Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

[ddeubel]

Is there snow in the sahara?

Egypt also can be added to this list. As well as all the other usual suspects. I'd also like to recommend the U.S.A's own burgeoning best friend China as getting 5 stars. As I've already pointed out before Uzbekistan is high up there also. Russia gets 4 stars, mainly because they only kill journalists, they don't put them into prison for life or lash/beat/torture. They are more merciful. Just so people don't think I am only picking on America's best friends -- let's also give Cuba 5 stars.........though I do think that their latest initiative Programa Todos Cubanos http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/20/opinion/edallbright.php
is very commendable....

What is noteworthy is that of all the countries in the news these days, the one with the most lively and democratic press and freedoms is Bolivia.........we will see how long this continues....

DD

[Gopher]

You might want to secure the copyright to this verison of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" that you have created or at least contributed to.

It seems that every time a new thread is posted, within one post, you can link the topic to a U.S.-centic worldview or antiAmerican point. Whether it is you who cannot discuss Turkish affairs without citing the United States, or Canuckistan who cannot discuss Iranian covert operations without attempting to hijack the discussion so that it treats U.S. covert operations, or Octavius Hite or any of the other dedicated NotAmericans who cannot even discuss a Canadian Supreme Court appointment without casting aspersions on the United States, I am amused.

I am sorry that Beijing, who you allege is "America's best friend," has such an intolerant attitude with respect to free speech (and other freedoms). What should we do, treat them imperialistically and dictate terms?

Is that what you advocate?

If not, how is this our fault? For we, as you know, have always been one of the most tolerant places in the entire history of this planet for religious and political freedoms.

Just clarifying the record. You brought in "America's best friends" and, by implication and innuendo, cast aspersions on the United States in an instance where it is wholly unwarranted (again).

This being said, Ddeubel, do you have anything to add to the issue I raised in creating this thread? Have you, for example, read the book, or do you know anything about this writer or her other accomplishments as a professor?

[Captain Courageous]

Nationalism is built into the Turkish Constitution - it's essentially part of what defines Turkey. You even go to jail for saying nasty things about Mustafa Kemal/Ataturk.

[Rteacher]

I haven't heard the link yet, but I bet it makes reference to the last famous Turkish writer who got in trouble with authorities for confirming his belief that there was an Armenian genocide carried out by Ottoman Turks. Here's an excerpt from an article relating that with an earlier classic example of Turkey's persecution of writers:

The trial of the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, for having �publicly denigrated Turkish identity� with his remarks about the massacre of Armenians and Kurds by the Ottoman regime early in the twentieth century, makes this an apt time to recall the life and career of another Turkish writer prosecuted - indeed, persecuted - by the state for his controversial views: the most prominent name in modern Turkish poetry, Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963).

In 1938 Hikmet, who like a great many poets of his time (Pablo Neruda, for example) was a committed Marxist, was sentenced to 28 years in prison on charges of sedition for a long poem about a fifteenth-century rebellion against Ottoman rule. Hikmet�s case, like Pamuk�s now, received wide international attention. Indeed, the figure of Hikmet looms in Pamuk�s recent remarks (in an essay in the New Yorker) about his country�s historic persecution of writers, and his joke that it is only with his trial that he has become �a real Turkish writer�. In 1949 an international committee, including on its rolls Picasso and Sartre, was formed to campaign for Hikmet�s release, and in 1950, the year he was released by Turkey�s first democratically elected government, he received the World Peace Prize. Hikmet continued to be harassed even by the new regime, and eventually had to seek refuge in Poland.
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2005/12/nazim-hikmet-in-prison.html

[Leslie Cheswyck]

Awhile back a Turkish dignitary took offense when he learned of the real goings on at what Koreans liked to call "Turkish" baths. It created a diplomatic row. Ankara threatened to re-name their own version of "Turkish" baths to ... you guessed it: "Korean" baths. (What the Turks had called their "Turkish" baths before then I do not know.) And that is why you no longer see signs in Korea touting "Turkish" baths.

*Play The Legend Of Pai Mei from the Kill Bill, vol.2 soundtrack while reading.

[Ilsanman]

I am glad Turkey does this still. It is fuel for the EU to keep Turkey out of them.

[laogaiguk]

[Ilsanman]

Exactly, unless you wish Europe to be totally and completely changed.

[bucheon bum]

The writer of "Snow" (blocking on his name) was arrested for the same offense recently (last year or this one). Now if he had been arrested for overrated writing, I would have supported Turkey's maneuver.


edit: whoops, RTeacher beat me to it.

[mithridates]

Interesting to see two Canadians talking about that after all Turkey's doing at the moment to evacuate Canadians stranded in Lebanon. 1,500 through Turkey so far and there should be a total of 4,000 or so.

I've decided that geopolitically the EU can't do without Turkey. The thing in the constitution about not being able to insult someone for being Turkish would have to be changed, but it shows that Turks are more concerned about being Turks than about being Muslim, and that's a good thing in my mind.

One interesting fact about Turkey is that leaving the cities does not bring you to a wasteland of Islamic hardcoreism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alevi

In press freedom Turkey still has a ways to go; they have a 25.00 rating according to Reporters sans fronti�res (lower is better) but that's down from the 35 or so it had last year and a few years before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders

There are a few posters on this board that actually know something about Turkey having lived there for a while though.

Edit: oh yeah, Alevi, not Averi (some rock band).

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Woland]

[Neil]

[Gopher]