Comments on: A Friendly E-Mail

By: HER

HER — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:50:46 +0000

[corrected version - sorry for my extraordinary English skills:-)]

p.s.: To be less egocentric: With "daily life and reality" I ment the daily life and reality of individuals which do not accept the Gülen Way of Life as their own concept of living (e.g.: Homosexuals, Agnostics, Atheists, couples living together without being married, people wearing shorts, people trying to eat or smoke on day time at Ramadan, protestors on May the 1st,…)

By: HER

HER — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:38:34 +0000

p.s.: To be less egocentric: With "daily life and reality" I ment the daily life and reality who dosen’t accept the Gülen Way of Life as his own concept of living (e.g.: Homosexuals, Agnostics, Atheists, couples living together without being married, people wearing shorts, people trying to eat or smoke on day time at Ramadan, protestors on May the 1st,…)

By: HER

HER — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:31:17 +0000

To cut a long story short: thx!

There are not so many comments out there trying to comment on Turkey from an "internal" (= daily life and reality) point of view.

To be honest, I think Western commentators try to defend AKP’s "conservatity" as they know that their politics to come may offer the best arguments to reject Turkey later on.

For Turkey EU ambitions should become history ASAP.

By: Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief

Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:01:03 +0000

I sent an e-mail to you, signed with my true name, and entitled "Félicitations".

After your comment I looked it up, but I cannot find such an e-mail. I normally try to answer all e-mails, even negative ones. I may have deleted it accidentally (hundreds of spam e-mail each day I get). If you would be so kind, please send it again.

UPDATE
Found it!

By: Lucrèce

Lucrèce — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:20:26 +0000

I sent an e-mail to you, signed with my true name, and entitled "Félicitations".

By: Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief

Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:04:03 +0000

Not sure what you are referring to in your comment Lucrece, but I believe I did not receive an e-mail from you, did I?

By: Lucrèce

Lucrèce — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:55:42 +0000

luckily I did receive quite some friendly e-mails as well
And you can even answer such emails.

By: The Moderate Voice

The Moderate Voice — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:45:26 +0000

Should Turkey Ignore Europe’s Advice On Democracy?…

Should turkey ignore Europe’s advice on Democracy?
Michael Van der Galien, writing in the Turkish Daily News, raises the issue in an op-ed piece. Here’s part of it:
The moment Turkish secularists started raising their collective voice agai…

By: A. A. B.

A. A. B. — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:01:48 +0000

I’d also like to note that the Constitutional Court did not breach the Constitution.

Article 2 says "Turkey is a laicist state". Article 4 says "Article 2 cannot be changed". The court noticed that Erdogan’s changes to the constitution were one step to disestablish laicism. Thus, the changes violated article 4 of the constitution and had to be declared void by the judges. Quite logical, actually.