Mission & Justice

Richard King; 5/7/08; Text; Richard King is a Perth-based literary critic.

Elvis Is Titanic: Classroom Tales from the Other Iraq; Ian Klaus; UWA Press

One has to wait until page 67 of Ian Klaus’s excellent book for an explanation of its peculiar title. Klaus, in Iraqi Kurdistan to teach US history and English, is searching for common ground with his students. Having already established the cultural ubiquity of the film Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, they move to a discussion of Western music. “Frank Sinatra?” No. “The Rolling Stones? Bob Dylan?” No recognition whatsoever. “Elvis Presley?” I muttered finally. Finally a knowing “Of course”, in the tone one uses to answer a ludicrous question. One student was very pleased with himself for thinking of the terms that would make the matter dear: “Of course we know who Elvis is. Elvis is Titanic. He is like Titanic of music.”

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5/6/08

Turkey’s highest court has ruled that Islamic headscarves cannot be allowed at universities. The decision is a defeat for the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which tried to allow the wearing of scarves as a matter of religious and personal freedom. The verdict of the constitutional court was issued on Thursday and says that amendments passed by parliament in February violated the secular principles of the constitution. Some observers think the verdict may bode ill for the government in a separate case in which Turkey’s chief prosecutor is seeking to disband the AK Party because it is “the focal point of anti-secular activities”.

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30/5/08

Women who wear perfume outside of the house are immoral. This is the assertion of the Diyanet, the religious affairs department of Turkey, which has published a list of “do’s and don’ts” for women in the public behaviour, and in the sexual sphere. The long list has immediately raised strong criticisms from women’s rights groups. The Diyanet’s blacklist includes, among other things, a ban on unsupervised women appearing publicly with men, and the obligation to be always “adequately covered”. An institution of the Turkish government, the Diyanet is the highest Islamic religious authority of the nation, but it has no legal power; its various responsibilities include that of appointing imams. Although the AKP, the moderate Islamic party of prime minister Erdogan, does not have direct control over it, the initiative is raising concerns among the supporters of the secularist state, because of the fundamentalist direction in which it seems to be leading the country.

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29/5/08

Turkey’s military says its warplanes have attacked Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq. The military says the warplanes targeted 16 rebel positions in the Hakurk region, just across their shared border. It says Thursday’s raids were effective but was still assessing the damage inflicted on the rebel group. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has been fighting for self-rule in Turkey’s southeast since 1984. Turkey has this year launched several aerial attacks and one major ground operation against rebel bases across the border in Iraq.

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23/4/08

Turkish warplanes have hit Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq. At least four military jets bombed Kurdish separatist targets on Wednesday, a Turkish military source said, adding that no information on casualties was immediately available. Ahmed Danees, a rebel spokesman, said the strikes had taken place late on W ednesday afternoon in the northeast part of Iraq’s Arbil province, close to the Turkey-Iran border. Kurdish rebels, fighting for independence since 1984, have been seeking autonomy for Kurds in southeast Turkey

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Tom Keneally; 7/2/08

Recently SBS screened a documentary that analysed Turkish television as a reflection of the concerns of the Turkish people, caught as they are between the blandishments of the US and the European Union, and less secular Muslim regimes to the east. Turks like to be seen as living in an advanced state, despite, for example, their Government’s persecution of novelist Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year. In any case, the program revealed that the most controversial show on Turkish TV was a contemporary drama about a Greek boy who falls in love with a Turkish girl. Their respective families treat their intention to marry as a calamity perhaps worse than death.

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