The world's natural freshwater resources available for human use are more scarce than is generally assumed. This statement has already become a cliche, yet the truth it reveals is getting more apparent every day, just as is the case with other global problems which require solutions above and beyond the parochial and short term interests of individual nation states. Water scarcity has two important aspects, both with political connotations at different levels, with worldwide maldistribution of economic and natural resources being at the core of the problem.

The persistence of simple commodity production (SCP) in capitalist economies has been a challenge to classical theories of the development of capitalism in agriculture, which considered SCP as a transitional phenomenon, doomed to disappear. SCP has not only persisted under capitalism but has become the predominant form of production in several branches of agriculture both in developing as well as in advanced capitalist countries. In the recent debate on the fate of SCP in agriculture, various observers have pointed out that necessary conditions for the reproduction of simple commodity producing families exist within capitalist formations and as long as these conditions prevail, the persistence of SCP will not be an anomaly (Friedmann, 1980 and 1986; Mann and Dickinson, 1978; Scott, 1986). Pursuing this latter position, this paper attempts to examine the conditions that led to the emergence and consolidation of SCP in Oriental tobacco production, in the Aegean region of Turkey.

Since the mid-1990s we have been witnessing the emergence of a “new Turkish cinema.” A number of young directors, among them Zeki Demirkubuz, Derviş Zaim, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Serdar Akar, and Nuri Bilge Ceyhan, made their first feature films during this period and have proved to be quite prolific since then. Acclaimed by critics in Turkey and abroad, recent Turkish films have received invitations from major international festivals and have won prestigious awards. The new Turkish cinema has also generated its own brand of audience. While Turkish films had largely disappeared from theaters for most of the 1980s due to severe economic adversities in the film industry, local viewers had, in any case, distanced themselves from Turkish cinema on the grounds of its presumed “banality,” the term “Turkish film” having become almost synonymous with “bad taste” for a decade prior to the arrival of the new Turkish cinema. Since the 1990s, however, Turkish films have once again begun to attract audiences to theaters, signaling that the long lost reputation of Turkish cinema may have been restored.

On 23 May 1919, a large crowd gathered in Sultan Ahmet Square in the center of Istanbul. Facing them was one of the most famous female figures of modern Turkish history. Since that day, the gathering has come to symbolize the call by the masses for change in the structure of authority and their protest against the 15 May occupation of Izmir by Greek expeditionary forces. Not only has this gathering taken on a mythical aura, but so has the image of Halide Edib, the woman who faced the crowd that day.

This essay focuses on economic hardship in the wake of the 2001 economic crisis and the impact of the resulting economic strain on individual and family distress (i.e., stress, emotional distress, physical health, and marital problems). Previous research on the impact of the economic crisis in Turkey has relied on small and non-representative samples or was limited to descriptive analyses. This research analyzes a nationally representative sample of 1,107 urban households using multivariate techniques. The OLS regression results show that, while the negative effects of the economic crisis were widely felt, those who lost their jobs, had a longer duration of unemployment, and who experienced higher levels of economic strain were affected most. Economic hardship and high and increasing levels of economic strain had a strong negative effect on perceived stress levels, emotional distress, physical health problems and marital problems. Renters were particularly hard hit by the crisis and report more strain and personal distress than non-renters.

The European public debate on Turkey's EU accession either emphasizes Turkey's political (in)competence for EU membership, or marks its cultural difference. Based on the discourse analysis of this debate in the German mass media, this paper questions the dominant European perspective, by placing emphasis on how and where the symbolic borders of an imagined Europe become visible. I will argue that the debate surrounding Turkey's accession to the EU reveals an ambivalent discursive process as it places the construction of the self-definition of Europe at the frontier of its Turkish-Islamic “Other.”