The Tuqay

Haytarma is about a Crimean Tatar in the Soviet Air Force in...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:45:12 +0500

Haytarma is about a Crimean Tatar in the Soviet Air Force in World War II, stuck on base while his family (and nearly 200,000 other Tatars) were deported forcibly.

It’s The Tuqay’s kind of movie.

Illustration by Nidal el-Khairy in this article on Arabic...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:05:56 +0500

Illustration by Nidal el-Khairy in this article on Arabic science fiction but seriously y’all this illustration.

humansoftbilisi: Sheikh Vagif, the head cleric of Georgian...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:42:08 +0500

humansoftbilisi:

Sheikh Vagif, the head cleric of Georgian Muslims once told me he enjoys listening to Pink Floyd and Deep Purple.

Ekumenopolis. As valuable now as ever. English subtitled version...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:37:39 +0500

Ekumenopolis. As valuable now as ever. English subtitled version is here.

Murmuration: Shura City

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:44:12 +0500

Murmuration: Shura City:

murmurationfestival:

Shura City

by AJ Kohn and Hiba Ali

A Brief Overview

The drone may conceive of itself — if it was armed with the ordinance of self-awareness — as a tool beyond architecture. In the end of the 1990’s society was able to get used to CCTV on street corners in stores and on the street. We…

@Writepudding representing Glendale, where everyone is Armenian...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:43:08 +0500

@Writepudding representing Glendale, where everyone is Armenian (but especially the Armenians)

Murmuration: A Dronestagram Family Portrait

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:07:57 +0500

Murmuration: A Dronestagram Family Portrait:

murmurationfestival:

A Dronestagram Family Portrait

by Tim Maly

Tim Maly takes a Dronestagram moment and shows us the entire family album, including everyone and everything involved in the event: those on the ground, the aircraft, where it came from, where it was built, where it was flown to, and who made the…

"Did you know that in the past week, five of my colleagues have committed suicide?"

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 07:53:28 +0500

“Did you know that in the past week, five of my colleagues have committed suicide?”

- An Istanbul policeman in this Radikal piece (which isn’t loading currently) and this New Yorker piece. According to the Policemen’s Union, six policemen have committed suicide.

For whatever reason, I find this incredibly affecting and not a little horrifying.

"Their main aim is to provide a ‘more expensive’ Taksim Square where the government and..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:19:45 +0500

““Their main aim is to provide a ‘more expensive’ Taksim Square where the government and [corporations] can make a greater profit.””

- Sirri Sureyye Onder, an MP for the Baris ve Demokrasi Partisi (BDP) as quoted in Alexander Christie-Miller’s article on redevelopment.

We don’t really need to convince you to join the...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:18:00 +0500

We don’t really need to convince you to join the Uluslararasi Capulcular Komunu, but here we are. It’s a damned catchy song to boot.

Mashallah News → Welcome to Occupy Starbucks

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:22:23 +0500

Mashallah News → Welcome to Occupy Starbucks:

A year ago, the students of Bogazici University occupied the Starbucks that invaded their campus. Mashallah remembers, and you should too.

"A drone is a perfect citizen. It follows orders. It produces. It does not waste. It does not take..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:17:58 +0500

“A drone is a perfect citizen. It follows orders. It produces. It does not waste. It does not take breaks, it does not gossip, and it does not unionize. A drone does not worry about the second-order effects of its actions. A drone will not whistleblow and a drone will not strike.”

- -by Ajam co-Editor Asher Kohn (via ajammc)

Travel Posters for the Soviet Union. Always a good slideshow to...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:32:02 +0500

Travel Posters for the Soviet Union. Always a good slideshow to have on the internet. I really don’t recognize that Tblisi.

"In the decades before the Holocaust, national identity and Yiddish spelling were deeply intertwined...."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:30:06 +0500

“In the decades before the Holocaust, national identity and Yiddish spelling were deeply intertwined. When I read Yiddish literature printed before World War II, I can often guess the writers’ political milieu through their spelling alone. In 19th-century Europe, religious writers spelled Yiddish words by imitating Hebrew, using vowel markings where none were necessary so their new writing would resemble ancient Hebrew texts. Meanwhile, Jews who wanted to assimilate into European life wrote in a Yiddish spelling that openly imitated German. This brand of spelling — it used Hebrew letters to represent even silent German characters in shared cognates — subtly announced, as leaders of the German Jewish Reform movement once proclaimed, that “Berlin is our Jerusalem.”

Spelling in the early Soviet Union was even more perverse. There, government control over Yiddish schools and presses led to the invention and enforcement of a literally anti-Semitic Yiddish orthography by spelling the language’s many Semitic-origin words phonetically instead of in Hebrew. (Imagine spelling “naïve” as “nigh-eve” in order to look less French.) It was an attempt to erase Jewish culture’s biblical roots, letter by letter.”

- Dara Horn, “Jewish Identity, Spelled in Yiddish“ (The New York Times)

Erdogan playing a game of Long Donkey. Full of a photoset of...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:12:05 +0500

Erdogan playing a game of Long Donkey. Full of a photoset of Erdogan ‘shopped into various #DirenGezi Things, because why not?

Window on Eurasia ‘De-Russification’ of Tatarstan

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:24:17 +0500

Window on Eurasia ‘De-Russification’ of Tatarstan:

Or as @randomdijit put it: “Yes, Tatarstan has radicals. They scream ‘Russia for Russians’”

t-a-h-i-t-i: Samarkand by jason.risley on Flickr.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:51:08 +0500

t-a-h-i-t-i:

Samarkand by jason.risley on Flickr.

Meanwhile, protests over administration in Bosnia. Here,...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 04:38:04 +0500

Meanwhile, protests over administration in Bosnia. Here, International Crisis Group’s Marko Prelec meets with the most Reddit-looking Imam I’ve ever seen.

All Singing and Dancing: A brief sociology of Islamic Pop in...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:48:41 +0500

All Singing and Dancing: A brief sociology of Islamic Pop in Indonesia, by Alicia Izharuddin

Link to the story, at The State_, here.

roadsandkingdoms: Are they not brothers, then, these protesters...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:42:25 +0500

roadsandkingdoms:

Are they not brothers, then, these protesters and the tantuni man?