TURKEYS DANGEROUS SITUATION

VIOLENCE IN CONSTANTINOPLE/ISTANBUL
PROTESTERS AGAINST ERDOGAN AND THE AK PARTY
PROTESTERS SEEK A WESTERN SECULAR TURKEY
PROTESTERS DO NOT WANT AN ISLAMIC TURKEY

[The Arab Spring has come to Asia Minor and Turkey.  What we saw in Cairo, Iraq, Syria we now see in Constantinople/Istanbul/Byantium.  The riots of Justinian in the 6th century AD are now visited upon the would-be remaker of the Secular Constitution of Kemal Attaturk, whose bedrock principle was the separation of Church and State.  Prime Minister Erdogan, who like a modern day Hitler, rules with an iron hand, would remake Turkey into an ISLAMIC STATE, rewrite the Constitution of Attaturk, require women to dress in islamic style, and repudiate all that Attaturk stood for, including Democracy and Western Style education.  Perhaps Erdogan will soon re-institute the Arabic script.  The triggering point for this latest round of protests was his proposal to ban liquor from Istanbul--a city, which like Greece or Italy, has a restaurant every five feet, where people have siesta, go to dinner, and drink until 3 or 4 am each and every night.  These proposals, in addition to being ridiculous the way Prohibition was silly in the United States, would have put the tourism and restaurant businesses in Turkey and in Constantinople/Istanbul out of business.  The Young People said NOT HERE YOU DON'T!!!

Raki (the national drink of Turkey) was favored by Kemal Attaturk, who loved Turkish Coffee with Raki.   In Turkey, when you bury a loved one such as your father, you pour Raki on his grave and drink from the bottle.  Drinking is Turkey is as Turkish as Wrestling or eating Fish by the Bosporus.  The Prophet himself could never had endorsed this, and Kemal Attaturk, if he were alive, would be on the side of the protesters!!!!  Down with Erdogan!!!!  Up with the Protesters!!!  

By Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL/ANKARA | Thu Jun 13, 2013 6:47pm EDT

(Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and the governor of Istanbul made what appeared to be final efforts to end two weeks of anti-government unrest by negotiation on Friday, meeting opponents of controversial plans to redevelop a city park.

Erdogan met a delegation mostly made up of actors and artists but also including two members of the umbrella protest group Taksim Solidarity, hours after saying his patience had run out and warning protesters occupying Gezi Park to leave.

Separately, Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu offered to meet demonstrators from Taksim Square, the epicenter of the protests, at a cafe by the Bosphorus waterway to discuss their demands that the government abandon plans to build a replica Ottoman-era barracks on the park, which adjoins Taksim.

"For those who want to talk face to face tonight, from midnight we will talk in groups, if necessary until morning," Mutlu said on his Twitter account.

A police crackdown on the park nearly two weeks ago triggered an unprecedented wave of protest against Erdogan and his AK Party - an association of centrists and conservative religious elements - drawing in secularists, nationalists, professionals, unionists and students.

Erdogan has already discussed the plans to build over the park with various people who support the protesters, but had refused until Thursday to meet with the Taksim Solidarity group at the heart of the campaign to protect it.

Late on Thursday, he appeared to suggest that hundreds of protesters, camped out in a ramshackle settlement of tents in Gezi Park, could be forcibly evicted, although Mutlu said later there were no such immediate plans.

"Our patience is at an end. I am making my warning for the last time. I say to the mothers and fathers, please take your children in hand and bring them out ... Gezi Park does not belong to occupying forces but to the people," Erdogan said.

Taksim, where police fired teargas and sent thousands scurrying into side streets two nights ago, was crowded but calm overnight. Some of the assembled masses chanted and danced, while others listened to a concert pianist who has taken up residence amid the protesters.

Riot police guarded a statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish republic, on one side of the square and the Ataturk Cultural Center on the other, both of them targets for protesters to hang flags in recent days.

Police fired teargas and water cannon day after day in cities including Ankara last week, while youths threw stones and petrol bombs in Turkey's worst unrest for years. Three people, including a policeman, died and about 5,000 people were injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association.

SCEPTICAL

Erdogan met an earlier group of academics, artists and students who support the Gezi Park protests on Wednesday and AK Party Deputy Chairman Huseyin Celik said they discussed the possibility of a referendum on the plans to build on the park.

The offer is one of the only concessions the authorities have publicly floated after days of firm rhetoric from Erdogan refusing to back down. Celik gave few details of how a referendum would be carried out, saying it could either be held across Istanbul, or just in the district near Taksim.

The protesters in Gezi Park were skeptical following that first meeting, saying the delegation was unrepresentative and rejecting the idea of a referendum, saying their demands - primarily that the construction plans be halted - were already clear and did not require a vote.

It was not clear whether Thursday night's talks would be met with the same skepticism.

Erdogan's tough political style has endeared him to voters - who have handed him an increasing share of the vote over the past three elections - but his opponents say he has poured fuel on the flames with his robust response to the protests.

The United States has voiced concern about reports of excessive use of police force, while the European Parliament on Thursday warned the government against the use of "harsh measures" against peaceful protestors and urged Erdogan to take a "unifying and conciliatory" stance.

The comments were not welcomed by Ankara.

"Turkey is not a nation that needs to be taught a lesson in any way on these topics by any country or by any group of countries," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

Erdogan, who has accused foreign forces, international media and market speculators of stoking unrest and trying to undermine the economy, said he would "share with the nation" on Friday details of what he called a "game being played with Turkey."

"It is as if the whole of Turkey is on fire, as if the whole of Turkey is collapsing," he said of some media coverage, describing it as "deceptive and unethical."

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Istanbul and Jonathon Burch in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Peter Cooney)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/13/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE9590QA20130613

WORLD

Argonauts

Georgios Seferis 

Mythistorema

4

Argonauts

And a soul
if it is to know itself
must look
into its own soul:
the stranger and enemy, we've seen him in the mirror.

They were good, the companions, they didn't complain
about the work or the thirst or the frost,
they had the bearing of trees and waves
that accept the wind and the rain
accept the night and the sun
without changing in the midst of change.
They were fine, whole days
they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes
breathing in rhythm
and their blood reddened a submissive skin.
Sometimes they sang, with lowered eyes
as we were passing the deserted island with the Barbary figs
to the west, beyond the cape of the dogs
that bark.
If it is to know itself, they said
it must look into its own soul, they said
and the oar's struck the sea's gold
in the sunset.
We went past many capes many islands the sea
leading to another sea, gulls and seals.
Sometimes disconsolate women wept
lamenting their lost children
and others frantic sought Alexander the Great
and glories buried in the depths of Asia.

We moored on shores full of night-scenes,
the birds singing, with waters that left on the hands
the memory of a great happiness.
But the voyages did not end.
Their souls became one with the oars and the oarlocks
with the solemn face of the prow
with the rudder's wake
with the water that shattered their image.
The companions died one by one,
with lowered eyes. Their oars
mark the place where they sleep on the shore.

No one remembers them. Justice

[NOTE:  THIS IS PART OF A LARGER POEM, AND IT IS MUCH FINER IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK.]

Placque devoted to G. Seferis Nobel Prize Winning Greek Poet

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1963 Awarded to Giorgios Seferis of Greece

Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy

This year's Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the Greek poet Giorgos Seferis, who was born in 1900 at Smyrna, which he left at an early age to accompany his family to Athens. After the Greeks were driven out of Asia Minor, and Seferis's home town had gone up in flames, homelessness - ever the fate of an oppressed and scattered people - was to play a decisive role during his adult years in more ways than one. Seferis studied in Paris, then entered the diplomatic service, went into exile with the Free Greek Government when Greece was occupied in 1941, and was moved about from country to country during the Second World War, when he served his country in Crete, in Cairo, in South Africa, in Turkey, and in the Middle East. After six years as ambassador in London, he retired last year and returned to Athens to devote himself entirely to his literary work.

Seferis's poetic production is not large, but because of the uniqueness of its thought and style and the beauty of its language, it has become a lasting symbol of all that is indestructible in the Hellenic affirmation of life. Now that Palamas and Sikelianos are dead, Seferis is today the representative Hellenic poet, carrying on the classical heritage; a leading national figure, he is also acclaimed abroad in so far as his poetry has been made available in translation. Here in Sweden his work was presented thirteen years ago by Hjalmar Gullberg, whose translations included the famous The King of Asine, the theme of which has a connection with Sweden because of our archaeologists' successful excavations on this site. Using imagination as a tool, Seferis tries in this poem to penetrate the secret behind a name that is merely mentioned in a verse of the Iliad.

When reading Seferis we are forcibly reminded of a fact that is sometimes forgotten: geographically, Greece is not only a peninsula but also a world of water and foam, strewn with myriad islands, an ancient sea kingdom, the perilous and stormy home of the mariner. This Greece is the constant background of his poetry, in which it is conjured up as the vision of a grandeur both harsh and tender. Seferis does this with a language of rare subtlety, both rhythmical and metaphorical. It has rightly been said that he, better than anyone else, has interpreted the mystery of the stones, of the dead fragments of marble, and of the silent, smiling statues. In his evocative poems, figures from ancient Greek mythology appear together with recent events in the Mediterranean's bloody theatre of war. His poetry sometimes seems difficult to interpret, particularly because Seferis is reluctant to expose his inner self, preferring to hide behind a mask of anonymity. He often expresses his grief and bitterness through the medium of a central narrative figure, a kind of Odysseus with features borrowed from the old seamen in the lost Smyrna of the poet's youth. But in his hollow voice is dramatized much of Greece's historical fatality, its shipwrecks and its rescues, its disasters and its valour. Technically, Seferis has received vital impulses from T. S. Eliot, but underneath the tone is unmistakably his own, often carrying a broken echo of the music from an ancient Greek chorus.

Seferis once described himself, "I am a monotonous and obstinate man who, for twenty years, has not ceased to say the same things over and over again." There is perhaps some truth in this description, but one must remember that the message he feels bound to convey is inseparable from the intellectual life of his generation as it finds itself confronted with ancient Greek civilization, a heritage that presents a formidable challenge to the impoverished heir. In one of his most significant poems Seferis describes a dream in which a marble head - too heavy for his arms, yet impossible to push aside - fell upon him at the moment of awakening. It is in this state of mind that he sings the praise of the dead, for only communication with the dead conversing on their asphodel meadows can bring to the living a hope of peace, confidence, and justice. In Seferis's interpretation the story of the Argonauts becomes a parable halfway between myth and history, a parable of oarsmen who must fail before they reach their goal.

But Seferis animates this background of melancholy resignation with the eloquent joy inspired in him by his country's mountainous islands with their whitewashed houses rising in terraces above an azure sea, a harmony of colours that we find again in the Greek flag. In concluding this brief presentation, I should like to add that the prize has been awarded to Seferis "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture."

Dear Sir - In honouring you, it has been a great privilege for the Swedish Academy to pay its tribute to the Greece of today, whose rich literature has had to wait, perhaps too long, for the Nobel laurels. Extending to you the congratulations of the Swedish Academy, I ask you to receive from the hands of His Majesty, the King, this year's Prize in Literature.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1963

[NOTE:  GREECE, IN THE 20TH CENTURY, HAD TWO NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE, AND MANY ARGUE THAT CAVAFY SHOULD HAVE WON ALSO.]