Oguz Alyanak - openDemocracy (Page 2)

Politics makes biased fools of us all

With tapes of voice recordings of Erdogan being leaked, whether they are authentic or not, what we believe today is what we want to believe.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 20 Mar 2014

The inconvenient truth about child brides

It is easy for states to ratify all the necessary conventions and take all the necessary legal steps in outlawing child marriages. However, it is the very social system that produces child brides that should be put under investigation.

By Oguz Alyanak and Funda Ustek

/ 11 Feb 2014

The many crises of Erdogan: have we come to an end-game?

This piece is an attempt to revisit some of the key crises afflicting the AKP and its leader, and in light of this analysis, investigate some claims that foretell the AKP’s doom.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 12 Jan 2014

Hagia Sophia: between consecration and contestation

Should Hagia Sophia become a mosque? Or should it become a church?

By Oguz Alyanak and Alexandra Mateescu

/ 3 Dec 2013

Extreme measures: invoking moral order in Turkey

While our fingers point at cohabitation and house sharing, and our minds are troubled by the imposition of a particular lifestyle, we tend to overlook a larger project of social restructuring.

By Oguz Alyanak and Funda Ustek

/ 13 Nov 2013

The two ends of Turkish democracy: opening up and covering up

About ten days after the democratic package was introduced, Turkey was tested, this time by a woman with décolletage. Turkey failed that test too.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 23 Oct 2013

Cashing in on the human rights regime

When all a politician needs to do is to pay the price of his/her misdemeanor and move on—which does not even come out of his/her own pocket but rather that of the taxpayer’s—would any politician prefer to take the blow personally?

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 2 Oct 2013

Syria: a moral intervention

Who will be there to teach us about morality, and to speak of yet another moral intervention when pictures of brutality show up on our screens, this time committed by the coalition of the “morally righteous”?

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 9 Sep 2013

Democracy's hall of mirrors in the post-Gezi world? A call for global dialogue

With the Ergenekon verdict, Turkey was to put behind it a history of coup d’états, and to open a new page by convicting generals (whose raison d’etre for the past 30 years was to fight terrorism) for participating in what is now officially a ‘terrorist organization’.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 19 Aug 2013

Why care about international prestige?

There was once a time when the Turkish Prime Minister was hailed for constructing a model country for the Middle East. Today, the picture is very different.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 2 Aug 2013

Testing what we learned in Gezi Park

In order for us to reach out to Diyarbakir, we needed a counter-narrative. Gezi was that teaching experience. But what was learned at Gezi had to be put to the test.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 9 Jul 2013

One day in Gezi Park

These various analytical approaches to Gezi fail to see the space, time and actors as “in process”; that is, not as being but as becoming.

By Oguz Alyanak

/ 19 Jun 2013