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Is Polygamy good for women?
11 02 2009A proposal last week by Malaysia’s Islamic party argued that polygamy can be beneficial for women.
The conservative Islamic party has called for Muslim men in the country to marry single mothers instead of “young virgin girls,” said a state official. Al-Arabiya news channel quoted Wan Ubaidah, head of women, family and health affairs in a northern state, remarking that although Malaysian men usually prefer young and virgin girls as their additional wives, this new proposal would help single mothers and widows who are finding it hard to raise their kids. Read the rest of the blog on the Worldfocus website.
Israel condemns Turkish TV drama for “incitement”
10 16 2009Only a few days after Turkey excluded Israel from a joint NATO war exercise, a new crisis is brewing between the two Middle East allies.
The problem is a television drama series that Israel condemns as state-sanctioned “incitement.”
“Separation,” a 13-part TV series that aired on Turkey’s state-run television channel for the first time on Wednesday, has several controversial scenes. In one, a Palestinian father holds his new-born above his head in front of Israeli soldiers at a check point. A few seconds later, one of the soldiers shoots the baby dead. In another scene, Israeli soldiers kick and beat elderly Palestinians on the streets and one soldier shoots a teenage Palestinian girl on her chest. Read the rest of the blog on the Worldfocus website.
Leveling the gender playing field in Turkey
09 11 2009Turks are mad about football (soccer), but most of them are unaware of a new development in the field: A new professional women’s football league. Now, a group of brave girls is trying to challenge the gender divide in Turkey.
The new league has been met with resistance, and some boundaries have yet been broken down. Many in Turkey still believe that women should be confined to the home, and that the football field is no place for women. Read the rest of the blog on the Worldfocus website.
Turkish Media Monitor
04 15 2008
In a country of political and ethnic turmoil, self-censorship is a common practice among Turkish journalists. Among the major factors that put pressure on journalists are: corporate ownership of media, the economic dependence of some of these corporations on the government, the military’s influence on reportage, and a political atmosphere of heightened nationalism, which is reflected in a criminal law that subjects journalists to prosecution for insulting “Turkishness.” At the same time, some progress toward greater press freedom can be seen in recent years as the number of journalists imprisoned because of their work has sharply declined from the 1990s. Read the rest of the article.
Texas and Ohio Primaries in the Turkish Press
03 06 2008The Turkish press has shown increased interest in the U.S. presidential primary elections now that the Democratic race is getting more and more heated. In the run up to February’s Super Tuesday elections, most of the Turkish media relied on wire service reports. However, for the March 4 Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas, most major Turkish newspapers had their reporters in Washington cover the event first hand. Read the rest of the article.
Coverage of the U.S. 2008 Elections in the Turkish Press
02 06 2008American politics has always been prominent in the Turkish press and most Turkish papers cover important U.S. news intensively. However, the run-up to the 2008 primary elections and caucuses has coincided with a very busy political period in Turkey. At the moment, the Turkish media is full of coverage of the incursion of the Turkish army into Northern Iraq and the ongoing armed conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey. Another event that is dominating the news agenda is the ruling conservative Islamist Justice and Development Party’s stubborn effort to change the law that bans the veil in Turkish universities. Thus, the elections in America have not yet become a prominent spectacle in the Turkish press. Read the rest of the article.
There are human beings in Iraq
Wayne Coles-Janess decided to go to Iraq to document the lives of everyday people since there is no real representation of anything to do with the whole Middle Eastern region on the mainstream media. The director says, “The only thing in the western media that we see from the Middle East is angry men shouting ‘Jihad Jihad’ and very poor people on dusty dirty streets with a camel or donkey. An actual visual depiction of the world that we live in today doesn’t exist. So I felt the obligation to use my skills as a filmmaker to go to Iraq, to try to find more typical stories of people in their society rather than the stereotypical ones that are represented in the media in 30 seconds.” When you watch In the Shadow of the Palms , one can see a very different version of the reality in Iraq than what is normally seen on the TV and this reality certainly does not justify the motives behind the actions of the US government. Read more from this article
In the land of Almadovar, amongst womenVolver, which can be translated as “To Return” to English, houses many different acts of “returning” during its runtime. We witness Almadovar’s return to his village La Mancha where he spent his childhood. We also witness his return to the female perspective, where whispers from “All About My Mother” echoe, by focusing on the rituals of women in La Mancha and their relationships with eachother. After the noir solemnity of “Bad Education”, Almadovar also returns to comedy. Read more from this article
