NEWS

In the light of what we know so far, this book can be described as "the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Ottoman Empire". In her foreword, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu also states that it is generally the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Middle East. So who was Vartuhi Kalantar? What caused her to be tried in the Martial Court and imprisoned in the General Prison?

She is among those who stand in front of, among those who resist, in the midst of an attack that forces children and 80-year-old people to work, leaves young people alone towards a pitch-black future, pushes women either to their homes or to unregistered jobs, and in short, workers' rights are being scythed day by day. Neslihan Acar, 38, is the cahirperson of DGD-SEN, the independent union representing warehouse, port, shipyard and maritime workers. When we add the other strikes, vigils and protests that have sprouted under the umbrella of other unions affiliated to UMUT-SEN, 24 hours of her life are filled with this struggle.

The Constitutional Court (AYM) in Türkiye, has ruled that the Kayseri Governorship’s ban on the Hrant Dink Foundation’s conference planned to be held in Kayseri on October 18-19, 2019, constitutes a “violation of the right to organize meetings and demonstrations.”

The other damage of over-tourism is at the economic level. Those who have experience in Turkey's tourism hotspots will know that this is a factor that drives up prices in everything from services to health; the local economy, temporarily inflated by tourism, spends the rest of the year suffering from this damage. Accommodating so many people creates a different range of problems: Rental prices generally increase due to houses rented to tourists in various forms. This increase can reach a level that forces city residents to migrate to other "tourism-free" regions. Although mass tourism may periodically appear to be an area of employment for those living in that region, it is not reflected on the local residents as the tourism sector is based on the “tourism” and transfer of cheap labor at the national level. All over the world, the tourism industry is characterized by labor exploitation and conditions that disregard workers' rights and sometimes even human dignity.

My mother also witnessed the September 6th-7th (1955) pogrom when she was a teenager. Sometimes she would tell stories about how the mob passing in front of their house in Kumkapı Nişanca and headed for the student dormitory where the local Greek girls were staying at the other end of the street. She would always stop talking there and wouldn’t continue. I wouldn’t ask either.

The award will be presented, as every year, on Hrant Dink’s birthday, September 15th.

As soon as the government's debate on “euthanasia” of stray animals, an irrational concept for this issue, became law and was published in the Official Gazette, news of massacres started coming from all over Turkey. The images of dogs and cats tortured to death are blood-curdling. Even more frightening is the social consent behind these scenes and what they may lead to over time. We talked about the subject with psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Specialist Dr. Didem Aksüt, because we need it.

Social media is a big cauldron, and a cauldron full of useless, deliberately manipulative messages. Although it is necessary to be visible and stand out, prioritizing its requirements can also cripple such digital activism. In this sense, Yaşar Adanalı's suggestion is that rather than relying on the power of a collective account that brings everyone's experience together, more residents/activists should produce video content for this purpose and the resulting pressure should lead institutions and initiatives working in the field to change their communication strategies. Programs that have a community-building perspective and work like an "impact academy" will thus feed digital activism.

As we left the July 8-14 Nonbinary Awareness Week behind, we talked to Şükrü and Ceylin from Demir Leblebi about the difficulties LGBTIQ+s face in education and housing from a queer perspective

The report, which is the result of an eight-day field research in the Büyük Menderes Basin, goes deeper by focusing on a specific region, but it does not stop there. It also has a perspective that reaches from this river to the seas of the world; for example, it draws a pattern of environmental destruction with lines drawn from a village in Aydın to the global scale. Scientific data strengthens the report, but the report transforms the narrative into a “story” without drowning the reader in data, sometimes like a diary, sometimes with notches from literature and psychology.