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The Print
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Turkey's looking more like Pakistan every day. Blasphemy-obsessed, imprisoned by hatred
Though no one was killed in the violence, it is becoming clear that Turkey, once the progressive cultural powerhouse of the Middle East, is starting to look a little more like Pakistan each week. The country's septuagenarian ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is even working to dismantle the constitution , which mandates that 'sacred religious feelings shall absolutely not be involved in state affairs and politics as required by the principle of secularism'. Earlier this week, police in Istanbul fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a mob seeking to attack a bar where staff of the magazine had retreated after the supposedly blasphemous cartoon went to print. The country's interior minister Ali Yerlikaya has promised legal action against the cartoonist, graphic designer, and editors of LeMan , vowing that 'these shameless individuals will be held accountable before the law'. The inferno lies below, a landscape made up of bombs, fire, and rubble. Their wings elevating them above the carnage, two angels—one bearing the name of the Prophet of Islam and the other of the Israelites—wish each other peace. The cartoon, published in the Turkish satirical magazine LeMan , is open to readings. Is it that those condemned to live in war can only discover their shared humanity after being liberated from life? Alternately, is it that the angels have abandoned their followers on earth, learning that piety cannot tame the savagery of the faithful? Extreme religious violence isn't unknown in Turkey. Thirty-seven people were burned to death in 1993 after mobs attacked a cultural festival of the Alevi sect, attended among others by the Turkish translator of Salman Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses. The proscription of books, arrests of opposition leaders, and the repression of ethnic minorities have been an ugly feature of Turkey's republic. However, its social and cultural life remains highly sophisticated and liberal, and not just by the standards of the grim Middle East despotisms. Erdoğan's true legacy, the violence in Istanbul suggests, might be demolishing the foundations on which Turkey's pluralism has rested. Decline of the republic Kemal Atatürk's epoch-defining construction of republican Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire aimed to create a new civilisation that could negotiate the industrial world. The religious orders that wielded enormous influence in the imperial era were closed down in 1925. Far-reaching reforms were introduced on how men and women ought to dress, including the rejection of the traditional Fez cap and encouraging women to give up the Peçe (headscarf) and Çarşaf (a loose-fitting outer garment). In 1928, the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script, a tool to demolish the power of the clerical class. The same year, Islam was removed as the state religion. For Atatürk, it seemed that the reconstruction of Islam itself was necessary. So he established the Presidency of Religious Affairs to oversee religious affairs. The clergy were transformed into state employees, responsible for delivering sermons dictated by the authorities. Imams were ordered to allow musical instruments into mosques, and failing that, were provided with gramophones and records. Even the wearing of shoes inside mosques was encouraged. This state-enforced religion, scholar Nevzet Çelik noted in a thoughtful essay, brought about enormous transformation—but it also stifled the organic evolution of civic life and marked secularism with the taint of authoritarianism. As Atatürk's legacy faded, and Turkey became more shaped by Cold War anticommunism, religion became a language of protest for the peasantry and bourgeoisie. According to historian David Tonge, from 1980 onward, things began to come to a head. The faltering economy fed communal tensions. Fifty died in massacres in Çorum, where Turkish ultranationalists attacked Alevis. As Left-wing groups battled fascists on the streets, the fights claimed dozens of lives every day. The opposition politician Necmettin Erbakan used Islam to attack Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, calling for Turkey to be made an Islamic State. The military stepped in to end the chaos: Turkey woke up on 12 September 1980 to find itself under military rule. To some, this seemed just a passing phase. The country had, after all, been subjected to coups in 1960 and 1971. The Generals hadn't even troubled themselves to send out the tanks the second time, simply sending a memorandum to the parliament. Also read: Pakistan suffers violence of its own making. West's refusal to learn is even more tragic A change of destiny Led by General Kenan Evren, the National Security Council realised it needed to come to terms with the social forces sweeping Turkey. Though secularism continued to be promoted as a guiding principle, religious education was reintroduced in primary and secondary schools. The government of Prime Minister Turgut Özal, which was elected in 1983, also instrumentalised religion. His education minister Vehbi Dinçerler banned the teaching of evolution and instructed clerical schools to teach that Turks had been 'leaders in the rise and dissemination of Islam throughout the world'. Later, Özal became the first Prime Minister of Turkey to make the Hajj pilgrimage while in office, leading a delegation of several hundred Members of Parliament and senior civil servants. The opposition media, Tonge writes, savaged Özal, publishing pictures of him in his white, ritual ihram towels, contrasted with his wife in a cocktail dress, smoking one of her trademark cigars. Erbakan's rise to power in 1996 marked a further shift in political direction away from secularism. His first trip abroad was to Tehran, in defiance of the United States, and then to Libya. He also tried to launch a D8 group of Muslim nations, as an alternative to the West's G7 group of economically developed countries. The ban on female civil servants wearing the headscarf was removed. The Generals, concerned, presented Erbakan with 18 directives, 10 of which concerned the defence of secularism. Then, in April, the military declared reactionary Islam to be more dangerous to Turkey than Kurdish secessionists, or even wars. Television stations, radio broadcasters, and newspapers considered sympathetic to the Islamists were shut down. Also read: Chinese J-20 isn't just a fighter jet—it's a signal to US, Japan and India European departure From 1999, the European Union sought to stabilise its eastern frontiers by drawing Turkey into the transnational body. The demands for civil liberties and freedoms that were now placed on Turkey's military gutted the institution. Led by Erdoğan, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) or Justice and Development Party, was founded in 2001, bringing together a disparate coalition of Islamists. To the world, however, the AKP presented itself as a pro-West, reformist, moderate, and neoliberal party. Europe and the United States bought the story. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the AKP was 'a government dedicated to pulling Turkey westward toward Europe'. President Barack Obama gushed about 'a model partnership' with Turkey. Erdoğan has also used the same language about Trump. The practice of AKP power, however, proved to be at odds with this image. For one, as the party faced growing competition from its rivals, it made increasing use of religion. 'Those with greater commitments to liberal democratic norms carried greater weight at the outset, only to lose their power and influence to electoralists,' political scientist Sebnem Gumuscu wrote in her book, Democracy or Authoritarianism. The signs of Erdoğan's commitment to Islamism became increasingly evident. The new school curriculum introduced in 2017 led to the removal of the theory of evolution and increased emphasis on religious values. The word 'jihad' was included as an essential part of Islam. And then, a year short of the centennial of the founding of the republic, he opened the Hagia Sofiya church for Islamic prayers, reversing Atatürk's decision to turn it into a museum, equally shared between the country's faiths. Erdoğan's beliefs are increasingly evident beyond Turkey's borders, too. The new regime in Syria has embraced Sharia as the basis of its laws, just as Erdoğan seeks in his homeland. He has also been accused of complicity in the killings of religious minorities. The rioting over the LeMan cartoon signals the rise of Turkey, diminished by its obsession with greatness, but a prisoner of resentment and hatred. This smaller, meaner Turkey, of the blasphemy rioter and sectarian killer, will be Erdoğan's legacy. Praveen Swami is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Newsroom
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsroom
Number is up for error-ridden NZ census – so what fills the data void?
Analysis: Since early in the Old Testament, leaders have counted their population. Sometimes to raise taxes, sometimes to raise an army. They counted the men, their wives and children, their donkeys, goats and sheep … Indeed, the fourth book of the Christian Bible is named 'Numbers', because it starts and finishes with God ordering censuses of the Israelites. Well, Statistics Minister Shane Reti may not be God, but he has now ordered an end to the NZ census. The census is a comprehensive record dating back to 1851, when the colonial Government also saw fit to count the numbers of citizens and their sheep (233,043) and cattle (34,787) … though it didn't count Māori. There's something simple and comforting about totting up numbers like that. It lacks the nuance and sophistication of randomised surveys and other statistical data collections tools; it's something we can all understand and trust. That will be a problem for Reti, with his announcement that the Government is doing away with the census. 'This approach will save time and money while delivering more timely insights into New Zealand's population,' he says. He points out that the cost of conducting the five-yearly census has risen 'astronomically' from $104 million in 2013, to $325m in 2023. If the 2028 census had gone ahead, it was expected to come in at $400m. Instead, Statistics NZ will measure New Zealand, New Zealanders and those visiting here (not to mention our sheep and cattle) using other tools. Specifically, so-called administrative data – which is information about us that's already collected by other agencies, including Immigration NZ, Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Social Development, Health NZ, ACC, schools and the courts. That will be rounded out by regular smaller surveys of no more than 5 percent of the population each year. Now, pollsters have got extremely good at designing survey questions, quizzing samples of the population, correcting for all sorts of demographic imbalances, and then extrapolating from those findings to the wider population. But as we know from every election campaign, those polls are closely scrutinised by politicians, spin doctors, the media and the wider population. The slightest aberration is seized on as evidence of the unreliability of polling. This has always been the case, but in the last few years official information has faced its own challenge. There are large numbers of people, here and overseas, who have become intuitively suspicious of governments, their institutions, and their science and data. So Stats NZ (which already commissions some surveys) now faces a trust problem. It must now persuade New Zealanders and international stakeholders to trust official statistics that are extracted from administrative data (which will feel intrusive to many) and from surveys (which will feel feel opaque and unreliable to many more). It's been coming for a long time, but nonetheless, this is a bad time to drop the census. This is a post-truth era when New Zealand and the world need facts they can trust. But Stats NZ's trust problem is not just the local manifestation of worldwide culture wars; it's also a problem directly of Stats NZ's own making. It's botched two censuses in succession. In 2018, the shift towards online data at the expense of field operations delivered far lower-than-expected response rates and data quality concerns, particularly for Māori and Pacific populations. Government Statistician Liz MacPherson was forced to tender her resignation. Then her successor, Mark Sowden, quit after two damning reports into the misuse of 2023 census data for party political purposes. After Sowden's departure, former Inland Revenue deputy commissioner Mary Craig picked up the poisoned chalice of Stats NZ chief executive and Government Statistician, as least on an acting basis. Like Reti, she's fronting a decision that was made by others, but she's putting a brave face on it. 'This is an exciting and necessary change,' she says. 'The traditional way of running a nationwide survey on census day can no longer be justified, due to rising costs, declining survey response rates, and disruption from events, like Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023.' She and Reti are right that the pace of policy-making requires information that is updated more than once every five years – though, to be fair, most of that data is already available, subject to compliance with the Privacy Act. Newsroom asked Sean Broughton, Stats NZ's population and housing statistics spokesperson, how New Zealanders can be confident that their information is being treated properly, and that the statistical reporting remains robust. 'As you say, the enduring challenge of maintaining New Zealander's trust and confidence is paramount,' Broughton acknowledges. 'Stats NZ is committed to building trust and reassuring New Zealand that we will protect the privacy and security of their information.' Laws and policies guide how Stats NZ protects and manages data, including the Privacy Act and the Data and Statistics Act. 'There are strict privacy, security, and confidentiality rules in place.' As for the reliability of the reporting, a cross-government chief executive group will lead and support the collective effort to improve admin data, Broughton says. Internal and external governance structures will be put in place that provide appropriate technical and governance oversight. That's critical, because official statistics are not only of curiosity value. They inform the Government where to invest $200 billion of infrastructure capital over the next 20 years – housing, schools, hospitals, climate change mitigation and adaptation … And as former Government Statistician Len Cook points out, they help us understand the dynamics of land use changes. For instance, those sheep numbers (233,043 in 1851) had risen to 76 million in 1976, but have now fallen back to 23 million. That means farmers moving off their land; school rolls falling; rural economies stagnating. Why is this? And is it a healthy evolution towards a lower carbon, high-tech economy – or is it a problem that governments and communities need to address? There is enormous variability in the drivers of population change and age structure among different local and national communities. The interaction between policy and population change is weakly understood. Writing for Newsroom, Cook warns of a coming 'population storm' for which we may now be ill-prepared. 'Falling fertility, rising life expectancy and volatile migration flows mean that the fiscal impact of demographic change from static policy settings will have the same effect as a fall in government revenue of over 30 percent by 2045,' he says. 'Almost all publicly funded services will face pressures of a far greater magnitude than we are currently seeing. Without regular knowledge we can trust, we will have little information to plan with.' Reti calls the statistics changes 'getting back to basics' – but to many, these contemporary data collection tools won't feel so 'basic' as simply counting everyone in the country. Persuading them to trust this new data? That's a task of Biblical proportions.
Belfast Telegraph
11-06-2025
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
A UDA gang that protects sex offenders is involved in Ballymena riots… this violence is just sheer racism
In Exodus, God instructed the Israelites to mark their doorways with the blood of a sacrificed lamb so he would "pass over" their houses, sparing their firstborn sons, while striking down the firstborn of the Egyptians. Ballymena has now developed its own version of the Passover, but this is a ritual where people mark their doors with Union flags. Those without the mark risk having their property razed to the ground.
Belfast Telegraph
11-06-2025
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
There's no dressing up Ballymena violence, there is no, ‘it is wrong but'… it is just racism
In Exodus, God instructed the Israelites to mark their doorways with the blood of a sacrificed lamb so he would "pass over" their houses, sparing their firstborn sons, while striking down the firstborn of the Egyptians. Ballymena has now developed its own version of the Passover, but this is a ritual where people mark their doors with Union flags, those without the mark risk having their property razed to the ground.
Daily Mirror
10-06-2025
- Science
- Daily Mirror
Incredible scientific discovery proves Moses did part Red Sea and how he did it
A key moment in Christianity, Islam and Judaism which requires a certain amount of faith to believe could have happened - now has a plausible scientific explanation The story of Moses parting the Red Sea - 'Yam Suph' in Hebrew - is one of the most well known parables of the Old Testament. It tells the tale of the prophet leading the Israelites out of slavery in the exodus from Egypt. According to the biblical narrative, Moses - led by God- raised his staff over the Red Sea, causing the waters to divide, which allowed his people to walk across on dry land. The pharaoh and his pursuing armies then perished after following the fleeing party as the sea closed back together, drowning them. This event is recounted in the Old Testament (Exodus 14: 19-31). According to the National Gallery in London: "When the Israelites reached the Red Sea Moses stretched out his hand and the waters divided, allowing his followers safe passage. The Egyptians followed them but God again commanded Moses to stretch out his hand and the sea engulfed the army." In the biblical account, after dispatching the seven plagues of Egypt, Moses led the Israelites out into the wilderness in search of the promised land, reports the Irish Star. The fleeing group found themselves trapped between the advancing army of the Pharaoh on one side and the Red Sea on the other. Depictions in films such as 'The Ten Commandments' or 'The Prince of Egypt' show Moses commanding the waters of the Red Sea to open long enough for the Israelites to flee Egypt which paints a vivid picture on the big screen. But now scientists have hypothesised that there may be a natural phenomenon which caused the sea to part and they argue that the real miracle would have been in the impeccable timing of the Israelites fleeing the Egyptians. According to the Daily Mail, the theory is backed up by computer modelling which indicates that a strong wind of 62 mile per hour (100kmph) winds blowing from the right direction could open a 3-mile-wide (5km) channel through the water. And, as those winds dipped, the waters would have rushed back with the speed of a tsunami which would have drowned the Egyptian army who were weighed down by chariots and other equipment. Carl Drews, an oceanographer from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told MailOnline: "The crossing of the Red Sea is a supernatural phenomenon that incorporates a natural component - the miracle is in the timing." According to Dr Bruce Parker, former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the prophet could have used his knowledge of the tides to flee Egypt. This is also backed up in the Bible which states: "The Lord caused the sea to go by a strong east wind all that night and made the sea into dry and the waters were divided." Some scientific experts claim the mention of a strong wind is key to understanding how Moses really crossed the Red Sea. In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Dr Parker wrote: "Moses had lived in the nearby wilderness in his early years, and he knew where caravans crossed the Red Sea at low tide. He knew the night sky and the ancient methods of predicting the tide, based on where the moon was overhead and how full it was." Meanwhile, the Pharaoh's men lived on the tide-less Nile River and would have been unaware of the dangers that faced them - leading the soldiers to be ambushed by nature when the tide came rushing back in. One issue, however is the direction of the breeze mentioned in the Bible which is that it was a easterly wind. Professor Nathan Paldor, an ocean scientist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told MailOnline: "When a strong wind blows southward from the head of Gulf for about one day, the water is pushed seawards, thus exposing the bottom that was previously underwater." The professor's calculations theorise that a wind blowing between 65 and 70 kilometres per hour (40-45 mph) from the northwest could have made such a path for the Israelites in their escape from Egypt. A wind in the conditions mentioned blowing for an entire night could have pushed the waters of the sea back by up to a mile. It would also drop the sea level by about three metres and allow the Israelites to move across the floor on an underwater ridge. In his original research paper, Professor Paldor maintains that the original Hebrew description is 'Rauch kadim' which can mean either north-easterly or south-easterly. It may also be the case that the true direction was lost in translation at some point. There are also theories that the location of the event occurred elsewhere with others believing it could have occurred at the Lake of Tannis.
