. In Leuven, girls were only allowed to be students in 1920, and of course there were no female lecturers at that time. It was only in the 1960s that higher education became generally accepted as a choice for young women. I do not have data for when female lecturers (all levels) appeared in Belgium, but anecdotally this seems not earlier than the 1970s. So the historical perception of women as capable academics is far more culturally entrenched in Turkey than in Belgium , and there is a much longer history of women in academia.
In Turkey, academia was and still is regarded as a female-appropriate career choice. As Healey et al. explain “academic career were historically and socially constructed and sex-typed as ‘safe’ and ‘proper’ choices for graduate women in Turkey. Women were socially encouraged to take up professional employment, as opposed to entrepreneurial or commercial careers, since these were considered harmonious with the potent image of ‘a respectful Turkish woman’” (p. 253). Interestingly, Turkey has a lower disparity between men and women who graduate in science subjects than most EU countries. So gender stereotypes (that women would be less capable of doing research than men, or less qualified for some forms of research, like physics, philosophy or mathematics) do not play a large role in Turkey as they do in Belgium. In Belgium today, unfortunately, there is still a widespread perception that women are not as capable academics as men. This is hard to quantify, but I have talked to many male academics who keep on insisting on innate gender differences, backing their claims up with dubious evolutionary psychological research that seems to indicate that women are less ambitious or have different minds that make them less suitable for academic research, etc. Many senior male academics I know accept the innate gender difference story, and thus even feel that policies to increase women’s participation in Belgian academia would be at the expense of quality. In fact, whenever there is a debate on affirmative action, I often hear the worry that any form of affirmative action will lead to a decrease in quality and excellence.
A significant expansion of the universities in Turkey starting the 1990s (with the number of state universities going from 29 to 76 between 1990 and 2004) created increased demand for academics and opportunities for career mobility for both men and women in Turkish academia. There was an increase of 75% full professors, many of those positions were filled by women. In Belgium, the gender gap in academia is decreasing, but unfortunately, economic recession in the EU has markedly decreased the number of new hires. Retiring (mostly male) professors are usually replaced not by new faculty, but by temporary lecturers. So even if more women are hired, it will take a very long time at this rate to close the gender gap.
The promotion system in Turkish tertiary education is more transparent compared to other countries. Vacancies for full professor have to be advertised, and criteria for promotion to full professor are clear and transparent, with a well-defined list of criteria. These do not make any explicit reference to gender equality, but it nevertheless results in greater equality of access to full professorial posts than in many other countries, where such standardization is rare. This transparency compares very favorably to both the Netherlands or Belgium, where many full professors are recruited through closed procedures, i.e., the position is never advertised. Many people are perpetually stuck at the level of assistant professor, despite an impressive research portfolio. Lack of transparency in hiring and promotion, even when supplemented by gender-equality promoting policies, is to the detriment of women. When Dutch departments try to fill a research chair or other prestigious position they look for people in their immediate network, and those people tend to be men. In Belgium and the Netherlands, even if a faculty position is formally advertised, there is often already a favored candidate who will take up the position, often someone who has been groomed for the position for years before it becomes vacant (e.g., a postdoc at the same institution). Unfortunately, men seem to have more access to this form of privilege than women. Other, more transparent procedures such as the Odysseus scheme also seem to favor men disproportionally. This scheme offers prestigious chairs at Belgian universities to foreigners, or to people who have established their academic career elsewhere, through a competition, with a generous start up grant. But in order to compete, a Belgian university has to sponsor one’s application (i.e., in practice, a department has to nominate a candidate). The importance of informal networks here again favors men disproportionately, as can be seen in the recent list of awarded grants (of 59 grants awarded, only 6 appear to be to women, only 10%)
The qualitative interviews of Healey et al. revealed that women academics often relied on employed domestic help. Many academic women were married to academic partners, and relying on domestic help allowed them to cope with the traditional gender patterns that are still prevalent in Turkey. Nevertheless, Turkish people hold traditional views on gender division of labor. By contrast (and this is hard to quantify), Belgian women are still expected to work half time or take a step back once they’ve had a baby. Relying on domestic help, like Turkish women, is not regarded in a favorable light. As a female academic once told me, “I’ve dismissed my cleaning lady, because I felt that I should be doing my own housework. It’s more difficult to combine with an academic career, but I feel that this is something I ought to do myself”. Similarly, another female academic with several children, who was forced to quit her academic aspirations for an administrative position said “I felt I could not be a good mother to them when they needed me most. I kept on feeling my research was getting in the way of my being there for them”. Undeniably, this dilemma plays for many women, but may be more starky felt by Belgian female academics than by Turkish ones, because relying on external help for the household is regarded as less appropriate for Belgian women.

In sum, the Turkish situation indicates that explicit policies promoting gender equality alone, although laudable, are not sufficient (Turkish academia even now has few such policies in place, whereas Belgium has many). It seems rather that transparency in hiring and promotion, a tradition of women in academia, a perception of women as capable academics are very important factors.

(visual aid for previous post, which featured a report from...

Sat, 04 May 2013 13:10:00 +0300

(visual aid for previous post, which featured a report from times higher education showing proportions of men and women in university staffs: red=farthest away from 50-50, purple being nearest to 50-50, and the others filling in the scale in prismatic order)

THE Global Gender Index | Features | Times Higher Education

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:53:17 +0300

THE Global Gender Index | Features | Times Higher Education:

In this year’s Time’s Higher Education Gender Index, Turkey was top ranked in terms of [lack of] gender disparity in the faculty of its top universities:

“One country, however, comes close to achieving an equal gender split. In Turkey, 47.5 per cent of staff at the top five universities are female.”

L’Aigle Studio, Turkey, RPPC, C1920s

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:46:54 +0300

L’Aigle Studio, Turkey, RPPC, C1920s

Sabiha Gökçen

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:57:23 +0300

Sabiha Gökçen

via kozmikova: çocuklar sorun çözüyor

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:56:33 +0300

via kozmikova: çocuklar sorun çözüyor

(via Trinity College Cambridge - College Website)

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:53:00 +0300

(via Trinity College Cambridge - College Website)

Towels. Towels are something Turkish.

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:33:55 +0300

Towels. Towels are something Turkish.

Wedding portraits, by One Man’s Treasure

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:43:40 +0200

Wedding portraits, by One Man’s Treasure

The bridge in Turkey that vanished overnight In an act of great audacity, a bunch of thieves have...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:01:46 +0200

The bridge in Turkey that vanished overnight
In an act of great audacity, a bunch of thieves have stolen a whole bridge in one night. And they are not the only criminals with big targets

Metal bridges beware, you are a target for thieves. Photograph: Alamy

Are you in the market for a 22-tonne bridge? Is there an 82ft gap that you’re aching to span? If so, and assuming you like to play fast and loose with the law, you might want to get over to the Kocaeli province ofTurkey where, earlier this month, audacious thieves stole an entire bridge overnight. It’s thought the miscreants intended to sell it for scrap metal; now villagers wanting to reach their orchards have to paddle across barefooted.

It’s not the first time thieves have displayed such ambition. Earlier this year half a bridge in India was stolen over the course of three days – the 40 thieves involved told a guard they had been contracted by the public works department, and blithely set up their cranes. Last year, in the Czech Republic, a 10-tonne railway bridge was stolen by a gang who pretended to be making way for a nifty new cycle route.

But the use of forged paperwork is somehow less impressive than making an enormous entity disappear in a blink. Full marks for this must go to thieves who flummoxed Jamaican police in 2008 by stealing an entire beach – making off with 500 truckloads of sand, and vanishing without trace.

Coffee and Nargile (by ookami_dou)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:59:16 +0200

Coffee and Nargile (by ookami_dou)

Istanbul 1981 (by Manfred Lentz)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:42:01 +0200

Istanbul 1981 (by Manfred Lentz)

Istanbul - sunset (by BüniD)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:19:03 +0200

Istanbul - sunset (by BüniD)

(via s i v i l s a n a t: manisa’da heykel örtüsü)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:30:19 +0200

(via s i v i l s a n a t: manisa’da heykel örtüsü)

via ileftmyheartinistanbul: Looking Cool (by...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:35:44 +0200

via ileftmyheartinistanbul: Looking Cool (by danielringold) IleftmyheartinIstanbul.com

Turkey: Trying to Impose an Abortion Ban in Fact, if Not in Name? February 13, 2013 - 3:05pm,...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:40:00 +0200

Turkey: Trying to Impose an Abortion Ban in Fact, if Not in Name?

February 13, 2013 - 3:05pm, by Dorian Jones

After public pressure forced him to back away from a head-on effort to drastically curtail abortion rights in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is resorting to back-door methods to get his way, women’s rights activists assert.

Turkey’s Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) stood at the forefront of a massivepublic campaign against the prime minister when, in 2012, he declared abortion to be murder and pledged to curtail its use. Abortion for medical or economic reasons was legalized in Turkey in 1983 for single women, while married women require their husband’s consent.

Although Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds a clear majority of seats in parliament, the politically savvy prime minister quickly detected that he was swimming against the tide of Turkish public opinion and stepped back from pursuing a ban.

But the WWHR, which has been closely monitoring access to abortion since the 2012 controversy broke out, now claims systematic efforts are being employed to curtail its use, and that the reports of such episodes are becoming increasingly frequent. “We know that all of Turkey’s clinics or hospitals which feel politically close to the prime minister are refusing abortions,” said the WWHR’s co-founder and president, Pınar Illkaracan.

While doctors, in the past, often performed abortions when women were beyond the legal time limit of 10 weeks into pregnancy, they rarely do so now. “Now we are hearing that doctors in private practice are being criminalized,” claimed Illkaracan, “Of course, both the doctor and the woman asking for the abortion are being criminalized.”

Despite repeated attempts by EurasiaNet.org, neither the Ministry of Health nor the Ministry of Justice responded to requests for comment.

While the government has stated that the legal time period for an abortion will remain at 10 weeks (for rape victims and those with life-threatening medical conditions, the limit is 20 weeks), one activist collective, Kürtaj Haktır, Karar Kadınların (“Abortion Is a Right, The Choice Belongs to Women”) asserts that procedural obstacles are effectively reducing that time-frame to eight weeks.

At a January news conference in Istanbul, the group, which is running a write-in campaign about problems with access to a legal abortion, also cited a host of examples of women facing abuse and interrogation by hostile doctors. One woman, who had an abortion at a state clinic in Istanbul, wrote recently to the prominent Hürriyet Newspaper columnist Ayse Arman about her own experience.

“I learned, to my horror, that they would not give any anesthetics, tranquilizers, or pain killers – nothing at all – while performing an abortion,” the woman recounted. “ I will never forget the physical and emotional trauma I experienced at that moment.”

The graphic nature of Arman’s column caused more than a stir, adding fuel to the debate, with allegations that such brutal treatment is part of a state policy of discouraging abortions. Some activists even contend that such measures could amount to a ban in fact, if not in law.

The government has drafted legislation to reform the abortion law, but still has not revealed the wording of the proposed amendments – a lack of information that only contributes to a growing sense of anxiety among many Turkish women.

“We believe they will target private hospitals where women have more freedom to have access to an abortion,” commented Abortion Is a Right activist Ayse Duzkan. “There could even be almost a ban on abortions in state hospitals. There will be extra limitations for unmarried women, as this will be an attempt to stop unmarried sex, to which they [AKP leaders] are opposed.”

There are also fears that the law could revisit last year’s proposal that any woman wanting an abortion be required to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus. A letter written to the campaign website “Abortion Is a Choice” gives an account of a doctor in a private clinic in Istanbul “without warning” compelling a female patient to “listen to what he called the ‘baby’s heartbeat.’”

Against that backdrop, Turkish women’s rights groups say they are now preparing for a prolonged struggle. “Women need the right to a free, healthy abortion. I think we are going to see many demonstrations and protests,” predicted activist Duzkan.

Activists also say that any government attempt to restrict abortion will simply drive abortion underground, raising the risk of more deaths from self-induced abortions. “Women will never let go of their abortion right — one way or another,” declared Filiz Ayla, a medical doctor who spoke at the Abortion Is a Right news conference.

Ottoman Map of Beijing,1900 (via Afternoon Map: The...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:07:00 +0200

Ottoman Map of Beijing,1900 (via Afternoon Map: The Well-Protected Domains Meet the Forbidden City: a map of Beijing)

(via Afternoon Map: Trams and Transport in Istanbul)

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:45:38 +0200

(via Afternoon Map: Trams and Transport in Istanbul)