Escaping sexual moral codes on the internet

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very particular news item in a Turkish daily.¹ At first I was shocked by the news item itself and soon after by the very fact that I was shocked in the first place. In my few trips to the Middle East, the very first thing that I noticed was exactly that what appeared from this news item. It was actually nothing new for me, was it? Or was it just that I hadn't expected it to be that pathetic?!

I'm talking about the conclusions of Google's Zeitgeist and Trends services, which report about search trends all over the world. The funny thing is that you can actually look up the information yourself! Try it out!

Anyway, the news item focused on a couple of very remarkable keywords: sex, porno and child porn. In all three cases Turkey ended up in the top ten - and in the last case even as number one.² I especially found the top ten for "sex" very interesting, please have a look at it:
1. Pakistan
2. Egypt
3. India
4. Turkey
5. Morocco
6. Viet Nam
7. Iran
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Indonesia
10. Serbia and Montenegro

I don't know anything about Viet Nam, but isn't it just so typical that all the others in the list are countries with a rather conservative sexual moral code? Isn't it funny that those who criticize the West for lacking sexual morality, are actually embarassed by members of their own society on this specific subject? I love the irony!

Searching "sex" on the internet itself is a quite trivial consequence of the suppression of sexuality by society, but it can actually lead to much more worrying situations. Several months ago women were sexually assaulted by gangs of men in downtown Cairo in broad daylight. The incident was much discussed in the Egyptian blogosphere; read this account of Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey (who has just quit blogging). This was apparently not the first time. Journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy writes in his blog that a similar incident occured in January last year.

On Malek's blog you can actually see pictures of the incident (the blog is in arabic, scroll down for the pictures).

Just don't ask me where the police was when all of this happened. OK?

1. "Seks arayışındaki tanıdık ülkeler" ["Familiar countries in the list of googling sex"], in Radikal, internet baskisi, 05/07/07; available at http://213.243.28.21/ek_haber.php?ek=sa&haberno=3473 (accessed on 05/08/07).
2. Please note that this does not imply that these keywords are the most googled keywords in Turkey; they are not! The top ten of most googled keywords is in fact not very unusual and certainly not embarrassing: Most googled keywords in Turkey

Hızır arrives with drops from heaven

Six weeks long, the people in the low lands of Northwest Europe enjoyed the rays of Helios without being disturbed by drops from the skies. Apparently, Haddad¹ became so inconvenient about this exceptionally long period, that he finally made it rain yesterday.

It's quite remarkable that it started raining on this specific day, the 6th of May. No, I'm not referring to the misfortune of Sarkozy being elected president and neither to the hanging of 21 prominent Muslim and Christian Arabs in Beirut and Damascus by Djemal Pasha, 91 years ago on this day (and please don't make me start talking about the inability of the Turkish parliament to elect any president, whatever his political background!). I'm rather referring to the much more pleasant event of Hıdırellez, the day that marks the beginning of the Days of Hızır.

Hıdırellez is a holiday celebrated in the Levant, mostly in Turkey, but also by Roma and Albanians in the Balkans. In the Western world the holiday is better known by its Romany name, Ederlezi, due to Emir Kusturica's "The Time of the Gypsies" ("Dom za vešanje") and Goran Bregović's soundtrack for this film, "Ederlezi".

The name Hıdırellez is actually a contraction of the names Hızır, or Hıdır (Arabic: الخضر, al Khiḍr), and Ilyas (Arabic: إلياس), both of them religious personages. Hızır is believed to be a saint, sometimes also considered a prophet, that became immortal by drinking from the spring of life (ab-ı hayat) and has pretty much all of Jesus' (or any other prophet's) supernatural abilities. Ilyas is the Arabic, Persian and Turkish name for Elijah, a prophet in ancient Israel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Christian Bible (New Testament) and the Qur'an (Newest Testament?).


Hızır and Ilyas sitting at the Fountain of Life.
source: www.khidr.org

In Turkey, the two act among others as the protecters of travellers. According to traditional belief, 6 May (23 April according to the Julian calendar) is the day on which Hızır and Ilyas meet each other to decide in which part of the world each of them will serve. It is usually thought that Ilyas takes care of travellers at sea and Hızır of those on land.²

This great meeting, however, is not the main reason for people celebrating it. Hıdırellez is actually a holiday marking the beginning of a new season: the summer. In the old Rumî (=Julian) calendar, the year was usually split in two seasons: the summery Days of Hızır (6 May - 8 November) and the winterly Days of Kasım. In this respect, Hıdırellez is actually part of an old common tradition in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East of celebrating the arrival of the temperate season. Nowruz is another example of such a tradition.

In fact, celebrations on the 6^th of May are also held by Orthodox Christians in the Balkans. They celebrate the day of Saint George (Serbian: Ђурђевдан, Đurđevdan, Bulgarian: Гергьовден, Gergyovden), a saint considered important by many Christian nations. However, just as in the case of Hıdırellez, the celebration is actually related to the arrival of the summer.

It may not be a complete coincidence that Saint George's Day and Hıdırellez fall on exactly the same day and are so similar to each other. There are some indications that Hızır is actually associated with Saint George (Arabic: مار جرجس, Mar Jirjis/Girgis). Near Betlehem, Muslim and Christian Arabs and Jews commonly visit a shrine of Saint George and all refer to the saint by the name al Khiḍr. In the Balkans, Muslim Albanians refer to the saint as Hızır, while Christian Albanians call him Saint George.³ It must be no coincidence either that the alternative name for Hıdırellez is simply Ruz-ı Hızır: Hızır's Day.

Anyhow, while the Balkans and the Levant are welcoming summer with celebrations, I'm welcoming it with drops falling from a grey sky...

1. Haddad, sometimes called Ba'al (Lord), is the Mesopotamian God of the sky, the storm and the rain. He is equated to the Egyptian Set, the Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Norse Thor and Germanic Thunder.
2. Uysal, A.E. and W.S. Walker, "An Ancient God in Modern Turkey: Some Aspects of the Cult of Hizir" in Journal of American folklore nr. 86, 1997; available at http://khidr.org/hizir.htm (accessed on 07/05/07)
3. Hanauer, J.E., Folk-lore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish, 1907; available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/flhl/flhl12.htm (accessed on 07/05/07);
Hasluck, F.W., Christianity and Islam under the Sultans. Oxford University Press, 1929, pp. 319-336 Chapter 2: "Koranic Saints"; available at http://khidr.org/khidr-turkey.htm (accessed on 07/05/07).

Traditions of the French... and those of others

Today is a big day for the French. On this fine Sunday in May, they will decide who will occupy the most powerful office in the Fifth Republic. If we are to believe the two main candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, France is going to change a lot once he, or she, is elected.

The questions is whether this will happen indeed. According to this article by Craig Smith, entitled "Forget who'll win in France. Change is a loser.", France will move only a little, certainly not as much as the candidates claim.

"We have traditions, attitudes, an attachment to social welfare and, even if change is desirable, we won't accept change overnight.",¹ it is said by French historian Michel Winock.

I find this a quite interesting way of reasoning, especially if we would apply it to other countries in the world. Can you imagine the reaction of the Americans if the Iraqis suddenly say:

"We have traditions, attitudes, a habituation to authoritarian rule and, even if change is desirable, we won't accept change overnight".

1. Quoted in Smith, Craig, "Forget who'll win in France. Change is a loser", in International Herald Tribune, May 5, 2007. Accessed via http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/06/news/06smith-web.php?page=1 on May 6, 2007.

Remembering the Dead?

"True friends reveal themselves in times of misery"¹ is a saying existing in many languages and expressing the fact that many people are eager to share one's happiness, while remaining indifferent towards one's sorrow. The saying even proves to be true on the national level, which especially becomes clear in periods with a couple of national holidays.

On the 4th of May each year, the Dutch remember the victims of the Second World War and of all other military conflicts since then.² According to the annual research of the National Committee for 4 and 5 May, 82% of the Dutch find the Remembrance of the Dead important and also think that commemorating is more important than celebrating.³


The ceremony on Dam Square, Amsterdam (Het Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei)

For someone attending the main ceremony on the Dam Square in Amsterdam - admittingly, I myself had no intention of attending the ceremony at first, but as I was in the neighborhood around that time, I decided to do it anyway - the results of this research are not really convincing. There is obviously a huge difference between finding it important to commemorate and actually commemorating!

In contrast to the thousands of people on the streets in the entire city center and its surrounding neighborhoods five days ago on Queen's Day (see my post on May 1, 2007), only a couple of hundreds were present at the commemoration yesterday, not even filling Dam Square. The whole event did not take more than half an hour.

Did someone say commemorating is more important than celebrating? That really sounds great, but let us rather stick to "True friends reveal themselves in times of misery". It's just so much closer to the truth.

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1. "Dost kara günde belli olur." is an example from Turkish.
2. Initially only Dutch victims were commemorated. From 1961 onwards the commemoration has included victims of other military conflicts as well.
3. "Draagvlak voor 4 en 5 mei blijft groot", on the website of Het Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei, 1 May 2007; available at http://www.4en5mei.nl/4en5mei/nieuws/nieuws/nieuwsdetail/_rp_kolom2_1_elementId/1_115593. (accessed on 05/05/07)

New layout!

Yesterday I have been busy developing a layout for my blog. I didn't like the templates offered by blogger.com and besides, everyone uses them. A good blog needs to be somewhat distinctive in both contents and appearance, doesn't it? Anyway, what you see now is the result of my design efforts yesterday. You like it?

I could use some feedback though, so just leave a comment!

In Turkey, everything changes but May Day

A few days ago I showed some pictures of the pro-secularism demonstration in Istanbul on the 29th of April. Below are pictures of another demonstration in the same city:


Volkan Şahin / Birgün


Volkan Şahin / Birgün


Volkan Şahin / Birgün


Volkan Şahin / Birgün

These pictures are taken during the demonstration on the 1^st of May. Trying to guess why these pictures are so different? Hint: look at the date again! Yep, it was May Day!¹

This whole event was actually organized to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the 1977 'Bloody' May Day demonstration, when gunmen fired at peaceful demonstrators, killing 34 people. It is quite ironic that even the commemoration of this incident is perceived as such a great threat by the authorities, that public transport is paralyzed, tv stations are prevented from live broadcasting the demonstration, busses from outside Istanbul are blocked from entering the city and demonstrators are harassed with water cannons, tear gas and batons. At the end of the day several hundreds of people had been arrested.

Well, we live in 2007 now, which means that it has already been 17 years since the 'communist threat' ceased to exist. In the meantime, a true classical Islamist occupied the office of Prime Minister in the staunch secularist Turkey (back in the '90s), and yet another one, appearing to be the 'evolved' version of the former, is currently doing the same... Wow, can you imagine that?! Apparently things do change in Turkey!

So what's new for May Day then? Uh... Nothing, Turkey has a chronic allergy to anything that is associated with socialism!

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1. For more about the demonstration:
- "Hundreds detained in Turkey rally" (BBC, 01/05/07)
- "Hundreds arrested at Istanbul rally" (Al Jazeera, 01/05/07)

and... an 'Orange Monday' in Amsterdam

Yesterday, it was the most crowded day of the year in Amsterdam. Completely covered in orange, the city was home to a massive outdoor festivity. No, it was not a soft-drugs festival and neither had it to do with prostitutes, as some might have expected from Amsterdam, but it did involve drinking a lot of beer and partying on the streets! Yesterday, it was Queen's day (Koninginnedag in Dutch) in the Netherlands, a national holiday which is most extensively celebrated in the capital Amsterdam. ¹


ANP

At first it may seem like the Dutch are very attached to the monarchy and are eager to celebrate the birthday of their queen. However, a brief observation of what is actually happening during that day, will be enough to understand that the public enthousiasm is not really about the queen or the monarchy.

The holiday was initially meant as a tool to strengthen national unity back in the 1890's. However, especially in the last two decades or so, the link between this holiday and the monarchy has appeared only superficial. The truth is that the new generations Dutch don't bother much about the queen or the monarchy. Most of them being apolitical, the queen doesn't play any role in their life, her existence doesn't affect them in any way. So when the Dutch appear en masse on the streets on this particular day, it is not really because of their wish to celebrate the birthday of their queen, but simply because it is just another opportunity to party!

I mean, the holiday may be called Queen's day, but the youth still prefers to be at Museum Square, a large square where big concerts are organized, rather than in that small town somewhere visited by the queen.² The youth prefers dancing, while taking a pull of their Heineken, instead of waiting along the road for the queen and waving passionately when she passes.

This story may give the impression that the queen is very unpopular in the Netherlands, but that's certainly not the case. It's just that Museum Square is hotter!

So did the holiday actually achieve its aim of strengthening national unity? I'm not sure about that, but with those thousends of tourists attracted by the festivities, I guess its next aim is already quite obvious: international unity!

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1. The 30^th of April is actually the birthday of the previous queen, Juliana. Her successor Beatrix wanted to continue celebrating Queen's Day on the 30^th of April as a mark of respect to her mother.
2. It has become some kind of a tradition that Queen Beatrix visits the festivities in one or two places.