Turkey is Typing…Keeping up with the Komşuluk · Global Voices
Deborah Ann Dilley

Komşuluk means “the neighborhood” in Turkish, and today we are going to stroll through it's streets.  First off on our visits today is Amerikan Turk, who in response to hearing the news that Turkey was going to block websites that offend Turkishness…he tongue-in-cheekly answers:
I can help!
Time to really populate my list of “Insulters of Turkishness”. Such a list is now officially required.
Next on our list is Erkan's Field Diary, who once again is delaying his military service.  He also comments on the role of the President in lieu of the upcoming Turkish presidential elections:
What I was taught in high school was that the Presidency was mostly “symbolic”.  the President had some power to enact but the real executive power resided in  Prime Ministry. Despite this supposed division of labour every presidential election in recent times had its own phase of political crisis. It seems that this last one to come produces a wider range crisis. Among a thousand things to say, I would like to state that Mr. Sezer, our current president, is mostly responsible for that the chair of President has become a site of more executive power and has become more partisanal instead of being a position that is beyond daily politics.
Idil from Ignore Me If You Can brings us a list of items directed to a “special someone”: I don't care if….
….You think your problems are more important than mine. No, they’re not. From my perspective; they’re completely irrelevant.
4) You now have a life that doesn’t involve me; watch me have one that doesn’t involve you.
5) You can’t take two minutes out of your busy schedule to give me the time of the day. If you won’t, someone else will.
6) You think the world revolves around your drama; it doesn’t. It never did, it never will.
7) You make out with every cow in the country, I don’t care anymore….
Me and Others comments on the nature of crowds…and his dislike for them:
it seems like there is nothing left in Istanbul you can do without getting involved to a crowd, a very large crowd. Try to change location, try to do business with a bank, try to eat something, or go shopping or even try just to walk. All you hit is people and people and more people.
Spooky Sense by Garfucius manages to turn a post complaining about the lack of good television into a comment on the current Turkish administration:
but zapping is a good method of sampling what is on show. skip the gibberish and football crap instantly, linger a moment to hear a question asked or a comment, stop there a while if the going is good and you do patchwork a sociological picture of the goings on. however, as far as the turkish stations are concerned, the presidential election, for the american and british channels, the war and the plight of muslims in the west have already lasted longer than the endless and ultimately unviewable young and restless. especially when it comes to tayyib bey's aspired ascent to çankaya; oh lords of fire and ire! have words ever been so completely exhausted out of meaningful ideas and insight! how can so many tongue-hours (*) be spent without a single spark of inspiration slipping through some lips at least?
In a follow-up post, the presidential commentary continues….
however, under the current settings, tayyib bey -though i hate that it is so- has every right in the book to climb to çankaya, the seat of the top state job since atatürk. if a man is good enough to be premier, he is good enough to become president, too. if you are afraid that his somewhat pedestrian religious, political etc. standing is detrimental to the well being of the state and or the nation, you should have the democratic mechanisms, principles, practices and habits in place even before he started climbing the first rungs of the ladder. not having that, you tried to do it on the edge of a bayonet and the jab you gave him made him spring to the top.
We are almost to end of the block on our trip today, Tarkan DeLuxe lists the latest gossip about Turkish popstar collaborations, and Turkey and My Foreign Perspectives gives us a list of our local Istanbul libraries.
As a little girl, I was fascinated by the library and librarians, but here in Turkey, you can't find them in every neighborhood and sometimes not even in an entire area where you live.
As an expat in Istanbul, have you had a hard time finding a library? In Istanbul, many of the universities and other specialty libraries allow you to visit for free or for a low annual fee, instead of having a local library. So today, I share some library resources for all of you working or visiting here in Istanbul.
As for me, I am off to find a good book.  Thanks for our walk today, see you next week.