Welcome back to the Turkish Blogosphere! (or a small section of it anyway…)

Phanja from The Need to Know posts this week about the radical shift of party viewpoints on the Turkish nationality issue. Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced that “We are all citizens of the republic of Turkey under that upper identity… However all Turks have “sub-identities”. This is a major shift in stances as according to traditional political views Turkish identity is the only identity within the Republic of Turkey, and ultranationalists are heavily critizing the current government for this particular statement. This issue was raised also in last week's addition of “Turkey is Typing” on Global Voices and I am sure that this will not be that last heard about it.

Talking Turkey this week posts about the Akimbo system which is an on-demand service offering Turkish programing in the North American continent and also a post of thanks to Global Voices for covering his site. You're welcome Metin!

Mustafa Akyol from The White Path posts a link to his article “Under God or Darwin” which was originally published on the National Review Online.

Amerikan Turk posts about the proposed Dubai Towers in Istanbul and a link to a Kanun that he has on sale made by his father. If you do not know what a Kanun is, please check his post as you can see video of one being played (it's neat!).

Erkan from Erkan's Field Diary was busy this week as he was in Washington DC for a conference, his presentation was loosely titled “How EU process changes performative and contractual nature of Turkish nation state”, while his blog gives us some insight as to the nature of the research he has been working on, with luck he might post part of his presentation for the benefit of his weekly reader. Even with his busy schedule he was able to post information and links about a terror summit held in Ankara, and give us some pictures and commentary on the recent soccer match between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray game (Fenerbahce won by the way).

Turkish Torque covers the gambit again this week, here are some highlights: Months of the Year in Gagavuz Dialect, Gagavuz are the Orthodox Christian Turks dispersed inbetween Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Turkey; translated into English poems by Necati Cumali; and a link to a Princeton University policy brief “From Desert Storm to Metal Storm: How the Iraq Spoiled Turkish-US Relations”. There is also an interesting 3 part post about a picture printed in the Hurriyet newspaper which showed AKP Minister of Transportation Binali Yildirim's wife Semiha Hanim (who wears hijab) sitting by herself apart from a table of men in which her husband sat eating. This has creacted quite the stir as is apparently shows little attempt at modernization. Semiha Yildirim has issued a statement saying that the seating arrangement was her choice and that she was invited to sit at the table. Torque asks the question how exactly can religiously observant women in Turkey become educated and become prominent members of government if they are not allowed into University because they wear the veil?

Metroblogging: Istanbul posts about a new tourist cableway for the Eyup Sultan district, the mystic center of the Istanbul.

And finally for today, here are some gems from Mavi Boncuk: historic pictures of Turkmen women, a link to a new sub-blog focusing on food Tastes of Mavi Boncuk, a book review of “A King's Confectioner in the Orient” by Friedrich Unger, Court Confectioner to King Otto I of Greece, and a description of Baba Himmet, a Turkish shadow play Karagoz character.

Interesting finds of the week in my searches through the ever expanding Turkish blogosphere:
1. Turcopundit, which posts links to all news/posts/etc that concern Turkey on a given day, as you can imagine this takes a lot of work and it is evident from visiting this great site.
2. Similar in function to the site listed above is Turkish Digest.