Why is she wearing general's clothes ?
Why is she wearing joggers under it ?
and what about her hands ?
She seems like a turkish woman.. They wear same clothes here in Holland.. And I think Garam, Thats not a general's clothes, thats just a coat...
You are right the girl is from Turkey and she is arrested due to protesting and wearing Hijab.
Read The Full Story.
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SISTER FILIZ BEYAZ She was born at Uskudar in Istanbul in 1975. Her father is originally from Varto Town of Mus City. She completed her school education in Haydarpasa School with success. She is the only one of seven sisters and brothers to have embarked on a university education. She succeeded in the 1996 university entrance exams and started at the Konya Selcutun City’s Theology section. She was arrested during the demonstrations against a Hijaab (Islamic dress) ban with 33 friends, on 22 May 1998. Thirty of those arrested were male, the rest were female. The following day she was released but two days alter another warrant was issued for the arrest of two men and two women, one of whom was Filiz.
On 3, July 1998, the court ordered Filiz to be detained in the women’s section of Konya E for 20 days. On 23 July she was released on bail. On 29, July at half past midnight, she and a friend Havva, were knocked down in a hit and run accident, known to be a method of extrajudicial killing by the Turkish secret service. They died in Konya, on the Istanbul Highway.
YOUR BELIEFS OR YOUR SCHOOL Today, I did what I had to do. I went to the laboratory to attend the lesson. But, they did not let me enter the lab. Furthermore, they insulted me.
They asked me " Is it really hard? Is it really hard to take off it? Take off it and then you may go in!"
Yes, it is very hard. Are they the great creator who ordered me put on this scarf? No, no , never! If so, how can they think that they have the right to tell me to take off my scarf?
They say "your beliefs or your school? "
Do people have to ask someone else when they decide to believe and to live according to their beliefs?
Nobody has given me this school as a gift. I’ve deserved this right by hard-working for days and nights.
They tell me “take off or give up”. But, I refuse both. I say “NO”. I will neither take off my scarf nor give up, to make someone happy.
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PLEASE GIVE VOICE TO OUR DEMANDS I am a sixth class student at Cerrahpaþa Medical faculty of Ýstanbul University. I would finish it in five months. My educational life was finished by the new rector of Ýstanbul University Kemal Alemdaroglu because of our headscarves .We are muslims and we wear the headscarves as a necessity of our beliefs .We can not attend to our schools although our laws protect the freedom of belief. In addition, Turkey is a member of United Nations and has signed to obey its rules. Please give voice to our demands! If I can not finish the school in the next seven months, I will be discharged.
I feel free with my headscarf. If I do not behave according to my beliefs, there will be no meaning in my life. I am very sad due to this problem. I cannot do anything as a solution.
My family is very sad for this condition. My mother is psychologically ill. I wish all these were terrible dreams. There is not any fault except my wearing the headscarf. I continuously pray God to get our right to live in this world.
ONLY FIVE MONTHS LEFT We are the final year student at Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty .
Up to the change of rector of university, we were happy in our faculty. After that, with the change of rector of university, all our dreams on being a good doctor turn upside down. Because new rector put new orders about the student’s dressings. According to these new rules, we cannot attend to school with head scarf. But, as a Muslim, according to our belief we must put on a head scarf. So new rules are attack to our religious freedom. Although a lot of organisation, politician, blame the rector of university and his staff for these new rules against the religious freedom, they haven’t given up to practise these nonsense rules against human rights
We are waiting the support of the persons all over the world for our struggle against the enemies of religious freedom and human rights.
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I AM A STRANGER Today, my school looks at me as a stranger and tells me that I am a stranger. However, yesterday, I was the owner of these lands. Tomorrow? I do not know what will happen , tomorrow. Will the corridors of the hospital that I’ve walked for many times claim me, again? Will the garden that I’ve sat for many hours at the guard nights take me to its bosom?
Our efforts to save the lives of patients, taking their blood pressure… my friends that I’ve competed with to take an ECG… My heart beats that I felt when I first made an I.V injection…Will they take place in my life, again?
For five years I have attended this faculty with the excitement which I felt the day I first wore the white clothes…I have become eager by listening to the dreams my father had about me. I have striven to see the happiness and pride in my father’s eyes and to take mummy’s blessing.
When I saw the patient losing his life due to lack of medical care, I decided to work harder and prayed more. I prayed to my Owner Allah not to keep me away from my way and to let me be a real doctor that helps the others.
But, suddenly, someone said “STOP! You have no chance to enter here with these clothes, especially the funny thing you wear on your head.” And then the doors were closed to my face roughly. The police stopped me entering my school that I had reached by the first lights of the day. My friends that I had shared the same desks for many years were able to do nothing. The professor who had been expressing his gladness about my success to the classroom was, now, at the door near the policeman. He was sorry… I could see this in his ashamed eyes. The only thing I could do was to cry out my innocence.
I am really sad to see the ugly face of my elders. But, I am not hopeless. I know and I believe that these days and oppressions will end somehow, someday. They will become “memories” from the past.
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COLDER THAN THE WEATHER OF WINTER A 17 year old high school student studying every day for at least 5 hours to mathematics, science, literature…no time for leisure because the big day is very close-this university exam.
Preferences are done -your ideal is being a doctor so only medical faculties are written-, the big race -exam- started, nearly in 3 hours time everything in your life will change, a university or nothing.
Yes. You’ve passed the exam now you have right to attend the largest university of Turkey. I.U. Cerrahpasha Medical Faculty English Department.
Time for registration, you registered for the first class, everything is O.K. you are studying your lessons and getting used to Istanbul. But also you are sad because you are so far away from your family and city.
Now, you are at the second class, this year lessons are more difficult but you pass all the exams and get really good marks.
3rd year, first semester , everything is going on in the same fashion, studying and studying. In the last month of year something happens and makes you colder then the weather of winter. This is the decree of rector saying " Students with head-scarf can not enter lessons, practices and exams."
You are in a shock state, you can not understand how a scarf may hinder education. For 3 years you attended lessons, practices and exams as the other students in your class but from now on you are regarded as a guilty person.
Then protests begin, 20,000 students from all faculties of Ý.Ü: walk from Beyazýt to Cerrahpasha and Capa Medical Faculties. These protests have no benefit, you are not allowed to enter practices or exams either.
A scene from examination hall:
At the door of the examination hall, everybody in your class -your classmates- are allowed into the class, but you are not allowed even though you have no difference from them in knowledge or skills, except your attire, you are guilty because you have a scarf.
These written things are not a tale or a story, they are all lived things in the Medical Faculty of Istanbul University.
IHRC Report on Turkey
Extract from IHRC Rapporteurs statement upon return from Turkey (November 1998)
Since the “soft coup” by the army in 1997, persecution of not only those holding Islamic political beliefs has ensued, but against all professing to be practising Muslims.
State employees are banned from wearing a beard, and in the case of women of wearing a headscarf. They are not allowed to pray at work, and risk loosing their jobs if they are spotted praying in public. Recently the army itself purged several generals who were discovered to be praying at home.
Hijab Ban
Women wearing headscarves have been banned from universities across the country, since the beginning of the 1998 academic year. Whilst some Deans of Faculties have not implemented this ban, the majority have infact barred students sporting the hijab (Islamic covering, veil, headscarf) from even entering university grounds. This had led to the daily scenario of police being called to campuses to remove women students who have attended wearing the hijab. In a demonstration across Turkey on October 11, 1998, 4 million protestors (Turkish Interior Ministry estimate) formed a human chain in various cities. Treason charges are pending against several journalists, lecturers and students who participated in this peaceful protest.
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Political Arrests
Government paranoia as to Islamic opposition has seen a number of high profile arrests against politicians. The Mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, received a ten month prison sentence for causing division in society under Article 312. He had infact read out a piece of Ottoman poetry. Whilst the Rapporteurs were in Turkey, the 75th celebrations of the Republic took place. Another mayor in Eastern Turkey, was arrested on that day, for remarks he had made two years earlier in a meeting, stating that the state worship of Attaturk was a polytheist practice. He also awaits trial on treason charges.
The law of promoting racial division has also been used against political opponents. One newspaper sub-editor faces 152 years in prison on 30 different counts of this charge related to an article he wrote criticising the envigorated alliance between Turkey and Israel.
Bekir Yildiz is the elected mayor of Sincan province. He organised a rally in support of the Palestinian right of self-determination. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison in September 1997 for promoting Islamic ideas.
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Use of Torture
Whilst in Turkey, IHRC Rapporteurs visited Bandirma Prison. This prison is situated across the Bosphorous from Istanbul, in the Asian part of Turkey. There many political prisoners are incarcerated. The existence of political prisoners in Turkey is openly acknowledged. Their prisoner status is classified as political, and their treatment is markedly different. A case in point was noted by Rapporteurs on their visit to Bandirma. Whilst criminal prisoners were allowed open and free access to their visitors on special occasions (IHRC Rapporteurs visited on Republic Day), political prisoners could only be spoken through a series of bars and reinforced plastic sheeting. To speak to the prisoners, visitors had to speak through four layers of metal sheeting with bore holes next to the bars, which of course precluded sight of the prisoners making communication long and laborious.
Some of the prisoners complained about torture at the hands of guards. Those who complained were those who were detained without charge - the purpose of torture presumably being to extract confessions. At meetings with prisoners’ families and lawyers, the Rapporteurs were advised of various methods of torture used against prisoners. These included:
Leaving prisoners naked in cells with open windows in winter, often after dousing them in cold water;
The use of electric shocks on parts of the body, including genitalia;
The use of blindfolded beatings, and threats of rape against wives and children;
In one case, a prisoner is known to have lost the use of his voice, and one side of his body, as a result of torture.
FREEDOM IS MY
DAUGHTERS NAME
by Arzu Merali
Can Turkey justify its horrendous catalogue of human rights’ abuses in the name of modernity?
I had thought that after years working in Human Rights, I had become desensitised to horrors inflicted and suffering unlimited. Torture should have been just another research topic. Talking to Ipek Firat, the wife of a political prisoner, I was proved wrong.
Turkish prison officers use similar methods of torture as the Algerian and Iraqi security services. Electric shocks to genitalia, buggery with broken bottles, ‘water treatment’ (dousing a naked prisoner in cold water, and opening the cell windows during winter) were examples Nazat Ashik, a housewife in her fifties recounted. Her son, Mustafa, is serving a 17 year prison sentence for writing against the government. He bled from his genitalia for two months before admitting the charge. Nazat has set up an organisation to help families and prisoners in a similar situation. How many there are is unknown – no organisation can agree, even begin to fathom the numbers involved in a country where even criticising its founding dictator is treason.
In many cases prisoners remain interred long after their terms have expired. For example, Nazat recently discovered four Egyptians imprisoned twenty years ago in Bilecik, for protesting against Camp David. They should have been released two years ago. Knowledge of their existence was accidental.
Our trip to Istanbul was a paradox: a snapshot of radical Europhilia and consumerism; of a country mired in the murders of 10,000 political opponents in ten years. We trudged around the standard sights. Orthodox monuments and retreats, the Basilica cistern, sign-posted in Latin and Slavic tongues catered for the tourist. No such considerations for our unofficial guide Rabia, a Turkish woman, one of thousands of women banned from university at the beginning of the academic year.
Rabia is articulate, intelligent and determined - a veritable heroine of a human rights epic that sweeps the nation. She is suspended from University because she is a practising Muslim. Her sporting of a headscarf has cost her dear. Her beliefs are part of an ideology dressed up in the Western psyche as fundamentalist, backward, repressive. Turkey’s oppression is however thoroughly modern.
This headscarf ban is the most strictly enforced since the coups of the 1980’s. Treason covers many ‘crimes’ and few Deans are brave enough to allow their students a choice. A daily battle of wills between students and academics, more fearful for their liberty than any ‘Islamic’ threat, has ensued. Everyday groups of students arrive at class. Everyday the police remove them. Everyday the students show their defiance by holding their own classes on the pavements outside.
I met Ipek Firat at the offices of Mazlumder, a human rights organisation with 22 branches nation-wide. We stumbled upon a writer facing jail, for his book on Kurdish orphans bereaved by security forces. The fine of 4 billion TL ($1,200) – beyond his means – was a relief. The separatist / terrorist PKK, Marx and Kurds are still an inimical part of the ruling ethic, but now bigger enemies and bigger victims loom.
Since the1997 ruling by the National Security Council (an amalgam of politicians and generals) that Muslims were the “number one enemy of the principles of modern Turkey,” Mazlumder’s offices have been repeatedly raided. Three were recently closed down, and the organisation’s accounts frozen. Ipek was detained on a prison visit to her husband Mehmet, an alleged associate of an Islamist group. Mehmet and Ipek’s cellmate, journalist Gul Aslan were consistently tortured. Ipek was released without charge. Her husband ‘confessed’ and is now serving a fifteen and a twenty two year term consecutively. Aslan’s case hasn’t been heard after 2 and a half years. I met her in Bandirma Prison.
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Behind two sets of bars and reinforced perspex, she looked far older than her 24 years. Her spirit is remarkable. Leaning aside and disappearing through four sheets of bore holed metal, she scolded me. “Don’t worry about me,” she smiled, almost smug in her passive resistance. “The fact that I’m here means they… generals, are scared…it’s only a matter of time before their rule will end.” How long will that be? In her lifetime? Conscious that her lifetime could be considerably shorter than most, she answered, “Maybe, God willing.”
This scares those in whom power resides. The Republic’s founder, known in Britain as ‘the benign dictator,’ Mustafa Kemal Pasha took on the title Ataturk – Father of the Turks. Women like Aslan, have had enough of patriarchy a la Pasha. General friendly and compliant, the mainstream media neglects to report arrests and protests unless there’s a violent photo-opportunity. The countrywide demonstrations in support of veiled students, in October 1998, saw 4 million protestors male, female, veiled and mini-skirted, hold hands. However, only a skirmish between police and protestors in Ankara, made news. Inevitably such incidents are attributed to ‘foreign’ agitation. These are never “Ataturk’s children.”
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4 million protest in support of hijab(veil)
The bastardisation of women like Rabia, Ipek and Gul is backfiring. They have become the new advocates for emancipation. Akit, a well-respected, secular periodical asked: why not be like Iran? It pointed amongst others matters to UN statistics: Turkey is significantly behind in the numbers of women attending and lecturing at university; in the medical profession and the media. The Ayatollah has outstripped Ataturk. Turkey’s Islamophobia is one of its more ridiculous emulations of the Europe its Generals so desperately want to be part of. Istanbul’s elected mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was prosecuted for statements purporting to cause division in society (treason once more) – he read out Ottoman poetry in public. He was sentenced last September to one year of imprisonment and a lifetime ban from all political activities, to run from the 75th anniversary of the Republic in October.
Our visit coincided with the anniversary holiday. Ataturk’s image festooned street lights in celebration. In popular imagination, he is either devil incarnate or prophet of modernity. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Nietzche’s last man – amoral, apolitical and above all modern, looked down from Istanbul’s lamp-posts, on his subjects. Turkey was celebrating his acceptance of civilised, European, universal ideals. And all were celebrating – government employees ensured dismissal if they did not attend the commemorative rallies. The End of History would indeed be nigh, if the West’s perception of Turkey as modernising and an (almost) democratised state had any meaning.
A crude checklist reveals the delusive success of the Enlightenment project in the (a)historic land of infidels. Turkish George Michaels and Madonnas regale on terrestrial and satellite tv. Ads for carpet shampoo and exotic nightlife purport the existence of values that conceptualise semi-naked women on billboards selling cars, and a culture of imported (female) and indigenous (tourist-oriented male) prostitution, as freedom. Ataturk’s sons and daughters can buy (into) it all. Still they resist.
Westernisation, according to author Emine Senlikoglu, means everything goes except for political opposition. She currently awaits the outcome of two cases against her for mooting an independent judiciary on air. Her first prison term was for a book on freedom of speech. Her second, was the result of answering from a conference platform, why she was imprisoned.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights granted freedom of expression. Some rights however are less universal than others. After the Refah Party was deposed by what incoming ministers called the army’s soft-coup in 1997, Newsnight was horrified at castigation of the generals, ‘because all they tried to do was protect Turkey’s secular constitution.’ The price of that protection? A fascism that enforces the liberal ethos of Western society, without contradiction. We cannot accept the horror, unless we admit that pro-Islamists, neo-Marxists and others might just be right: the liberal ethos is as violent and oppressive as the ‘demons’ it eschews.
Aslan’s husband Tamar still suffers torture. She too was arrested on a prison-visit. Their three year old daughter sees them every two weeks. Had she been a criminal, her child could have stayed with her. Instead Tamar’s parents keep her. “What is your daughter’s name?” I asked, as the girl ran around the visitors’ hall. “Azad,” she replied, “FREEDOM.”
ARE they not Muslim or What?
Most of the Turkish people are Muslim, but its sad to see the kind of discrimination these women are facing just because they choose to wear hijab. its totally ridiculous.
I think the Turkish government's attempt to modernize their country has back fired, they're violating basic human rights!
And its horrible how the international community's not doing anything to stop this.
If a sikh man was not allowed to go to university because of his turban, everyone would be in an uproar.
i just pray these women wont stop fighting for their rights.
"I was just here. Where did I go?" (Fox Mulder)
[This message has been edited by hk (edited December 10, 2000).]
subhanAllah......