Current Affairs

Istanbul Ignites Following Election Overturn

7/5/2019

Lara Gibson

Yesterday, Turkey’s electoral board overturned Istanbul’s municipal election results in which Erdogan’s AK party candidate narrowly lost to the CH party’s Ekrem Imamoglu back on March 31st. Erdogan’s Justice and Democratic Party or AKP stated that there were ‘irregularities and corruption’ in the Istanbul election. A re-run of the March election is due to take place on 23 June. In a defiant reaction to the decision to overturn the vote, Istanbul’s residents stormed the streets demanding justice.

Istanbul’s residents appear to be furious about the election overturn and have swarmed the streets en masse shouting anti-government slogans. Turkish contacts have been reluctant to discuss the latest turn of events, but an American resident of Istanbul who witnessed last nights events commented: ‘People are furious and so they should be. Their voices have been silenced.’

The municipal elections in March were seen as a referendum on President Erdogan’s rule. Whilst the AKP-led alliance won 51% of the vote nationwide, the rising secularist CH party claimed victories in Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul. The AKP have so far challenged the results in Istanbul and Ankara, and Turkey’s electoral board have granted a re-run in Istanbul. The AKP have been losing ground in recent months and the election results in Turkey’s largest cities are emblematic of Erdogan’s dwindling popularity in urban areas. Erdogan has previously claimed that ‘whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey’, and his strong-man status has been splintered by recent events.

The decision to request a re-vote was a high-risk strategy for Erdogan and his party. As his support dwindles in urban centres, the decision to challenge the results of the vote may further alienate voters and fan the flames of Imamoglu’s campaign. Imamoglu was formerly a largely unknown CHP candidate and a second election could serve to increase his notoriety. CHP deputy chair Onursal Adiguzel responded to the news by saying that it is ‘illegal to win against the AK Party’. The Washington Post reported that ‘the decision to challenge the results was a high-stakes gamble for Erdogan- forcing a replay of a vote that was largely seen as a referendum on his own leadership.’

Following a devastating currency depreciation and economic recession in recent years, it seems that Turkish voters may be tiring of their long-standing leader and seeking new horizons. Ripples of revolution have surfaced periodically over the past few years and optimistic members of Turkey’s youth-heavy population consider it a matter of time before Erdogan’s 18 year rule ends. The tides may be turning sooner than anticipated, as the previously fractured opposition have united and are presenting a largely-sectarian alternative to the AKP’s long-standing stagnant rule.

How Should We Reflect on the Abortion Debate in Argentina?

22/1/2019

Pro-choice campaigners (taken from the Graphic Online)

Clorrie Yeomans, Third Year MLAC Student, College of Saint Hild and Saint Bede

The Run-Up to the Abortion Debate

The abortion debate in Argentina is an earthquake that splits the land in two. The ground shudders during five months of campaigning in the streets filled with crowds of campaigners wearing emerald bandanas and make-up to symbolise the pro-choice movement. Their principal argument is that criminalising the issue of abortion does not make it go away. In fact, the issue is far from being unimportant, considering that up to an estimated 500,000 clandestine abortions are performed every year in Argentina. Women are criminalised for taking ‘misoprostol’: a drug originally intended to treat stomach ulcers. However, the metal coat hangers in the activists’ hands are a sickly reminder of the even more traumatic alternative for many women, mainly living in rural or deprived areas. Unsurprisingly, these dangerous illegal abortions are the country’s leading cause of maternal deaths. The pro-lifers are also chanting in the streets; dressed in blue. Their fundamental pillar of support is the Catholic Church; whose power has been reinforced since the beginning of the Argentine Pope Francis’ papacy in 2013.

The entire nation waits in suspense on 8th August 2018, as the Senate deliberates for over 16 hours. This would be the final hurdle for abortion to be legalised after it had already been passed by the Chamber of Deputies, the Argentinean equivalent of the House of Commons. The proposed bill would endow every woman with the choice as to whether to continue or terminate her pregnancy during the first 14 weeks. This is a substantial improvement in comparison to the current law which only allows terminations in cases of rape or when the expectant mother’s physical health is at risk. This would be a historic moment for Argentina and for Latin America, where over 97% of women live under restrictive abortion laws. Then, the wave hits and the ground shudders: the Senate rejects the abortion bill by 38 votes to 31. In the streets, there are endless tears of disappointment and anger, as well as happiness and relief.

Natalie Cave (Third Year Student)

Natalie Cave, a Third Year Spanish student who was in Buenos Aires on her Year Abroad, reflects on the historic event:

Being right in the centre of an Argentine protest was quite the experience. I didn’t really know what to expect as I’ve never been involved in a protest in England before, let alone in Latin America where protests are known to be violent. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the abortion protests. The streets were full of singing, dancing, food stalls and music. Everywhere around me I could see both men and women chanting and waving green bandanas (a symbol for pro-choice supporters) in the air. What really stood out was their passion and solidarity in their protest.

The Wider Causes and Effects

Reflecting on Natalie’s response, it is clear that the abortion debate stood for so much more than just a change to the law. The campaign was undoubtedly intertwined with the revitalisation of the feminist movement in Argentina, as well as throughout the continent. It could be said that the abortion debate triggered the feminist movement to become more concrete. At the vanguard of the debate, the ‘#NiUnaMenos’ (‘Not one [woman] less’) campaign surged over social media in response to a series of femicides, including that of 14 year-old Chiara Páez who was beaten to death by her 16-year-old boyfriend when she was
8-weeks pregnant. This triggered women to bring their issues out of the home and into the streets with their heads held high. A space has been forged in which to confront male chauvinism; one of the underlying causes of femicides, violence against women, and poverty throughout the continent. From this point forward, politicians in Argentina and beyond can no longer bury their heads in the sand when confronted with women’s issues. It is true that the abortion debate is not an isolated issue and it has continued to have an amplified ongoing impact, despite the law being rejected. The debate must be situated within a wider dialogue which The New York Times refers to as a ‘broader cultural struggle’. Curious as to what this means, I began to contact members of both sides of the debate, starting with a Skype interview with 24-year-old Franco Teves from Mendoza (the fourth largest city in Argentina):

Franco Teves, Political Researcher- Mendoza, Argentina

Hello, Franco, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Could you briefly introduce yourself to our readers, please?

Franco: Hi, it’s a pleasure. My name is Franco Teves and I am a political researcher in the Senate of Mendoza, Argentina. As part of my work, I was involved in the pro-choice campaign.

So, what were the main arguments of the pro-choice campaign?

Franco: We believe that universal access to safe and legal abortion is necessary because the contraceptive pill is not 100% effective and many people are allergic to condoms. It is hard to say that bringing a new life into the world is something negative but this kind of mistake can really destroy your future. In Latin America, this is a reality because it is the woman who takes care of the child. When young women get pregnant in Latin America, they are often still in education. They are marginalised from society as they can never return to school and if they lack support from their families, they will forever struggle financially. Also, as a matter of fact, many women die from unsafe illegal abortions. Normal terminations are not 100% safe but women would feel a lot more at ease if they had access to a regulated service with specially trained doctors. It is important that we make people aware of this; we must take care of these young girls.

So, what was your personal involvement in the campaign?

Franco: I went to schools, along with other campaigners, to discuss the need for the law…

… But isn’t it wrong to influence school children politically?

Franco: We don’t say that this is a political motive: this is a human need.

President Mauricio Macri’s decision to not veto a law to allow more open abortion, despite being a pro-life advocate himself, has been interpreted by many sceptics as a premeditated way of distracting Argentinians from the country’s ongoing economic problems. What do you think about this?

Franco: This is definitely not true as the abortion campaign began many years prior to the economic deterioration. This year seemed to be the perfect time to vote because the country had become more open and it was more likely to be successful.

What would have been the secondary effects of the law?

Franco: The legalisation of abortion would have led to a more open society with better sex education which would prevent abortion from being needed in the first place.

So, is abortion really the solution to the issue, or what Argentina really needs is better sex education?

Franco: I don’t believe that abortion is the absolute solution to the root cause of the issue. However, by introducing it, people will become more open-minded and will feel more comfortable about speaking out about the issues of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe sex in public. This would lead to sex education being more widely taught in schools.

Would you consider Argentina to be a ‘developed’, ‘forward-thinking’ country then?

Franco: Argentina is a very open-minded and developed country. In fact, in some aspects, we are similar to countries which are considered to be developed. Many advances have taken place in London before coming to Buenos Aires only a few years later. There is a broad acceptance of gay rights and women’s rights and after the next elections, 50% of the Parliament will be made up of women. However, we cannot be an open-minded country until the abortion bill is passed.

Thank you very much, Franco, for taking the time to speak to me today.

Professor Charles Camosy

Questioning Western Media Coverage

Charles Camosy, Associate Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University, has conducted a plethora of thought-provoking research into the abortion debate including his book Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation. His article, The abortion debate in Argentina vs. Ireland: what made the difference? compares Argentina to Ireland, where abortion was legalised in 2018. The article primarily critiques Western media coverage of national abortion debates. For instance, Camosy argues that the case of Chiara Páez, the pregnant teen who was tragically killed, was skewed in order to support the pro-choice campaign. Páez’s pregnancy might have triggered her partner’s violence but his temperament would have possibly manifested itself anyway in an alternative situation further down the line. Legal abortion could have maybe prevented this isolated case of violence. However, it would not have attacked the root cause, or rather the misogyny which is notoriously perpetuated in Latin American culture. All women are threatened by this, and particularly young pregnant women who fall into a downward spiral of dependency and vulnerability. The Western media coverage which I came across tended to oversimplify the debate by inferring that Argentine women, except for those who were deeply religious, universally supported abortion. On the contrary, Camosy observes that a considerable number of female Senators opposed the bill. For example, Senator Silvina Garcia Larraburu considered the abortion debate as a smoke-screen for the country’s economic problems and as an insufficient measure to resolve the wider issue of gender crime.

The conclusion to Camosy’s argument is that the largely generalised and biased Western media coverage in support of the pro-choice campaign in Argentina represents ‘a classic example of neocolonial imperialism into a culture with a very different understanding of the good’. After reading this nuanced conclusion, I decided to personally contact Professor Charles Camosy to ask him to further elaborate on this argument:

Do you believe that western media coverage has used the abortion debate as a way of demonstrating neo-imperialist attitudes? Has western media depicted Argentina as a backwards country?

Charles: 'Indeed I do. Such media, not least because of its partisan bent, simply assumes that abortion rights should be accepted by all societies which care about human rights--and then uses that assumption to describe a country like Argentina (which advocates for the human rights of both the mother and the child) as regressive, based and beholden to religious authority given their refusal to yield to the orthodoxy of the developed West. But that neocolonial posture is not only morally wrong--it is, frankly, silly given, for instance, Argentina's clear progressive history with LGBT rights. There is nothing progressive about appealing to Western-style individual autonomy in ways which make the unwanted vulnerable invisible. Argentina is rightly wrestling with the complex legal and social situation in which both mother and prenatal child are treated as the people they are. Countries like Chile and Ireland--which have had far better health outcomes for women than their abortion-friendly neighbours--prove that a morally serious country need not choose between the vulnerable pregnant woman and the vulnerable prenatal child. Argentina is to be lauded for having a more expansive view of human rights--especially when compared to developed Western countries which proceed as if the massive and horrific violence faced by prenatal children ought to be ignored.'

Reflecting on the Western media coverage to which I had already been exposed, I personally found Camosy’s argument very convincing. For example, the ‘Dispatches’ video by the New York Times describes Argentina as ‘overwhelmingly catholic and conservative’ and infers that the Catholic Church continues to be the puppeteer commanding society and the government in Argentina. The video focuses on the fact that the colour of the pro-life movement is blue; the same as the national flag. This polarizes the ‘Argentinean’ pro-lifers in blue and the green pro-choice activists who are supposedly importing a movement from the outside world: feminism (of which the West likes to try to take ownership).

Camosy’s observation that the debate was a key moment for Argentina in asserting and projecting her own national identity is very convincing. Despite being known as one of the most European nations in Latin America, Argentina is also starkly different to European countries, as the abortion debate has proven. Indeed, for us outsiders in the West, it is incomprehensible how extensive gay rights coexist alongside strict abortion laws in one, united country. That is to say that Argentina refuses to force herself to fit into the mould of Western dichotomies, favouring instead a rich and multifaceted national identity.

Concluding Remarks

To conclude, the purpose of this article was not to convince you to support either side of the abortion debate. Instead, I hope to have led you to consider if it is a good idea to continue to universally implement Western ideologies of feminism and human rights in other nations, without adapting them to their own culture and economy. In a country apparently offering limited sex education, would abortion replace contraception? Does Argentina have sufficient revenue to set up safe abortion clinics for all? Does one have to support abortion in order to be feminist and progressive?

Most importantly, should the West be allowed to dictate what is morally right and wrong throughout the world?

The Definite Article would like to thank Natalie Cave, Franco Teves and Professor Charles Camosy for contributing to the article.

Pro-life campaigner wearing green makeup and bandana (taken from The New York Times)

Pro-life campaigners (taken from the National Catholic Reporter)

Photo taken by Natalie

Is France’s glorification of revolution a problem?

14/1/2019

Sam Turner

La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, has a beautiful melody, but violent and bloody lyrics. Bastille Day, the French national day, is a symbol of freedom as it marks the release of political prisoners from the Bastille. However, it also signifies the start of an extremely bloody revolution.

When singing God Save The Queen, it is improbable that English people sincerely believe and mean what they are singing, and it is unlikely that they consider what the words of the anthem represent every time. It is purely a force of habit. The same is likely true for the French. But the words of an anthem do have meaning and are embedded into national culture and identity, revealing the foundations upon which a nation was built. When I first researched what the words of La Marseillaise meant, I was shocked, but also intrigued and taken in. Other anthems, such as Italy’s Il Canto degli Italiani, also feature violent lyrics, but, for me, no other anthem I have ever heard could match the sheer passion and emotion of La Marseillaise belted out inside the Stade de France. It casts a spell in a way and, through it, it brings people together. However, the lyrics include a literal call to arms (‘aux armes citoyens’), and was first used in 1792, after almost three years of a revolution which killed hundreds of thousands. La Marseillaise celebrated and encouraged violence even after all of the bloodshed.

In the US, the 4th of July marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when revolutionaries gathered in Philadelphia to sign what they had spent over a month writing. Although this event happened during the War of Independence, the day celebrates breaking free from the oppressive rule of the British. Americans celebrate the signing of a document; a provocative act but not a violent one. Bastille day, likewise, celebrates breaking free from oppressive rule. However, in this case the French celebrate an act of violence. They killed the governor of the Bastille and paraded his head around Paris on a pike. There is no doubt that both days symbolise freedom, but there is a profound difference in the acts being celebrated.

Historians have suggested that the violence which characterised the French Revolution was initially used reluctantly, but once it began it was clearly widely supported. The gilets jaunes have protested angrily and sometimes violently over recent weeks against President Macron’s diesel taxes and other policies. The protests quickly gained widespread support. A poll in December suggested that the protestors had the support of roughly 80% of the public. Even when they turned violent, support for the protests didn’t waver. The way the French revolt is substantially different than how the British revolt, however. Looking at the history of British rioting, civic unrest and violence in the UK generally happens on a smaller scale, is less calculated, and is less well supported.

That is not to say that French people are inherently violent. Ask any French person whether they like violence, and they would almost certainly say ‘no’. But when violence is used to push back against the establishment as it so often has been, it often finds wide support. As Charlotte Hughes-Morgan mentioned in her recent article, her French colleague shrugged off the violence of the gilets jaunes, saying simply ‘en France, on aime la Revolution’. Pushback against authority is a general theme throughout French history, ranging from the original French Revolution to May ’68, from the Communards to what we are seeing today.

As I see it, France’s history of political instability and violence can be, in part, attributed to its glorification of the French Revolution. It has helped engrain into French culture a mistrust of any kind of political elite and given rise to the danger that anger might spill over into political violence.

A Short analysis of the 'Gilets Jaunes' movement- Is it achieving its goals?

16/12/2018

Charlotte Hughes-Morgan

Red wine and baguette by the Seine; buttery croissants on the Champs-Élysées; enraged strikers in high-vis jackets throwing paving stones at the police. Just another day in the city of love.

When expressing my disbelief at the extent of the recent riots in Paris to a French colleague, he shrugged it away with ‘En France, on aime la Revolution’ (“In France, we love the Revolution”). He has a point. Looking back at the recent (and not so recent) history of France, one can observe that fighting back against the establishment is an integral part of the French Psyche. From THE Revolution of 1789, a well-loved cornerstone of the A level history syllabus, to the student riots of May 1968 and the hugely destructive riots of 2005 in the suburbs of Paris, the list of instances of civil unrest in France is impressively long.

Whilst it is easy to titter at the infamous French revolutionary spirit, over the last few weeks the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ (‘The yellow vests’) movement has brought some of the worst violence seen in France in decades, with 4 deaths and thousands of arrests throughout the country, and nearly 90,000 police and military personnel deployed to quash it.

Just what is going on in France at the moment? The foreign press has inevitably focused upon the most violent aspects of the movement over the last few weekends, plastering across front pages images of armoured tanks, anti-government graffiti on the Arc de Triumph and violent hooligans shrouded in tear gas. However, over an extraordinarily short period of time, the movement of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ morphed into a monster of many heads. On a fundamental level, the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ started as a group of individuals protesting against a planned rise in fuel tax (the fluorescent vest is an appropriate symbol in light of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ required by law to be carried in all cars in France). Their frustration stemmed from the fact that they cannot do without their cars to get to work and therefore will be the ones most hit by the rise in fuel prices. In their eyes, the Parisians and other urban dwellers have the advantage of public transport whilst those out in the sticks do not.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Any protest movement, and especially one that has gained so much ground so quickly, is a complex structure. The fuel tax is merely the icing on a multi-layered cake of dissatisfaction with Macron and rising living costs. The reasons for the violence are many and varied, and attempting to untangle one group of protestors from another is an arduous task.
There are of course, the original ‘Gilets Jaunes’, widespread groups of individuals from provincial France who started by expressing their anger at the fuel tax through social media groups and organized themselves rapidly in protest movements on the side of France’s roads and in smaller cities before finally moving to demonstrate in Paris.

In addition to this wide-ranging group, there are ‘Les casseurs’ (the thugs/hooligans). This is not an official name, but one heard quite a lot in a French office (often muttered with a shake of the head over an espresso in the canteen). These are the groups primarily thought to be responsible for smashed shop windows and explosions in the streets of Lyon, Paris, and Grenoble amongst others. Most alarmingly, these include a number of extreme left and right groups in France, jumping on the bandwagon of aggression and popular discontent. The French Interior Minister Christophe Castanar has accused far-left and far-right groups of simply exploiting an opportunity for violent protest, a viewpoint which seems more viable now given the continuation of the protests even after the controversial fuel tax had been suppressed. However, the continuation of the protest highlights the great discontent of the French towards Macron’s presidency on issues that lie beyond fuel tax.

Finally there are the students, some as young as 15, protesting against the recent changes to the University admissions system, which many feel goes against the French principle of equality of opportunity in French education. Again, there is a feeling of bandwagons being jumped upon in some of these cases, the changes to the French university system, whilst controversial, are arguably a different set of problems.

With so many different strands of French society running through the protest movement and no obvious leader, it is perhaps more telling to look at those who are NOT protesting. Looking around my prosperous Parisian office I think I’ve found the answer. Funnily enough, none of my colleagues are about to don their fluorescent jackets and risk tear gas for reasons worthy or otherwise. Whilst Macron’s current unpopularity seems fairly unilateral, the feeling of abandonment from the government without a doubt comes from areas outside of the biggest French cities.

The discontent was undoubtedly triggered by the rise in fuel tax but underlying problems have accumulated over time to provoke the biggest crisis of Macron’s presidency. Macron was elected on a platform of economic reform and yet, since his election, lower and middle income families have seen a drop in household income, whilst the scrapping of the wealth tax has been seen to benefit only the richest in society.

Geography seems to be playing an increasingly large part in social and economic difficulties, not just in France but throughout Europe and the world. It is tempting to draw comparisons between the violence of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ and the growth of populist movements throughout Europe, not to mention the geographical split between London and the rest of England revealed by - dare I say it - Brexit. However, this is not a new problem. The gap between the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless is the source of many cases of revolutionary fervour. However, in France, the country where ‘Liberté, Egalité Fraternité’ is still written proudly across the entrance of nursery schools, such a feeling won’t be let to lie.

What next?

Needless to say, large-scale violent protest has not worked wonders for the French economy, and shops and restaurants staying closed and boarded up in central areas meant losing out on business during one of the biggest shopping weekends before Christmas. Many of the shops surrounding the building where our central offices are located still have smashed windows, graffiti plasters the walls of restaurants and street corners and my local Starbucks looked almost apocalyptic the Monday after the biggest protest. Tourists have been put off, monuments closed, and repairing the damage with (ironically) French tax-payers’ money will be no mean feat. However, it is the longer term effects of the movement that will be the most revealing. In short, have the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ got what they came for?

In response to the latest and most violent wave of protests in the capital, Macron’s government has agreed to scrap the planned increases in fuel tax and most ground-breaking of all, in his long-awaited address to the nation on December 10th, Macron agreed to raise the SMIC (The French minimum wage) by €100 per month, a measure which will affect 2.6 million of the lowest-paid people in French society. All this, from a president who, a mere few weeks previously, had promised zero cooperation with violent protestors.

The impact of the 'Gilets Jaunes' movement will be an interesting one to follow. Many things about it are unprecedented, not least of which is the scale and extent of the violence: The role of social media in streamlining localised protests, the mutual exclusivity of a comprehensive environmental policy and an acceptable social policy, and the extent of the government concessions in the face of violence. Whilst the protestors seem pacified by Macron’s new promises, the price of their disillusionment has been a high one to pay.

Gone are the days when France’s leaders disappeared to Versailles and hoped people got bored of giving up their weekends to protest. Clearly, the demands have become impossible to ignore.

Contemporary Racism-The Polemic Case of Treasure Richards

29/11/2018

Irini Picolou

Race has no scientific foundation, as proved by the emergence of Social Darwinism and the existence of later theories in 1911. However, despite the challenges that science imposed to the subjective belief in the plurality of races existent in mankind, heinous racial discourse, activity and genocidal regimes such as that of Nazi Germany, continued to prevail. Is history repeating itself? It might be worth looking into the dubious case of Treasure Richards, an 16 year old African American teenager who identifies herself as Caucasian and white, ‘with a body like Kim Kardashian’.

Poising on the chair on Dr. Phil’s studio, Treasure becomes the performative object of ridicule and comedic entertainment. Her views are underscored by the media, characterising her as a racist villain who does not deserve a supporting and loving family. Ultimately, her racist identity has created her into a problem for society, but also a necessary form of entertainment for the public.
Personally, I condone this treatment towards her. It is understandable, on the one hand, that there would be a profound expression of disgust in her public reception. On the other hand, however, not a ‘racist sympathiser’ myself, it is important to delve into the potential sociological and environmental implications that this case inaugurates.

Her mother told her she was not an African American, something that was criticized in a show hosted by an African American psychologist. This is not the pinnacle of the blame that should prevail, however, it does create a veritable confusion in one’s identity as well as a discursive confirmation of a desirable self-identification. I am not going to make assumptions about this individual and insist she has some sort of mental disorder, but objectively speaking, how far should we go about shaming her views in public on a global spectacle?

It is, without doubt, important to prevent the spread of extremist ideas and to show one that it is wrong. However, the extent to which this girl has been publicly shamed for her factual distortion within her self-identification could be considered counterproductive. We could make the argument that it gives her, in a way, more agency to inflate her egotistical form of expressing her outlandish ideas, or if we make presumptions about her emotional hidden state, it may reinforce her ‘self-hating’ if this is the case already. It is important to consider where these ideas came from since the renowned scholar who wrote the Oxford very short introduction on race, Ali Rattansi, considers racist beliefs not to be ‘natural’ as such. So where did these emerge from?

Without pointing the finger at solely one factor i.e. her mother’s role in reinforcing the distortion of her daughter’s self-perception, it is important to bear on the wider contexts of racism and self-identification, as well as the legitimacy of discursive agency in order to understand where these heinous-sounding ideas originate from. In other words, it is crucial to understand what constitutes our understanding of difference, why this girl views African-Americanism as a platform of difference and to what extent she truly self-identifies as Caucasian. It is thus necessary to delve deeper into these issues of self-identification and fear of difference by trying to perceive what shapes her view of difference, what role society plays in her apparent distortion or why she is afraid of being ‘different’, if profound studies show that to be the case. It is crucial to examine her true intentions through survey and academic study, instead of public shaming and to test environmental theories before publicising such statements and assumptions in the media.

Of course, it is not an immediate instinct to view this from an academic lens, because it is categorised as a form of entertainment and perhaps what we would call ‘television trash’. However, it is important to take a sociological standpoint on the issue which may help us to decipher the origins of extremism in groups such as the

The erroneous claim of monolithic identity

27/11/2018

The Future of Cyprus and Cypriot Identity Remains Unclear

Irini Picolou

‘Cyprus is Turkish and will remain Turkish’, said Meral Akşener, leader of İyi Party (Good Party), a prominent opposition party in Turkey. Akşener ‘has caused alarm by calling for a repeat invasion of Cyprus, using the code phrase Ankara’s army deployed to launch an assault on the island 44 years ago’, Ayşe goes on holiday.

In 1974, the town of Famagusta, home to many in my grandfather’s generation, was invaded by Turkey. Famagusta was one of the most prolific holiday resorts in the world and had one of the best beaches in Europe. Today, it is a derelict, sombre and melancholic ghost town, when it was once a lively bustling home to many Cypriots who looked after it and warmly welcomed tourists. My grandfather will never be able to see his home again because access is denied to Greek Cypriots.

I take issue-and perhaps also a biased view-with many of these claims. Firstly, I do not actively oppose the cohabitation of Turkish Cypriots with Greek Cypriots in one national space, and I believe in a harmonious liaison in some areas of Cyprus. What I do strongly denounce is the attribution of a secondary cultural identity as the defining feature of a group within a country which consists of two national groups, especially the first being primarily Greek. I do not deny that Cyprus is, by definition, at present, a bicommunal state with two equally rich languages and cultures, but it is most certainly impossible to efface the historically primary culture which is still very much present in Cyprus through the power of political discourse. This, I do not accept.

Secondly, if Turkish government officials want to pacifically liaise with Greek Cypriot government officials and to create a positive image of their population, the threats to exploit the resources of the island are not helping this image, it simply reinforces a backward reputation of the Turkish government, a repetition of history. The erroneous claiming of a monolithic identity acting as a political justification for the exploitation of the countries’ resources is not a logical, historically or ethnically supported statement, and should therefore not be rendered into a matrix of power. We are in the 21st century, and we should have moved on from extremist political regimes within Europe. It is time the Turkish government really contemplated on the logic behind their words and the disadvantages they are creating for the reputation of Turkish Cypriots looking to live harmoniously within their country.

The case of Matthew Hedges and the evaluation of academic permissions

25/11/2018

Irini Picolou

Undoubtedly, the case of Matthew Hedges, the Durham academic who received a life sentence in the UAE for allegedly spying against the state, is a major devastation for the entire university community and even more so for his close family. To have your whole life taken away from you in less than five minutes, which is how long his trial lasted, in a foreign country, crippling with uncertainty and horror in a cold isolated court, is beyond even some of our worst nightmares.

This case does raise a particularly significant, however, even if somewhat cynical and critical message, for the academic community in particular. Without being able to make a comprehensive judgement on the level of support and surveillance Hedges’ academic proposal received, as a young academic, the naivety of tackling such issues is plausible. For this reason, the university should be striving to protect their PhD students at their highest level of potency, even if it means including some restrictions on certain proposals. As undoubtedly invaluable as this research may have proved to be at first glance, this case does raise questions about the degree of academic liberalism that should be permitted by the university. Despite the confirmation from the foreign office that Matthew was not working as a spy, this did not stop a court ruling determining a life sentence of 25 years as well as a brutal confiscation of his materials and belongings.

We must therefore turn to the questions, what security procedures are utilised when attributing funding to a PhD proposal or acceptance, if any? It is time that the university carefully consider the position and the power of the country even within what is considered to be one of its allies. It is easy to lose touch of the wider contexts and global issues that exist beyond the realms of academia, and although this is an event which never should have occurred, it is an important creation of a pressing need to re-evaluate and refine security procedures in such proposals dealing with transnational sensitivities in foreign countries that exist beyond our reach. To what degree was this proposal evaluated, questioned and considered? Perhaps not to a great extent; as, as it has been shown, his research in the UAE involved a great risk, a risk which, in the end, he paid with his freedom. The power of the country to save Matthew Hedges from the permanent execution of a life sentence is sadly limited and hence extremely uncertain at this point in time. Even if his case is eventually resolved, what sort of mark does this leave on one’s future? It is crucial to contemplate these issues on an individual level within their wider contexts, instead of attributing the main focus to academic appeal and interest.

Although this issue has many layers of complexity, such as the criticism of academic restriction and the limited information that the country itself may have about the specific security measures in each country, it is better to take precautions rather than to run the risk, especially with the rise of wider global issues such as terrorism and the tightening of security measures in global spheresre to edit.

Anti-Zionism, a different ballpark to Anti-Semitism

12/11/2018

An Orthodox Jew expresses his anti-zionist beliefs and support for Palestine

With a longstanding history of the Jews being oppressed in the 1492 expulsion of Late Medieval Spain, the Eurocentric Christian attitudes associating Jews with filth and disease during the years of the plague to the Modern terror of the Holocaust, there is surely much to say on the historical front of Anti-Semitism. However, recently there has been an erroneous conflation of Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism, which is the danger in the arguments of Israeli supporters in the world-famous conflict violently encountered with the Palestinians.

Let us first examine the etymological origins of the two words to demarcate where the confusion may lie. Objectively speaking, when you type ‘Zionism’ into Google, the first definition which appears reads ‘a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel’. Anti-Zionism is thus a political movement denouncing the promotion of the settlement of Jews in Israel. Surely, the danger can lie in manipulating the wording as ‘Anti-protection,’ thus making it seem that there are Anti-Semitic beliefs involved with this political movement. Anti-Semitism, on the other hand, is predominantly a racial movement, and the two do not necessarily intertwine depending on the context due to the fact they refer to separate concepts, let alone are synonymous with one another. If we phrase it as such, we are taking it out of the current political context in which it is being used and have to face the negative implications of conflating the two terms.

It is important to remember that Palestine was previously a British colony before Britain allowed Israeli rule to dominate the Palestinian nation on the grounds of religious justification, claiming it was a promised land to which they now want to return. If I disassociate my own personal views from the matter, which may or may not be Pro-Israeli in the case of the conflict, Zionism is thus a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine. Granted the justification was morally and ethically right or wrong in its political and biblical context, it is important to remember that the conflict has equally led to the slaughter of a nation, almost as what we could term as a present-day genocide. So effectively, Zionism is being utilised to justify the oppressive actions of the Israeli population towards the Palestinians, and labeling this threatening settlement to Palestinians is ‘Anti-Semitism?’

I would not be writing this article if there was a somewhat peaceful cohabitation existing in certain areas of Palestine or even a political compromise between the two countries. I have friends who have lost cousins in Palestine in bloody gun episodes with the intervention of Israeli soldiers. While I do not actually overtly oppose Jewish settlement within a certain country or even dare to question governmental choice based on Biblical and legal terms to grant Palestine to the Jewish nation, my stance being limited and thus neutral until I read more on the matter, I certainly do oppose terming Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism within this specific political context which indirectly serves as a justification for the murder, oppression and hatred towards the Palestinian people.

Irini Picolou

The rise of the far-right in Brazil : Implications of Bolsonaro’s Election

12/11/2018

The nation has elected a strong, nationalist leader

Following a longstanding analytical tradition, Anglophone media outlets have been quick off the mark in drawing parallels between Latin America’s largest democracy, Brazil, and its North American neighbour in recent weeks. In today’s political climate, it is hardly surprising that the country’s newly elected president has been branded as the ‘Trump of the Tropics’ not only for his anti-conservationist stance, but also for his shamelessly sexist, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, militaristic and fanatical remarks — you name it, he has said it. These circumstances do, in some respect, encourage us to jump to certain conclusions; however, we shouldn’t assume that Bolsonaro rose to power by merely riding the populist tide and exploiting US intervention from the likes of Steve Bannon. This is a different country: an autonomous nation with its own history to which we cannot apply an identical logic. The causes of this historical outcome were much more intricately woven, and the results reflect both global and national turning points that can point us towards their possible impact.

Given our typically limited coverage of Brazil’s current affairs, the impulsively critical response to the general election held on October 28th was nothing new. At the dawn of the millennium, the country’s international image was improving as things really started to look up for a place with so much potential: the famous Seleção won its fifth World Cup title in the same year that Luiz Ignácio da Silva became the world’s most voted-for president second only to Ronald Reagan in his 1984 victory. Who would have thought that the evolution of the BRICS would be tainted by a corruption scandal so politically widespread that Lula himself would eventually end up behind bars? What was meant to be an emerging economy watched football stadiums and Olympic training facilities rot; more patients died queuing in hospital corridors, and public education continued to appall as enrollment in state schools plummeted. O Gigante adormecido, the Sleeping Giant, as Brazilian’s have often called their country, still lies dormant for all that it has yet to offer while we tut and shake our heads at the abysmal situation.

This contextualisation is key to understanding why the people, o povo brasileiro, elected a man with such fascist tendencies. The career politician due to take office in January next year actually left the army in 1988 to join the Chamber of Deputies a few years later. During his time in the Planalto he has been a member of nine different parties and passed only two of around 170 bills, one of which was suspended almost immediately after by the Supreme Court because the phosphoethanolamine pill, which he wanted to legalise, hadn’t been under enough testing to prove that it truly treated cancer. It’s safe to say that, had he appeared on The Apprentice, Jair Bolsonaro probably would have been fired. So why the sudden rise in popularity after almost three unproductive decades in Congress? The simplest answer is most likely that Lula couldn’t be the Worker Party’s candidate while he was in jail, so PT had to find a rapid substitute, in this case, Haddad, who carried the baton reasonably well, but couldn’t secure the votes needed to win a majority. There was, in fact, one man largely responsible for this turn of events.

His name, Sergio Moro; the judge in charge of the Lava Jato, an operation to incriminate government officials involved in Brazil’s mindblowingly sweeping money-laundering scandal, has recently been appointed Minister of Justice. He had originally claimed he would not accept such an offer so as not to tarnish the reputation of his anti-corruption project with the Federal Police, so it’s difficult to tell whether he has taken on this new responsibility to help bring about much-needed political reform, or if he was involved in some sort of mission to eradicate the left from his country for good. In any case, Bolsonaro’s heightened presence is symptomatic of much more than a far right-wing resistance of “communism”. This is the collapse of the neoliberal order and years of technocratic management that haven’t given the people what they desperately needed. Last year alone, more than 60,000 were murdered on the streets of Brazil — this is the last straw for families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and all they want is for law and order to be restored.

However dictatorial his measures may seem, planning to open up protected Amazonian land to industry and threatening some of the most vulnerable people in society, Bolsonaro has undoubtedly offered more change than any of the other presidential candidates. His focus on tradition, protection, and progress, no matter how relentless, gives many Brazilians hope for a safer, more prosperous future. In a world so desperate for security and stability, perhaps he doesn’t seem like such a monster after all.

Isabella Garcia Foster

Ethiopia Installs First Female President as the Nation Ushers in a New Era

2/11/2018

Calm Before The Storm: I visited the beautiful Bale Mountains just hours before being caught up in deadly Ethiopian riots

Experienced Ethiopian Diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde has recently become Ethiopia’s first female president, vowing to promote gender equality and peace in the nation. Although the presidential position of Ethiopia is largely a ceremonial one, Zewde’s accession to be the next president of Ethiopia is great testament to the progressive new era Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is creating.

I visited Ethiopia in February this year, and the country appeared to be on the brink of civil war. Tribal tensions reverberated within all corners of society, deadly riots were breaking out on a regular basis, and I actually ended up being escorted out of the country by the army. Looking back, that would make for a great story, but at that moment it was terrifying. Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromos, felt marginalised and were putting huge pressure on the government to release the increasingly large number of Oromo political prisoners, stamp out corruption, and ease unemployment and inflation.

Just days after I left Ethiopia, in an unexpected turn of events, (now former) Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned. Ethiopian citizens then elected the first ever Oromo Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, who vowed to unite the country and ‘clean up’ the ruling class. Ahmed’s instalment as Prime Minister followed three years of protests lead by ethnic Oromos, and since taking the country’s highest power he has been carrying out huge reforms, and through politically liberal acts he seeks to restore stability and encourage growth in Africa’s fastest growing economy.

In the past few months Ahmed has ended a two-decade long conflict with Eritrea. In July 2018, a joint declaration was signed between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which puts an end to border conflicts, and allows the two countries to restore diplomatic relations, further opening up trade routes, and decreasing military spending. Ahmed’s government has released thousands of political prisoners, healing old wounds between Ethiopia’s tribes, and lifted Ethiopia’s draconian state of emergency act, widely perceived to be a tool of repression, thus opening up the political landscape and establishing democratic principles within the country’s governance.

Although domestic opposition have seethed at Ahmed’s fast-paced liberal reforms, the international community has welcomed his progressive reforms and many investors are looking towards an increasingly attractive Ethiopia. There is particular interest surrounding his intentions to privatise several state owned enterprises and establish an Ethiopian stock exchange. Ethiopia is, at present, the largest country in the world, in terms of population and gross domestic product, to not have a stock exchange.

Abiy Ahmed, a father of three daughters, further appears to be a great champion of women’s empowerment. Earlier this month, Ahmed famously declared in a parliamentary speech that women are ‘less corrupt than men.’ He further stated that strong female leadership would help restore peace and stability and bring greater transparency to the government. He seems to have acted upon his word by giving 50% of cabinet positions to women, and being the head of a parliament which elected Ethiopia’s first female president.

So as Ms Zewde steps into her new office, Ethiopia steps into a brave new world of change, progress and optimism. Hopefully, next time I return to Ethiopia I won’t experience such a dramatic forced exit…

Lara Gibson