Michel Foucault and Discursive Reality

This is inspired by current reading and online conversation with a friend. Unlike my friend, and many commentators, the more I read Foucault the less I see what he is often believed to do. That would be to understand reality in terms of discourse, which would be a form of social constructionism or constructivism. His account of sexuality in particular does not, as far as I can see, understand sexuality as constructed by discourse. ıt looks at the discourse surrounding sexuality, including science. The difference is important. Foucault sees medical, psychiatric, moral, religious, and philosophical discussions of sexuality as belonging to discourse, discourse which cuts across all subject divisions. Saying our knowledge of sexuality is discursive is not saying that sexuality is discursive. It does not deny that discourse is conditioned by observation and physical reality. Who would deny that our sexuality is affected by ideas about limits and the excitement of passing limits. However, despite popular mythology, Foucault does not say that sexuality is constructed by prohibitions. Sexuality is a reality labelled in many ways in different contexts. My friend correctly refers to this as Nominalism. Nomianlism does not deny physical realities though. Nominalism is not constructivism. The constructivist looking parts of Foucault are just as much about the eruption of physical reality in discourse as the definition of reality by discourse. That is why there is no master universal discourse in Foucault. He follows a materialism in which discourse emerges in the attmetps to control physical reality. I'll ask my friend for citations and then I may have more to say.

More Courage of Nick Clegg

I have to revise yesterday's comments about Clegg not saying as much as I'd like about his attitude to public services. In an interview with 5 prizewinning Liberal Democrat Bloggers (Alex Wilcock, James Graham etc), Clegg was clear and established consistency with past statements. He's in favour of choice in public services, particularly schools and health. he sees them as being funded by general taxation. In health he wants patients to 'own' a financial pot which can be transferred between providers, on schools he wants choice and he wants poor families to bring money with to any school their children attend. He clearly excluded health insurance and educational vouchers. This is consistent with previous pronouncements though those did leave the door open for what he has now excluded. His early speeches in the campaign did not exclude these possibilities either. Still given the necessary flexibility of anyone with a political career this is a consistent record. Clegg may or may not be pondering more radical market orientated measures, if he is he can floatr them later and wait for the reaction. He cannot force them on the party which does decide policy at conference after a consultative process.

I would prefer to see private insurance funds coming into health, with the government paying premiums for the poorest and everyone obliged to have insurance on a drivers' insurance model. Where services are provided by a public body it is reasonable to charge for morfe routine purposes, exempting hose on state benefits. Everyone knows that General Practioners (geenral service doctors in Britain) have a lot of people coming to 'surgeries' (open time) who do not have a problem or not one the GP can address. Education 'vouchers' are good if what that means is that parents choose between a multitude of publicly funded providers. That meaning has been given to vouchers, though I would have thought strictly speaking it could only apply to government issued vouchers which can be redeemed against fees at private schools.

Clegg is not running on the measures I favour but his committment to choice is important and does take some courage at this point. There are a lot of public sector professionals in the party who may be inclined to stick to a point of view based on producer monopoloy. This is referred to as 'universal service' and is supposed to be egalitarean. In reality it means inefficient services which disproportionately benefit the middle classes. Witness east London, a low income area where Medecin sans frontieres has moved in because National Health Service provision is so useless for local working class people. That is adter 10 years of increased spending on health and higher salaries for public sector workers, on top of a pension regime much more favourable than what most get in the private sector.

The Courage of Nick Clegg

I've been tracking the contest to lead the British Liberal Democrats as closely as possible from Istanbul. In particular I've been following the Lib Dem Blogs aggregate. Inevitably this is a self selected group of the over opinionated (just like must myself) but overall I think it gives a reasonable idea of how Liberal Democrats are thinking.

This point is partly in response to some of the bloggers, but also to growing general perceptions of Nick Clegg. It has to be said that Clegg's campaign has been strikingly bland after an impressive launch in Sheffield where he emphasised the limits of the state and promised to take the party out of its comfort zone. There was an obvious contrast with Chris Huhne's more abrasive style. Things came to a head on BBC TV on Sunday when a presenter produced a Huhne campaign team dossier labelled 'Calamity Clegg'. Huhne disassociated himself from the document but then proceeded to talk over Clegg and the presenter making very aggressive accusations. One of his accusations was that Clegg supported school vouchers (not an idea I find intrinsically dreadful). Clegg has said in public and apparently in a recent private conversation with Huhne that he does not support vouchers. Indeed he has supported another way of increasing choice in schools by suggesting that low income families should carry money with them to any school they choose.

Most bloggers, and probably most party members, found Huhne's attitude unacceptable. Hardline Huhnites defended Huhne as telling it as it has to be told. A few neutrals took the view that Huhne was abrasive but Clegg is too bland and lacking in nerve

Clegg not a Coward
Very recently Clegg took a lot of flak from outside the Lib Dems on two policies:
1. Amnesty for illegal immigrants who've been in the country for 10 years or more
2. Evidence based public policy on drugs including alcohol, misrepresented in some quarters as a call for prohibition of alcohol. The point in the latter case is to approach the issue in health terms not criminal law.
Earlier radical proposal
Great Repeal Act, to dispose of unnecessary legislation. Could be just tidying up but I think it has to be taken as a plan for limiting the state by seeking out over interventionist legislation.

Clegg's Problem
After making a bold start by referring to limited state liberalism, very striking for the left inclined Lib Dems, Clegg has retreated into vagueness. He certainly does not want to say much what he favours for public sector reform. Under questioning from bloggers he's said he wants individual National Health Service accounts which would give a choice of providers. He's not really following up on the speech though or on earlier indications that he's interested in forms of funding health services other than out of general taxation. Huhne makes this sound like the bench mark of good health services for all, but the reality is that France has what is widely believed to be the world's best service. There are many private hospitals and charges, those who need reimbursement or free services in the first place get them. I don't see many French coming over to Britain to use our health services, Sarkozy has acted to make less easy for British ex-pat retirees to have free access.

Huhne the Thug
Some, and not just Huhne fans, thinks he showing he's got what it takes in the political battlefield. This misses the point that an inner party leadership battle is not the same as a contest between parties. Generally Clegg has recognised this, and certainly more so than Huhne. Clegg can turn on the rhetoric when he wants to, his different style in this contest does not make Huhne a better battler. I don't think the electorate are looking for a cynical aggressive power mad type, or at least they expect politicians to keep it hidden. Huhne's fans find criticisms of Huhne unfair but think their man should grind Clegg into the ground. All this shows that given the chance he will portray Clegg as destroying the health service, and all public services. Clegg has put off the debate about public sector reform. Since in the Lib Dems the party conference really does make policy, that doesn't mean Clegg will spring some package on the party straight after being elected.

Nonsense about Huhne's Level of Support
I'm not sure it it's the result of Huhne's briefing or lazy journalism but some media, particularly the Guardian/Observer newspaper have claimed Huhne has more party support than Clegg.
What are the facts?
1. Clegg has many more MPs backing him
2. Clegg has many more supporters on his website
3. Clegg has many more Facebook supporters
4. A recent survey of constituency chairs showed more support for Clegg.
That last point is probably the most important in showing how party members will vote. party chairs are local people who will know what members are thinking and will be in tune with that.

Predictions are dangerous but I'm jumping in
Clegg will win
Clegg will be bold.
Clegg's pleasant manner will make him the right person to explain bold policies

Zizek in Istanbul. My Humiliation

The Occasion
Slavoj Zizek was in Istanbul last week. Zizek uses a mixture of cultural commentary, philosophy, psychoanalysis and Marxism with great success. he is an international star as was reflected in his Istanbul reception. Bilgi University hosted his visited and he gave two seminars on saparate campuses. On both occasions entry was restricted to a limited who had registered in advance. An audio-video was set up to compensate the disappointed.

General Impression
I was present on both occasions and the Bilgi organisers very kindly invited me to a dinner after the first seminar. Both the talks and the dinner conversations were triumphs of wide ranging intellectual, political and cultural references delivered with compelling humour and force. I can't say I agreed with much of it, but there's no doubt that what he does he does with enormous talent, and as far as I can make out he is a nice person in an hyperactive kind of way. I certainly admire his complete contempt for Political Correctness

Political Correctness
Political Correctness brings up an oddity of the occasion. Many of the audience would in most contexts be considered painfully politically correct. That might mean an extreme embarressment with regard to the possibility of saying the wrong thing. At the less pleasant end, that can mean attacking and insulting people who supposedly said the wrong thing. This can be through put down or through more direct aggression. Zizek is completely free of all this and got the audience roaring with laughter at jokes they would never tell themselves and in many cases would try to make anyone who said anything similar pretty bad.

Prohibition
That leads to a great theme of Zizek's talk. Prohibition in two senses: direct prohibition and prohibition of mentioning the prohibition. The second prohibition enforces conformity through a language of freedom which conceals the reality of the first prohibition. This structure can be found in totalitarian and democratic societies.

Zizek's Prohibition
What was prohibited in Zizek's talk in the second sense, was the convergence between Zizek's 'Marxism and 'left' or 'communitarian' liberalism. This is extremely obvious but is not something Zizek can talk about himself. Conversations around the seminars confirmed that his fans take him as a symbol of non-liberal leftism to the degree that raising the relation with liberalism met with silence. Zizek criticises totalitarianism and prohibition in terms of the limitation of the state, avoiding self-censorship, individual rights. His criticism of capitalism refers to the very abstract account of commodity fetishism in Capital volume One. Zizek was concerned with referring to as concrete, but the reality is that 'commodity fetishism' rests on a belief in a natural, even metaphysical, real value inherent in produced objects. This is just a poor basis for criticising capitalism, many many Marxist economists have found it necessary to put concepts like 'commodity fetishism' and 'surplus value' and 'labour power theory of value' on a pedestal where they can be ignored. Marx's discussion certainly has ethical and cultural interest, but no non-Marxist economist would find them threatening. Zizek bases his critique of Capitalism and Totalitarianism on Enlightnment. The usual claim is made that Enlightnment values can only be satisfied by Marxism. Again this has never strict non-Marxists as a threatening argument. Enlightenment writers covers a wide and complex range, but a reasonable ideal type would emphasise: law, representative government, individual rights, private property, limitation of the state, division of state powers, commerce/market economics. Exceptions can be found but no one can deny that this is a reasonable over all summary. This just does not lead to Marxism except through some truly brutal readings of Kant. Fichte's transformation of Kant starts to lead in a statist anti-liberal direction but who believes that is a guide to what Kant says. Anyway, Fichte is an embarrassing example because of his nationalism and authoritarians, at the time he took an anti-liberal direction. Zixek himself comments on the lack of an alternative to capitalism. At the same time he gestures towards Lenin, with no thought about how Leninism is the first version of Stalinism. Beyond the gestures what is there: an interests in individual rights and pluralism in the context of community values and the social goals of the state. This is leading towards Sandell and McIntyre, not Lenin. Occasionally Zizek can sound like a Paleocon or a Swiftian Tory (absolute defence of local communities as bearers of tradition and value).

My Humiliation.
The second seminar was late to start. I was chatting in my admittedly loud voice with an ex-thesis student. Someone, I don't know who turned round and told me my conversation was disturbing, 'Please this is philosophy'! I was talking in a rather ironic way about the fever round Zizek and about problems with a very disturbed person who chairs a philosophy department in Turkey. I guess this person thinks that when a star comes, church/mosque like reverence is becoming and necessary, and anyone who doesn't behave accordingly is not a philosopher. I've been teaching philosophy, writing about it and studying it for over 20 years ago. I recently published a book on Derrida. I was at dinner with Zizek the evening before! His conversation at dinner and his talks show his attitude is the opposite of my tormenter. My conversations can be loud and unsubtle, but Zizek is much more radical in that direction, though he is also a very sympathetic and sensitive person. Sadly that's what happens with academic stars, they attract bizarre people with bizarre projections onto their hero. I seemed to be in the corner for those kind of people, judging by questions or self-obsessed ramblings posing as questions which emerged from that vicinity.

Media Myths: Neo-Conservatives and Free Markets

The Myth: Neo-Conservatives are Extreme Free Marketeers.

The myth is partly a journalistic one, but partly a belief which has become necessary to a large number of left wingers.

There is a variety of people travelling under the Neo-Con banner, and the influence it has had on the George W. Bush administration has led to lines blurring. Though on the whole the blurred line is one between Neo-Cons and hardline Realists in International Relations. The US view of reconstruction in Iraq is inevitably that it should be free market in principle, and should benefit US enterprises. I don't get excited about this. I didn't support the war, but governments defend national interests and prevailing principles of political economy within that country. The outrage from some people is pointless, would a very socialistic government do anything different if it was occupying another country for any reason. Say defending itself against invasion. Any Democrat government would push for very free market policies by the standards of Saddam's Iraq and would seek to benefit US companies.

The Neo-Cons are not libertarian extreme free marketeers in ideology. Many of them are ex-Democrats who support the kind of welfare programs and regulated economy which has existed since the New Deal. They are greatly hated by the Libertarian purists, and the the Paleocons who mix very small state policies with nationalism and conservative social values. Those forces who reject what endures from FDR are not Neocons, they tend to actively hate them.

The real source of Neo-Con thought are Cold War Military Liberalism, the neo-Platonist elitest Leo Strauss who never expressed an interest in pure free markets, the post-ideological social theorist Daniel Bell, Trotrskyites who moved from Marxist based hatred of Stalinism to a fervent belief in Democracy again Marxism.

The pure economic libertarians strongly opposed the Iraqi invasion, hate Bush and hate Neo-Cons.


But don't let those distinctions confuse you the next time you want to have a good rant about Neo-Cons and free markets.

Media Myths: Headscarf in Turkish Universities

I'm trying to get through a number of irritating media myths, which are certainly widespread in the British media and therefore probably elsewhere.

Myth: Female students can wear the headscarf in private universities in Turkey but not public universities.

Reality. There is variety of practice in BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

A Private University where the Headscarf is Strictly Banned
I spent 9 years teaching in what is now Turkey's largest private university (Google me if you want to find out which). Not a place I regret leaving, but that's another story. When I started there in'97 there were students in the headscarf. However, the atmosphere was hardening after the February '97 Postmodern/Indirect Coup against the Islamist Prime MinisterErbakan. The word kept coming from the Higher Education Council to harden the line. First religious women came in secular hats covering their hair, or a wig, to avoid the horror of exposing real hair to non-family members. Eventually security stopped allowing them onto campus.

A Public University where the Headscarf is Allowed.
Bosphorus University (for some reason they insist their international name is Boğaziçi which can't even be spelled out without using the Turkish alphabet, I'm ignoring their stipulation). It's well know that the headscarf is worn by students there. Cumhuriyet (Republic), the flagship of secularist republicanism has plastered pictures of the headscarved women over its pages with great horror. Bosphorus is not a little known institution. It has the highest entry grades of any university in Turkey and is the first choice for most students.

I could give other examples, but enough. Journalists, aren't they wonderful? Do they ever check their claims?

Feyerabend and Latour: Must Philosophy of Science cleanse itself of Them?

I was teaching Paul Feyerabend and Bruno Latour earlier today in my MA class (Methodology in Political Science MA).

This followed the usual three defining figures in discussing scientific methodology: Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos. Feyerabend and Latour both develop thin gs which can be found in Kuhn. Like Kuhn, Lakatos rejected Popper's view that all scientific theories are theories which have survived experimental refutation. Lakatos suggested that theories are part of a group of theories, he labelled research programmes. There is no sudden refutation of one theory because the 'refutation' can apply to any one of a large number of theories including theories assumed in make observational instruments. However, a research programme goes through a kind of refutation over time when observational anomolies can only be explained by reducing the empirical scope of the programme.


Kuhn emphasised the non-scientific motivations for accepting or rejecting theories tied up with relations inside the scientific community. Lakatos regards this very warily as social psychology to kept apart from Science Itself.

With Feyerabend the supposed logical consistency of science is dismissed along with any claims that science is justified by observation. There are always various theories which satisfy observations, observations themselves are interpreted as parts of theories, different methods can be used and none is better than another. This violates the concern Popper and Lakatos have with finding a logic of science, a way in which all science is beliefs justified by observations, and logical inferences from observations.

With Latour, it's even worse from the point of view of mainstream philosophy of science. Relativism and contradiction in science? No problem for Latour. Science should be studied anthropologically to grasp the impact of power on scientists. Science can be explained by episodes in cultural history. E.g. 17th Century science is governed by the ideas painters had about the right distance from what is being painted.

Maybe we should try and rescue something from Latour for mainstream epistemology and philosophy of science.

1. Latour is a direct realist. The objects of observation are real as they appear for us.
2. Latour is denying the sources of the scepticism which has haunted epistemology since Descartes.
3. Latour's anthropological approach turns science into a vital human impulse.

And rescuuing Feyerabend

1. The scope of science takes precedence over contradiction.
2. Observations should be maximised.
3. Possible explanations are miximised.
   

No need to dismiss this as social psychology, or worse. Surely some stuff here for the justificationist epistemologists and philosophy of science types.

Nationalism and Facebook in Turkey. How about some Real Deabtes about Turkey's Politics

I've joined the Facebook phenomenon. I resisted at first, because I thought it was faddish. Well it is faddish, but it's still great as a way of keeping in touch with friends, reviving old friendships and sharing all kinds of things in an online community.

Facebook is now very popular in Turkey. I have no strong evidence for this, but I have a strong feeling that Turks in Turkey and Britain are disproportionately active on Facebook and internet communication. They keep popping up, and I'm particularly aware of it based in ıstanbul. The most obvious Turkish dimension of Facebook is that a lot of peopel have put the Turkish flag instead of a personal photograph on their profile. Less nationalsit people have been complaining about it on Facebook. Nationalists left and right are fighting it out it with the anti-nationalist or a-nationalist left.

As far as I'm concerned both sides are putting too much emphasis on the flag and nationalist gestures. Some more substantial issues would be welcome. Nationalist gestures, and reactions to them, have increased because of the way that opposition to the recovering Islamists in government has been mobilised, the reactivation of the PKK from norther Iraq, slowness of the EU to welcome Turkey, constant obsession in the west with labelling 1915 deportations and massacres of 1915 as genocide. It should be obvious that it is nonsense for parliaments to be voting on such an issue, just as it should be obvious that it is nonsense for Turkish nationalists to create an enemy image of the west out of the issue.

As regards the Turkish Facebook community, come on let's hear some substantive ideas about Turkey's present and future, not gestures and insults.

Liberal Democrat Leadership Race. A Major Choice. Clegg is the Man

I've emerged from a long sloth with regard to blogging, stimulated by the Liberal Democrat leadership race, and a few other things. A burst of blogging coming after a long down period. Trying to keep blogs brief, as that is the general tendency.

The point I have to make for now is that the Liberal Democrat leadership race is not a non-choice between two identikit candidates. The latter claim is upheld by many journalists handsomely paid for writing misleading generalisations. On the basis of my unpaid labour here is the real assessment.

Huhne is running for the party left vote, though evolution in the Lib Dems may mean more tha tis running for the support of the more introverted members.

Clegg is running for the party right vote, but with a lot of support from the party left. Most obviously Steven Webb who looked like the new leading figure on the party left, taking over from Simon Hughes, has given his support to Clegg instead of running himself.

What has happened is that a large part of the party left has decided that market mechanisms are necessary in public services and welfare provision to provide a good service and to avoid constant increases in the tax burden. Arguments they would recently have rejected as Thatcherite or beyond Thatcherite are being eagerly embraced because quite rightly it has become widely understood that competition stimulates efficiency and better outcomes. It is being widely understood that the public sector does not exist to soak up unemployment through inefficient working practices, which is wha tis has become in practice.

Chris Huhne is rejecting that argument. This is the key difference of substance. An opportunistic negative campaigning style has also begun to turn off people previously sympathetic to him.

Clegg is the man. He is the man because he understands how to bring together market mechanisms and social welfare for the poorest. He is taking a strong stand on all issues of the individuals' importance in relation to the state. He is reviving 'Classical Liberalism' in the proper manner, tha tis without the nonsensical misinterpretation of the tradition by hard-libertarians and social-national conservatives who favour a limited state in economic matters.

The Independent's Coverage of the Hrant Dink Trial

Today's coverage in the UK newspaper The Independent of the trial concerning the murder of Hrant Dink marks a return to the worst kind of coverage of Turkey. It used to be that stories on Turkey, particularly in The Guardian and the Independent, would accept every accusation against Turkey as fact and as the end of the story. Things reached a particularly farcical level when Helena Smith was reporting regularly on Turkey for The Guardian. She combined this with reporting from Athens and clearly had strong affinities with Greece. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it does suggest a duty to strive for objectivity when reporting on Turkey. A duty she ignored and in a manner which involved absurd mangling of facts. In one story she appeared to think that the whole of eastern Turkey had a majority of ethnic Kurds, of course this is true only of the South-East. Her reporting of state links with nationalist violence in Greece and Turkey sweepingly assumed that the Greek state was innocent and the Turkish state was guilty, which sums up her attitude.

Robert Fisk of the Independent is an even more extreme advocate of this kind of attitude but as he mostly writes about the Middle East rather than Turkey it's not such an issue. Justin Huggler used to file reports similar to Helena Smith but I have not seen his name there for a long time. Recent coverage in The Independent has looked at the positive and negative aspects of Turkey in a more fair minded way; and his risen above the attitude that every accusation made by radical Kurdish groups and the Armenian and Greek lobbies should be taken as unchallenged truth. Of course it is equally important to avoid accepting a line inspired by the Turkish state or nationalist groups.

Todays report Turkey on Trial as suspects claim state collusion in writer's killing is a return to the bad old days, as the headline suggests. Turkey is not on trial, the murderer, and his associates, are and so far the court has shown every sign that it will investigate possible collusion in the murder of Hrant Dink.

I posted a blog on the murder of Hrant Dink the day it happened. For those who have forgot, he was an Istanbul Armenian-Turkish journalist who was convicted of insulting Turkishness because he was accused of insulting Turkishness under article 301 of the Penal Code. The conviction seems to have been based on a misreading of articles in which he said Armenians needed to clean their blood of hatred for Turks. The ultra-nationalist lawyers who brought the case, and the judges, agreed that Dink was saying that Turkish blood was dirty. Clearly none of these people should have had careers as literary critics looking at the interpretative ambiguities of Shakespeare or Joyce. That also means they are of limited quality as members of the legal profession. Many comparisons have been made between the two fields. Dink was murdered after receiving many death threats and informing the Istanbul police of his fears for his security. I predicted that the murderer would be apathetic character manipulated by nationalist godfathers. Indeed, the suspect on trial is a 17 year old adolescent from Trabzon who was caught very easily and was clearly manipulated by an ultra-nationalist network in Trabzon. I condemned all the major actors in Turkish politics for their moral guilt in supporting intolerant nationalism, particularly article 301 of the Penal Code which criminalises insults to Turkishness. I condemned the leader of ultra-nationalist Turkish lawyers for his role in provoking prosecutions under 301 and aggressive provocative demonstrations against defendants. I stand by all those criticisms. I strongly wish for the Turkish political actors to repeal 301, to allow free discussion of the massacres and deportations of Anatolian Armenians in 1915 with no restriction on opinions or on words used. I wish for the state to end its tolerance of ultra-nationalism and to crack down on links between state employees, including members of the police and security forces, and ultra-nationalist criminals.

Having made those points clear, I must condemn the way in which Nouritza Matossian and Daniel Howden are reporting on the trial. Neither are Istanbul based people. It's quite extraordinary that The Independent should give coverage of the trial to people who are not resident in Istanbul and who do not regularly write on Turkey. In such a situation, it's not surprising that personal assumptions should trump balanced coverage. Matossian is an Armenian writer and artist. She is someone of many admirable accomplishments. Her parents were murdered during the 1915 atrocities and one must sympathise with the pain of that family memory. She is not a fit person to report objectively on this trial or these issues in Turkey. Her level of objectivity can be checked by examining this article for the Observer. The article includes this phrase

In London, a thinly veiled propaganda exercise at the Royal Academy trumpets Turkish empires, making far-reaching claims about the origins of the 'Turkic peoples'. Echoes of master-race ideology.

In Matossian's view a widely praised exhibition at the Royal Academy, 'Turks' could be dismissed as master race propaganda. Apparently, she thinks it intrinsically racist to have an exhibition about the art of ethnic Turks in various states created by Turks in central Asia and the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Apparently there should have been more art by Armenians and Greeks. Somehow I don't see Matossian condemning an exhibition of art by the Armenians of the world which did not include non-Armenians who have lived within the Armenian state at any stage in history. The exhibition had absolutely nothing to say about the Turkish race it simply grouped together work created by ethnic Turks in a broad geographical and historical spread, allowing for important aesthetic comparisons, and showing the ways that Turkish art drew on non-Turkish influences. It's true that many Armenians and Greeks lived in the Ottoman Empire, naturally their different historical heritage puts them outside an exhibition tracing an undoubted historical reality, the movement of Turks from Central Asia to Anatolia. Well established realities including the kinship between Turks and Mongols are presented by Matossian as near Nazi racial supremacist mythology. She does not bother about non-Turkic groups in central Asia. Her own chauvinistic mentality is extremely evident. At that time The Independent and the Guardian (which publishes the Observer) were all too ready to accept this kind of stuff. Unfortunately she's back.

The co-author of the trial article is Daniel Howden, deputy foreign editor of the Indepedent. He has little previous record on writing about Turkey. For the purposes of this article , I guess he relied on Matossian's rantings, and possibly toned them down to create a semblance of objectivity. The article reports offensive behaviour by nationalist lawyers and complaints by the family of evidence disappearing and inadequate investigation of state collusion. Family complaints of state obstruction may well have some merit. However, what the article fails to mention is that the court has investigated a large number of people suspected of planning the murder and general involvement in ultra-nationalist criminality. Those investigated include retired army officers and the court is demanding access to police officers. Members of the police conducting the investigation appear to have done an admirably thorough job. Those linked with the case appear to to be linked with ultra-nationalist demonstration, the murder of a judge who upheld restrictions on religious dress in Turkish schools, attempts to manipulate the funerals of soldiers killed by the PKK (terrorist Kurdish separatist group), attempts to defraud at least one widow of a martyred soldier, attempts to manipulate secularist anti-government demonstrations. The last area of work included contacts with an official in the social democratic Republican People's Party. The very complexity and ideological ambiguity of these conspiracies suggest that the there is no unified conspiracy directed by high members of the state. ıt suggests weakness in the state in opposing the activities of criminal networks which have an extraordinary range of political, economic and criminal gaols. These ambiguities are not remotely captured by the Independent report.

One final point. The report refers to Dink's home town as inthe south-east of Turkey as 'the former heartland of Turkish Armenia'. Malatya is Dink's home town and most inhabitants are ethnic Kurds. Armenian states from classical to Medieval times include parts of what is now south-east Turkey, but Kurds have been in the south-east since classical times and the insinuation in the article that the south-east of Turkey used to be clearly Armenian is an absurd piece of Armenian ultra-nationalism.