#Turkish News and Discussion

[wordsmithic]

How an ancient Greek story became the Islamic World's favourite romance

Metiochus and Parthenope (Greek: Μητίοχος καὶ Παρθενόπη, Mētiokhos kai Parthenopē) is an ancient Greek romance novel. In a translation by the eleventh-century poet ‘Unṣurī, it became the Persian romance epic Vāmiq u ‘Adhrā, and the basis for a wide range of stories about the 'Lover and the Virgin' in western medieval and Islamicate cultures.

Metiochus and Parthenope in a mosaic found in Zeugma

The Arabic Script

Vāmiq means 'the lover' and ‘Adhrā means 'virgin' in Arabic, corresponding to the connotations of virginity in the name Parthenope, from Greek parthenos 'young girl, virgin'. Other names in ‘Unṣurī's text are transposed from the Greek, demonstrating derivation from Metiochus and Parthenope, probably via an Arabic translation.

In the 10th century, Ibn al-Nadīm records that Sahl b. Hārūn (d. 830 AD), secretary to Caliph al-Ma'mūn in Baghdad, composed a work of the same title. This must derive from the Greek text, whether by direct translation or through an intermediary — conceivably even an earlier Persian translation. Meanwhile al-Bīrūnī (d. c. 1051) claimed to have translated an Arabic work of this name into New Persian. Al-Bīrūnī's text might, then, have been the source for ‘Unṣurī's poem.

The Greek Story

Metiochus is the eldest son of Miltiades. However, his stepmother Hegesipyle plots against him in favour of her own children. So, along with his friend Theophanes, he flees his home (on the Thracian Chersonese), seeking the court of his distant relative Polycrates on Samos. There he meets Polycrates's daughter Parthenope at the temple of Hera. They fall instantly in love. Polycrates invites Metiochus to a symposium, and the discussions on love at this event are the main surviving part of the Greek text.

The Layla and Majnun motif

Layla and Majnun (Arabic: مجنون ليلى majnūn laylā "Layla's Mad Lover"; Persian: لیلی و مجنون, romanized: laylâ-o-majnun) is an old story of Arab origin, about the 7th-century Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi (or as Layla al-Aamiriya). The Layla-Majnun theme passed from Arabic to Persian, Turkish, and Indian languages. It is a popular poem praising their love story.

Further reading:

Cf. Thomas Hägg, 'The Oriental Reception of Greek Novels: A Survey with Some Preliminary Considerations', Symbolae Osloenses, 61 (1986), 99–131 (p. 106)

T. Hägg, B. Utas (2003). The Virgin and Her Lover: Fragments of an Ancient Greek Novel and a Persian Epic Poem. BRILL. ISBN 9789004132603.

Divider's source

[yan-lorkai]

Hello can i request yandere alucard from Hellsing with a darling that is turkic/comes from turkey? Since alucard has bad pasts with the ottomen and i am kind of curious on how he will react when he finds out or hears his darling speaking turkic with a family/friend? would some words kind of trigger him? (I am kind of curios and im totally not requesting it because im from turkey/j 😗)

Please take you're time and remember to take of yourself ^_^

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ a/n: darling, be prepared to read the best fic of your life /j. No but really, I loved that request, it got my creativity juice flowing like a waterfall. This and my bestie is turkish, so I could pester him to tell me all sorts of things about Turkey :D

He adores his darling, of course — his obsession runs deeper than any grudge or lingering pain from his past. But when he first hears the familiar rhythm of Turkic words slipping from their lips, something in him stills.

He doesn’t say anything at first, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly as the sound of the language washes over him. Memories he thought buried claw their way to the surface: bloodied battlefields, a life of humiliation under the Ottomans, and the echo of commands in a language not unlike the one you now speak so casually. It’s a language he’s long associated with chains, suffering, and vengeance, and hearing it from you — you, his precious darling — sends a jolt through him.

Alucard doesn’t lash out. He’s far too composed for that, far too invested in you to let his rage take over. Instead, he watches. His grin remains in place, sharp and predatory, but his silence stretches uncomfortably long. You notice his change in demeanor, the way his usual dark humor seems to vanish, replaced by an intensity that makes the air feel heavier.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft but carries an edge. "Where did you learn that tongue, darling?" he asks, his crimson gaze locking onto yours. There’s no anger in his tone, only curiosity laced with something darker, something unspoken.

If you explain your heritage or your connection to the language, Alucard’s reaction is subtle but telling. His grin widens, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "Ah, how fascinating," he drawls, leaning closer as if to study you. "The irony of fate, wouldn’t you agree? That someone like you would capture someone like me."

Though he continues to smile, there’s an unshakable tension in his presence whenever you speak Turkic. Certain words, the ones that remind him of commands he once obeyed or insults hurled at him, seem to trigger flickers of old rage. But he never directs that anger at you. Instead, it manifests in possessiveness, as if to prove to himself that you belong to him, not to the past that still haunts him.

If he ever hears you speaking Turkic with family or friends, his reaction is unpredictable. He might stand silently in the background, his grin unnervingly sharp, listening to every word. Later, he’ll question you, not out of distrust, but out of a need to reclaim control. "What were you discussing, my love? Should I be concerned? You wouldn’t keep secrets from me, would you?"

Over time, his obsession takes on a new layer. He starts speaking that language — not because he wants to, but because he refuses to let any part of you be a mystery to him. His accent sharp and deliberate, his words carrying a weight that makes your chest tighten. "I wonder," he says one day, his voice low and dangerous, "if they spoke to you in this tongue the way they once spoke to me. Tell me, darling, how does it feel to hear it from my lips instead?"

Though the language stirs his deepest wounds, his love for you twists that pain into something much more possessive and obsessive. You become his anchor, his way of reclaiming a part of himself he thought lost to the past. But make no mistake — he’ll never let you forget just how tightly his grip on you has become.

"You’re mine," he whispers one night, his crimson eyes burning as his lips brush against your ear. "Even if the ghosts of my past linger in your words, you’ll never escape me. Not now. Not ever."

[octuscle]

Sustainable changes

Nicolas had just been promoted to Senior Product Manager. But the condition was that he had to take a foreign assignment for two years. He had reckoned with Germany, the USA or maybe Japan. India would also have been okay. But he was supposed to go to Turkmenistan. His employer had just bought a large agricultural cooperative there, which was now to be converted in the direction of ecological and sustainable agriculture. On the one hand, this sounded like a completely unknown field of work. Nicolas had previously worked more in the consumer goods sector. On the other hand, anything that bore the label "sustainable" was naturally a career driver at the moment. So he took a cautiously optimistic approach.

Once Nicolas arrived at his new workplace, the optimism quickly evaporated. He had arrived somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There was no office building, there were only barracks. Mostly not air-conditioned. He had expected to be put up in some hotel. But he had been given a room with a farmer. Toilet in the yard. Bathroom was an outdoor shower served from the cistern. He felt infinitely silly in his outfit.

In the first service meeting, a colleague asked him if they could tweak Nicolas's resume a bit for the presentation to the workers. It might be good for his credibility if they could give him some local roots. Nicolas was tired. The trip had been exhausting. He remembered his parents' Russian gardener. A picture of a man. Former combat swimmer. And of the Turkish cook. So he answered, one may mix in there with pleasure something Russian and Turkish. The main thing was that he was allowed to retire now.

The night had been hell. It smelled like a pigsty in his room. And he could hear the pigs too, as if they were sleeping in bed with him. There was no hot water to shave with. And company policy forbids the use of shower gels containing microplastics without functioning wastewater treatment for environmental reasons. So all he can use is a bar of curd soap. When introduced to the staff, he looks appropriately a bit bedraggled. One of his colleagues asks Nicolas to say something in Russian. He has to think a bit. His grandmother sometimes spoke to him in Russian. But it's enough for a "I'm happy to be here and look forward to working with you. The employees cheer for their new boss.

Before Nicolas takes a shower the next morning, he drives the pigs out of the barn. If he's going to share the roof with them, he might as well make himself useful. His hosts invite him to breakfast. The conversation in Russian is still a bit bumpy. Nikolai hasn't spoken his father's language for years. And his host family, of course, actually speaks Turkmen. But with hands and feet it works. And so it goes on in the office. The team meeting was supposed to take place in English. But the interpreter dropped out. With every hour it gets better. The memory of his father's language comes back.

At breakfast, Nikolai realizes that he understands Turkmen better than he thought. It definitely works out that his hosts ask him in their native language. But he prefers to answer in Russian. Nikolai speaks it again as fluently as he did when he lived with his father in the Sevastopol army barracks. At work, they discuss the tasks for the next few days. Nikolai considers the projects for preventing soil erosion and unused surface water runoff to be urgent. Everyone passionately discusses the possibilities of transforming agriculture to get by without artificial irrigation. But Nikolai realizes that it will be difficult to irrigate only naturally in the desert.

The next morning, Nikolai surprises your host family with a few words of Turkmen. With his fluency in Russian and Turkish as his mother's language, it's not that hard for him to learn the language. On the job, they speak almost only Turkmen anyway. Today, his job is to drive the fields and inspect and document the environmental damage. Nikolai doesn't even need to shower for that. It will be hot anyway. And air conditioning is only for wimps. The point is to save energy wherever possible. In the afternoon, he gets a call from headquarters. They are very pleased with his work on site. It is clear that the project would not make an economic contribution. But the advertising impact is enormous. Whether he is interested in accepting a junior director position at the headquarters in Paris.

Nikolai turns his camera, bares his left breast and says in broken French that his heart beats for his new home. He won't leave until the desert blooms again.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

The Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization Hezbollah has already begun rebuilding its military capabilities and financial operations, just over a week since a ceasefire with Israel went into effect after 13 and a half months of war.

While the IDF’s aerial and ground offensives severely degraded the Iranian proxy’s terrorist infrastructure and forces, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has started recruiting new fighters, boosting domestic weapons production and looking for ways to continue smuggling arms in via Syria.

Reuters cited a senior American official, an Israeli official, and two U.S. lawmakers briefed on the intelligence in its reporting published on Wednesday.

According to the terms of the Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah is prohibited from rearming.

Hezbollah lost more than half of its weapons stockpiles and thousands of fighters during the war with Israel, according to American assessments. However, it has not been destroyed, with the sources saying that it still has thousands of short-range rockets and will try to rebuild using weapons factories in neighboring countries with transportation routes into Lebanon.

One of the lawmakers told Reuters that Hezbollah has been “temporarily weakened” and its command-and-control capabilities diminished. However, the lawmaker notes, “This organization is built to withstand disruption.”

Washington is particularly concerned about Syria, where Turkish-backed jihadist terrorist groups recently launched offensives in Aleppo and Hama, in a major challenge to the Assad regime and its Iranian and Russian backers. Israel continues to target Hezbollah smuggling routes in Syria and at the Syrian-Lebanon border and to disrupt Iranian weapons shipments via Syria.

A senior U.S. official revealed that Washington is urging Syrian President Bashar Assad to restrict Hezbollah’s activities, with other regional countries being enlisted to assist in this effort. Reuters reported earlier this week that the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates discussed the possibility of lifting sanctions on the Assad regime, provided, among other conditions, he halts the weapons supply routes to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah officials assert that the group will maintain its “resistance” against Israel. However, sources in Lebanon indicate that Hezbollah’s primary focus at the moment is on rebuilding and restoring homes damaged by Israeli airstrikes in Southern Lebanon and Beirut.

Hezbollah’s financial system

Meanwhile, Saudi-owned, London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Hezbollah has begun assessing repairs to its financial arm, Al-Qard al-Hassan, which was heavily damaged by Israeli attacks during the war.

The Iranian proxy plans to pay housing grants through the bank to repair the homes of families impacted by the war. Each family may receive $12,000 for rent and home repairs.

Despite, suffering severe blows in an Israeli aerial operation on Oct. 21, the bank resumed operations a week after the ceasefire.

The Saudi newspaper highlighted that “the announcement of the bank’s resumed operations contradicts Israeli claims of its destruction.” However, a source close to Hezbollah confirmed that the group had suffered significant financial losses during the war. The source further explained that the funds for rehabilitation will not come from Al-Qard al-Hassan’s resources, but from recent financial transfers from Iran to Hezbollah.

Iran transferred $1 billion via a regional intermediate on the first day of the ceasefire, which Hezbollah plans to use for its rehabilitation efforts.

[galaxygirl-katie27]

Vector Redesign

Tap for better quality

Notes under the cut!

-Okay so first of all, I had to finally figure out his nationality, so that it would make sense with the story. Which led me to my headcanon of Vector being Turkish-Persian mixed, with his father being Turkish and his mother being Persian. But ultimately he would be the prince, later king, of Persia. I‘d like to make a full post about this topic specifically later, but in short: His father was the second Turkish prince, so in order to be king himself, he married into the persian royal family, who had no male heir, so he could have his own kingdom. So that later, Vector could jut walk through Türkiye with his army to attack Nasch in Greece, because of his blood-relation to their royal family without any problems.

-To the design. I gave him a ponytail, just to try it out, but I just liked it so much, that I had to stick with it.

-He has big eye bags from Insomnia, because of many nightmares almost every night. He has major PTSD from his past, that sill haunts him.

-He has a tooth gap (where he actually lost a tooth) and many scars and bandaids, because this boy is just always hurt (most of it because of the Ray-Way). I once read a headcanon, that all of Ray`s clumsiness wasn’t even acted, Vector is just like that. He still bumps into all kinds of furniture post-series.

-Also he ruined all his pants at one point because of his clumsiness and because the others (Nasch) don’t want to buy him new ones, he just patched them up himself, and yes he did poke himself with the needle multiple times.

-FRECKLES. No elaboration needed.

-Big father issues. Also no elaboration needed.

-This boy never ties his shoes, which also doesn’t help his clumsiness. Also he wears mismatched shoes, but they match enough for him and he just doesn’t think anyone notices. Everyone notices.

-He is one of the people with the most Trauma. If you ask him how he‘s doing he‘d say: „I take antidepressants.“ And he does! He got them perscribed, after an… incident. I wont go into detail, but I think you can guess what happened. And while most of the barians still don’t exactly like him, they don’t want him to die. He also refuses to go to proper therapy. Yuma is his therapy.

-He also has ADHD, which I think he always had, even in his past life. He got it diagnosed post series, when Yuma talked to him about his ADHD (another headcanon of mine) and Vector just heavily related to many things Yuma said and so he proposed that maybe he should get a diagnose. Which tuned out positive.

-Also he‘s a cat owner. I read so many fics, where he just adopts a cat. It’s mostly to spite Rio, when he came across a little kitten box on the side of the road one day. But he got so attached to it, it‘s his family now. It’s a little white female kitten, who is also deaf and her name is Pestilence, Pesty for short. He is also so good at hiding her. The barians only found out about her like 6 months after Vector got her. There was a massive discussion, but in the end Vector got to keep her. She is now his emotional support cat.

-He also reads a bit, but it only consists of the most cliche, sappy, stereotypical romance stories you can find, to make fun of them.

-His past life redesign is like the biggest redesign up until now, since I researched ancient Persian an Turkish royal robes, because even when he‘s the prince/king of Persia, I think his father would still bring some of his Turkish background into the family.

-And since I made him older again (and tanner, because he was more in the sun in Persia than in Japan) I gave him a little goatee

-Also his robes are red to resemble his father, and how he is slowly turning into him (plus the goatee), but he still has blue in his clothes to resemble and respect his mother. I refuse to believe that he stopped loving her after her death. I think he always continued to love her deep inside and actually still misses her post series. He just doesn’t show it.

[224bbaker]

📰🧤Chapter Twelve: The Case of the Precarious Park 🎢🌊

You are cordially invited to: The Press Opening of 22Fun B Baker Merriment Park (and Memorial) August 18th, 1891 That place that used to be the only standing monument to the Anglo-Turkish War (we think)

In which a morbid interruption leads to a potential new case, and all is not as it may seem…

Transcript here and at 224bbaker.com, where you can also find bios, more info, and links to our social media.

Full credits and content notes below the cut

CREDITS

Written and Directed by Ian Geers and Lauren Grace Thompson. Sound designed by Sarah Buchynski. Produced and edited by Lauren Grace Thompson. Original music by Baldemar and Ian Geers. 

CAST

Hampton Fawx: Jeremy Thompson

James Stallion: Chris Vizurraga

Madge Stallion: Katie McLean Hainsworth

Archie Cartwright: Shawn Pfautsch

Lucius Peppermint: Evin McQuistion

McMurphy/Bram: Ian Geers

Dr Iphegenia Brown: Hannah McKechnie

Inspector Braddock: Wesley Scott

Inspector Whittle: Jay Donley

Elizabeth Weatherby: Allie Babich

Devlin Montgomery, the Standard: Chris Hainsworth

Tuppence Montgomery, The Times: Sarah Coakley Price

Jacob Sullivan Montgomery, The Spectacle: Trey Plutnicki

Fitzy, The Evening Sun: Zack McKenna

Forensics Paul: Daniel Millhouse

Ambrosius: Llewyn Geers-Thompson

CONTENT NOTES

This episode contains adult language and sexual innuendo. Discussions of murder, blood, dead bodies. Visit to a coroner.

[thefisherqueen]

I was wondering about what the bathroom and toilet situation would likely have been like when Sherlock Holmes and dr Watson moved into Baker Street in 1881 (for fanfic reasons, obviously). An in-house bathroom and toilet have long been luxuries. My own parents have stories of not having a bathroom yet at home when they were young, and both grew up in the '60 in the Netherlands. They either had an iron tub filled or went to a public bathhouse, and the toilet was located in the garden. Both of them grew up working class, however. I imagine that Holmes and Watson's combined income would have made them middle class, so the Baker Street rooms would perhaps have been more luxurious.

Doyle thought it probably not appropriate or relevant to really directly discuss it in the stories, but there have been a few mentions of the possibility of taking a bath at Baker Street in the stories, for example when Holmes asks Watson why he would prefer to go to the Turkish bath over taking a bath at home in The illustrious client. I found this interesting article that discusses the likely bathroom situation at Baker Street!

"After 1870, a system of constant water supply began to be introduced to London, although it took over 20 years and a huge amount of pipe retrofitting to bring the “constant” to all of London. The West Middlesex Water Company supplied water to the Northwest section of London, including Marylebone (and thus Baker Street).  By 1891, 43 percent of the houses supplied by this company were on constant.  The change to the constant system involved the water company reworking its water main system under the street to each house and it required each homeowner to redo almost all of the piping system inside the house. The constant water system involved a much higher pressure of water, which the older pipers connected to a cistern could not handle. New fittings and faucets were also required inside the home when the conversion was made.

Thus, by the time that Holmes and Watson rented their rooms on Baker Street from Mrs. Hudson in January 1881, they almost surely had access to piped, running water and to a water closet in the building. More than likely, a room had been converted to a bathroom by the time they rented, but the “constant” water supply was probably introduced to Baker Street later during their tenancy.  The Canon suggests there was a bathroom on the second floor of 221B.  The precise location of the water closet(s) is not known."

Also, look at this victorian contraption! A hip-bath it was called. It just looks so funny

[girlactionfigure]

⚫WOMAN KILLED BY ROCKETS IN PROTECTED SPACE, MORE CEASEFIRE NEWS - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( PHOTO - Israeli flag is hoisted over a Hezbollah village in south Lebanon. )

🔸 LEBANON / HEBZOLLAH CEASEFIRE.. (Barak Ravid) US envoy Hochenstein delayed his arrival in Beirut (an indication there is not agreement in Lebanon on ceasefire terms.)

.. A few hours later (in the last hour), now he is coming after “clarifications”.

.. Unanimity among senior Lebanese, that all of Lebanon together with Hezbollah will stand firm in the face of the Israeli demand to act militarily freely in Lebanon against Hezbollah's goals.

.. As part of the proposed ceasefire, Israel agrees to discuss with Lebanon points of dispute on the land border between the countries, something Israel has consistently refused in the past.

🔸HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. President Biden in Brazil: ''I continue to press for a ceasefire agreement. I ask everyone here to increase the pressure on Hamas, which is currently refusing this deal.''

.. Shin Bet chief Bar visited Turkey secretly on Saturday and met with the head of Turkish intelligence regarding the promotion of a hostage deal.

▪️MORE ARRESTED OVER FLARES FIRED AT PM’S HOUSE.. the latest is a member of “Brothers in Arms”.

▪️VERY UGLY POLITICS.. Attorney General demanded via multiple deputies that the police investigative unit open an investigation into Nat. Sec. Minister Ben Gvir.  After being told there was no basis, sent another deputy to “find something”.   (Per Min. Ben Gvir). Attorney General denies.

▪️GOVT MOVES FORWARD ON RETIRING LEGAL ADVISORS.. Finance Minister Smotrich in a letter to the Commissioner: ordered the termination of the term of office of the legal advisers to the government ministries within 90 days. This, following the government's decision from yesterday.

🔪ATTEMPTED RAMMING - LA-TWANI.. terrorist accelerated with a vehicle towards an IDF force operating in the area, forces shot him.

⭕ROCKET STRIKES - SHAFARAM.. 1 killed by a Hezbollah rocket, serious damage to a 3 story apartment building. 10 people injured. The woman killed WAS IN A PROTECTED SPACE.  It is unclear if MDA is referring to a shelter, or some other kind of protected area in the building.  Over 50 rockets fired at the area.

[your-resident-boat-person]

Hi! I saw your post about your top ocean liners! If you're still answering questions, what do you know about the Adriatic? Feel free to include another ship as I'm trying to learn more about ocean liners!

So, the Adriatic occupies a strange position in the Ocean Liner community. If you were to ask someone which of the Olympic class was their favorite, you'd get various answers, including the Britannic. However, very few people would say they picked Britannic because "she's the best version of the Olympic class". Most people would discuss her building, or her World War 1 service. Meanwhile, most people who I have spoken to about the Big 4 prefer the Adriatic because "she's the best version of the big 4". And, I mean, they're right, but its strange. She's the largest, the fastest, and the most luxurious. She was the first ocean liner to feature a swimming pool and Turkish bath, and all of her accommodations were generally a significant upgrade from her predecessors. But it's strange to me how THAT is the reason everyone prefers her. I mean, it's why I prefer her. She's the ultimate ship of the Big 4. But like I said earlier, very few people who prefer Britannic over Olympic and Titanic hold that opinion because she was (planned to be) more luxurious.

Anyway, here are some cool facts for you.

1. The Big 4 was almost the Big 5.

After Titanic sank, White Star apparently put in an order with Harland and Wolff for "A new Adriatic class ship". This is VERY strange considering the Big 4 had since been superceded by the Olympic class. As far as I know, no company EVER ordered a new ship from a previous generation like this, other than this instance. The ship was to be named RMS Germanic, after the SS Germanic of 1874, from the Britannic class. She presumably would have followed and improved upon Adriatics design, just as the Adriatic improved on the design of her predecessors. RMS Germanic had her keel laid down right around when World War 1 started, but the war delayed her construction, and she was eventually canceled.

2. The name

Like the Germanic, The RMS Adriatic was named after another White Star ship, the SS Adriatic of 1871. The SS Adriatic was the 5th ship in the Oceanic class, White Star's first class of ships. Like the RMS Adriatic, the SS Adriatic was an enhanced version of her predecessors. However, the SS Adriatic was later improved upon by the SS Celtic. The RMS Celtic of the Big 4 was named after this ship.

3. The Specs

The third ship of the Big 4, the RMS Baltic (named after the SS Baltic from 1871, also from the Oceanic class) was significantly larger than the previous two ships. However, Harland and Wolff left her engines unmodified. This meant that she was slightly slower than her predecessors. The Adriatic was even larger than the Baltic, but Harland and Wolff made her engines significantly more powerful. This meant that the largest of the Big 4 was also the most powerful, and the fastest. Her fastest crossing time was 7 days and 6 minutes. Also, her top speed was around 17 knots.

4. Coal consumption.

The Lusitania and Mauretania were the fastest ships in the world. From 1907 to 1929, their speed was unrivaled. The Mauretania specifically held the record for 19 uninterrupted years, and even beat her own record once. This, however, came at a cost. The Lusitania and Mauretania consumed 1,000 tons of coal PER DAY. The Olympic, only a few knots slower, only consumed 650 tons per day, despite being nearly 10,000 GRT larger than both of them. I actually discussed this in more detail in a previous post. Anyway, the Adriatic, by comparison, only consumed 260 tons per day. Now, she was nearly 10 knots slower than the Mauretania, but you can see how much more economical it made her by comparison. Because this was before late stage capitalism, these savings were passed on to the consumers. Tickets for the Adriatic (and by extension, the rest of the Big 4) were SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER than other competing ships, even the Olympic, and the RMS Oceanic, the predecessor to the Big 4. Also, after the first World War, most Ocean Liners like Olympic and Mauretania were converted to burn Oil instead of coal. This had several advantages.

1) Oil made the refueling process several magnitudes easier and shorter.

2) Burning Oil instead of Coal made the ship marginally faster (the Olympic was 1/10th of a knot faster after the conversion).

3) Burning Oil made the ship produce much less smoke, increasing the air quality in EVERY PORT THESE SHIPS WENT TO.

4) Because fluid takes the shape of its container, you were able to store MUCH more of it, greatly extending the ships range.

However, an unintended consequence of this was the Stokers. Generally, a ship like the Olympic had 350 men stoking the boilers with coal. After being converted to Oil, this number dropped to 50 or 60. Also, because Coal and Oil boilers were so different, coal stokers would need to be completely reeducated to work on these new ships (contrary to popular belief, stokers were considered skilled labor at the time, and required very specific and specialized knowledge and training. It wasn't just a matter of finding a strong guy and handing him a shovel.) As a show of good faith to their employees, White Star didn't convert any of the ships of the Big 4 to burn oil, to help ensure that the coal stokers could maintain employment. This was especially appreciated once the Great Depression hit in 1929.

🌟~B-B-B-BONUS FACT~🌈

The RMS Adriatic was launched on the same day as Cunard's RMS Mauretania. Because of this, as well as the fact that the RMS Lusitania was launched earlier, the Adriatic was the only member of the Big 4 to not hold the title of "largest ship in the world".

⚓️🛟🚢 - BONUS B O N U S FACT - 🚢🛟⚓️

The longest trip the RMS Adriatic did was her voyage to be scrapped in Osaka Japan.

Now that I've infodumped all over your dash, here's a disclaimer:

90% of this was from memory. I occasionally checked some sources for specific numbers like speed and coal consumption, but otherwise this was all stuff I just knew off hand. Before you use ANY of this information ANYWHERE, I'd reccomend fact checking it to make sure I didn't get anything wrong.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out and ask! This is my favorite thing in the world.

[legendthatexists]

Sebastian Vettel and the Mystery of Randy Mandy...

i.e. Would anyone like some utterly pointless but mildly intriguing information? Because here it is. It started with this photo and its caption sending me down a distinctly 2010-shaped rabbit hole.

↪ "ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - NOVEMBER 13: A detail view of the name 'Divine' of the car of Sebastian Vettel of Germany and Red Bull Racing team is pictured during qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit on November 13, 2010 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates."

Hang on... 'Divine'? The 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix? But Sebastian's winning RB6 was called Randy Mandy - he even said so himself. What is happening here?

Well, as it turns out, the story goes something like this...

Heartened by the achievements of 2009, Red Bull brought their RB6 to winter testing in Spain with high hopes. Their optimism was not unwarranted. The car, equipped with chassis 01 for the tests, looked to be a promising challenger, and the team came away from the sessions satisfied and ready to get things underway at the first race of the 2010 World Championship - calendar for reference throughout.

(This is a tale of many chassis, so to avoid using the word a thousand times, I'm mostly referring to them just by number.)

Before the season began, Sebastian Vettel announced to the world that he would be continuing his tradition of naming his cars, and turned up to the first round in Bahrain to race in Luscious Liz, chassis 03. Mark Webber's sadly unnamed counterpart carried 02.

The race came and went with minimal drama for the team. But at the next round in Australia, Webber had been switched to 04, formally intended to be the spare, as it was slightly lighter.

The team continued like this, with Webber driving 04, and Vettel 03, for the next several rounds, up until the Turkish Grand Prix. Vettel had been unhappy with the car in Spain and in Monaco, and upon inspection the team discovered some hairline fractures in 03, so assigned him 02, used only once by Webber in the opening round, for the race in Turkey.

Although he dropped the habit from 2011 onwards, Vettel had previously been known to rename his car after a chassis change, doing so when one occurred after the first race of the season in 2009. Following this tradition, he quickly dubbed his updated RB6 Randy Mandy. All of this information was reported by the relevant racing media when it occurred. News articles are still easily found online.

↪ Vettel's Randy Mandy, pictured at her outing during the European Grand Prix in Valencia.

Once again, this chassis allocation remained for several rounds, until Silverstone. Here, Webber was given Vettel's used, faulty, but now patched up 03, as Webber had... somewhat damaged his 04 upon descending from the Valencian skies. A quick aside, but his Silverstone win therefore came in that 03 chassis, which Red Bull let him keep as a memento after the season was done. Ergo Mark Webber technically owns Luscious Liz?

But I digress. To recap so far: Both drivers tested 01. Vettel drove 03 up to and including Monaco, after which he received 02 due to small defects in 03. Webber ran his opening weekend in 02, switched to the lighter 04, then damaged it in Valencia and had to drive Vettel's fixed-up 03. Got it?

Chassis-tracking becomes a lot simpler after the summer break: Webber changed to the new 06 for the weekend in Japan, and Vettel to the equivalent 05 immediately after the summer break. His updated car was pictured in Spa with that intriguing new name: Divine. Although this information was available in the usual technical documents and FIA releases, the chassis changes were not covered by the media, and the new name was never mentioned, and isn't listed on Vettel's website. There are a lot of well-documented discussions about the changes that took place from online in 2010, with reference to the technical info. Still, the only confirmation of the name change is in photos, or squinting at 2010 onboard quality. And yet, there are several photos and onboards, and it's stated plain as day in the caption I quoted at the beginning...

Save for Webber using and promptly crashing 03 in Korea, the two drivers saw out their seasons with their new chassis. Meaning that Vettel, it appears, drove to Red Bull's maiden championship, and indeed to his very own, in a car christened Divine.

↪ Her nameplate was pictured in the garage at Spa. It can also be seen in this photo, on the grid just before the deciding final Grand Prix of 2010.

↪ Vettel's chassis label at Yas Marina. (Apologies for the quality - it's a photo I took of a photo in this book).

TL;DR In 2010, Sebastian Vettel not only switched chassis after Monaco, but also after Hungary. Given his then-tradition of giving each new chassis a new name and as told by photographs, he won his first championship in a car that was called Divine; not Randy Mandy as we all thought..

This is relevant to absolutely nothing and nobody in real life but I found it somewhere between slightly and mildly interesting, and thought others might too :)

photos 1 & 2 by Vladimir Rys, photo 3 by Mark Thompson. Via Getty.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes of the massive destruction evident in the vicinity of what is left of the Kuwait Specialized Hospital in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, after several months of bombing and shelling, along with the purposeful detonation and destruction of Palestinian healthcare infrastructure. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ISRAELI GENOCIDE IN GAZA DAY 302: HANIYEH KILLED BY SHORT-RANGE ROCKET ACCORDING TO IRGC, BIDEN WARNS NETANYAHU NOT TO COUNT ON US TO BAIL HIM OUT AFTER ANY FUTURE ROGUE ATTACKS, ZIONIST ARMY CONTINUES ITS SLAUGHTER OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS AS GENOCIDE GOES ON ENDLESSLY

On the 302nd day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 3 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 31 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 62 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or whose bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally the number of those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC) published the findings of their investigation into Hamas Politboro leader Ismail Haniyeh's assassination on Saturday, July 31st, in his residence in northern Tehran.

According to the IRGC's findings, Haniyeh was killed as a result of the launch of a short-range rocket with an approximately 7kg warhead that was "fired from outside the premises of the guesthouse" housing the Hamas leader in the northern Tehran suburbs.

The attack comes following more than 300 days of failure for the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip, as the occupation has so far been unable to dislodge the Hamas resistance movement from the Palestinian enclave.

As a result of their failures, the Zionist entity has been regularly lashing out at its neighbors, launching attacks on resistance groups and civilian infrastructure throughout the region, including in Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Iraq, the countries that form the Axis of Resistance.

The IRGC also said that all security protocols and safety requirements were fully applied to the guesthouse residence of Haniyeh in Tehran, a building that was regularly used to house political figures and other foreign guests during visits to the Islamic Republic.

It also dismissed speculations in the Western and Hebrew media, which the IRGC said are fueled with "sinister political objectives" to divert the attention of public opinion.

The IRGC concluded their report by renewing its vow to avenge the death of Haniyeh at the hands of the "terrorist and adventurist Zionist regime," and warned that the Israeli occupation will receive a "harsh punishment" at the time and location of Iran's choosing.

Meanwhile, for their own part, the Joe Biden administration in the United States gave warning to the Zionist entity's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against further escalation amid the risk of a larger regional war.

According to reporting in the Western and Turkish media, President Biden held a "tough" phone call with Netanyahu on Thursday, where the American President warned the occupation's Prime Minister to "stop escalating tension in the region," and to "move immediately towards a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal."

During the call, the US President discussed with Netanyahu US troop deployments to support the genocidal regime in occupied Palestine against various potential threats following Haniyeh's assassination.

"The President discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive U.S. military deployments," the Administration said in a statement, with Biden reaffirming his commitment to Zionist regime's security against "all threats from Iran."

Biden also supposedly stressed the importance of de-escalation in this heated moment, while Biden is said to have discussed US-Israeli joint military preperations for any possible Iranian or other axis of resistance retaliation. Biden also made clear he was "not pleased" with the direction the Netanyahu regime has taken.

The American President went on to complain to Netanyahu that in a previous call last week, the two had discussed the importance of securing a hostage exchange and ceasefire deal, but instead the Zionist entity chose to go ahead with Haniyeh's assassination in Iran, according to a source who spoke with American news outlet Axios.

According to the anonymous official, the United States will help the Zionist entity fend off an Iranian or resistance response to the assassination, but after that, Biden told Netanyahu he expects "no more escalation" from the Israeli regime and immediate movement towards a hostage exchange deal.

Biden finished by warning Netanyahu that in the event of further escalation, he "shouldn't count on the US to bail him out," the official told Axios.

The United States has since menuevered military resources into various positions within West Asia in case it is needed to "defend itself and its allies."

Meanwhile, the Zionist regime has continued its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, massacring civilian families and destroying their few remaining homes and public facilities for the 302nd day.

On Friday evening, an IOF drone targeted a gathering of civilians in the Al-Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of 4 Palestinians.

Similarly, occupation fighter jets bombed a house in the Al-Bureij Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing a child and wounding a number of others, while another strike targeted a residential house in the town of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian citizen and injuring two others.

The attacks continued later on Friday evening, when Zionist warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Abu Hasira family in the Al-Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths 5 civilians, including 3 children and an elderly man, as well as one woman, who were transported by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city.

The Israeli occupation's atrocities continued when Zionist army warplanes bombed a residential house belonging to the Abu Hasna family in the Miraj area between the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing 5 Palestinian civilians, including a young girl and 3 women.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 39'550 Palestinians killed, including at least 10'300 women and well over 15'700 children, while another 91'280 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

This brings the total number of casualties to well over 130'830, or the equivalent of 5.68% of Gaza's 2.3 million inhabitants.

August 3rd, 2024.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#source4

#source5

#source6

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[ridenwithbiden]

TO PAY FOR TRUMPS TRILLIONS IN TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH.

"Oz will succeed Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the current administrator of CMS, to lead programs including Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older, and disabled people, and Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for lower-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for more than 140 million Americans.

Also in the CMS fold are the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) and the Health Insurance Marketplace, which was created by the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama in 2010.

Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are currently discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other government welfare programs to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multi-trillion-dollar 2017 tax cut."

Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US Senate. Donald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6 trillion dollar annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.

“I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS,” Oz posted on X on Tuesday. “I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr].”

In the announcement of Oz’s selection, Trump said that Oz would “make America healthy again” and described him as “an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades”.

Oz has been on US television screens for nearly 20 years, first appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004. In that time, he has talked to his audience about losing weight with fad diets and what it takes to have healthy poops and, toward the end of his run, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential remedy for Covid-19.

Here’s what to know about the New York University professor and surgeon turned television show host, and now Trump appointee.

Mehmet Oz, 64, is a Turkish American Ohio native best known for The Dr Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. His father was a surgeon in Turkey, and after Oz graduated high school in Delaware, he was admitted into Harvard. He also served in the Turkish military in order to maintain dual citizenship, the Associated Press reports.

Before entering US homes via daytime TV, he had more than 20 years of experience as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Presbyterian-Columbia medical center in New York. He was also a professor at Columbia University’s medical school.

His bona fides at the prestigious institutions earned him quick credibility with viewers, and his popularity garnered him nine Daytime Emmy awards for outstanding informative talkshow and host.

Though his show ended in 2022, Oz maintains a YouTube channel filled with old episodes of his shows where he interviews guests such as Penn Jillette about his weight loss and Robert F Kennedy Jr about his 2014 book about the presence of mercury in vaccines. He also has an Instagram account that boasts more than a million followers, where Oz shares photos of his family and sells products from iHerb, an online health and wellness brand for which he is global adviser.

Oz’s questionable medical advice and time in politics. Throughout his TV tenure, Oz dabbled in the hallmarks of weight loss culture like detoxes, cleanses and diets that promised rapid weight loss. He also faced a grilling by senators in 2014 over claims he made and alleged false advertising on supplements he promoted on his show. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Oz regurgitated misinformation that came from the fringes of the right and medical communities.

These comments continued when he threw his hat into the race to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate in 2022 against John Fetterman. At the time, the Guardian wrote:

“Oz was dogged by questions about his actual connection to the state during the campaign. Oz lived in New Jersey for decades before he moved to Pennsylvania in October 2020, into a home owned by his wife’s family. He announced his bid to be the state’s US senator just months later.”

Following Fetterman’s stroke, during which he said he “​​almost died”, the Oz campaign launched unsavory attacks against him, with one Oz aide, Rachel Tripp, claiming Fetterman might not have had a stroke if he “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life”.

Oz ultimately lost to Fetterman, who garnered 51% of the vote compared with Oz’s 46%."

[allthegeopolitics]

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday called on the international community to oppose the US veto on Palestine’s UN bid, and recognize Palestine state. “It is unjust that Palestine is not allowed to become a member of the UN. We call on the international community to oppose this injustice and recognize the state of Palestine,” said Hakan Fidan in a joint news conference with his Mauritanian counterpart Mohamed Salem Ould Merzoug in Istanbul. During a meeting with Merzoug, Fidan said that they discussed the “ongoing massacre in Gaza,” adding: “Just like Turkiye, Mauritania also adopts a sensitive policy regarding the Palestinian issue, particularly the situation in Gaza, and provides all possible support.”

Continue Reading.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

So I just wanted to share this because I thought it was hilarious it happened.

So the PJO subreddit just made a post titled "Hot Takes? [general]" And I knew what I wanted to say after reading some of your posts about valid criticisms when it comes to the series.

So I made a comment basically "I think the series could've been better if it was set in Greece. Rereading the series as an adult and truth be told having their gods leave the country for America because it's "the new beacon of western civilization" feels like an insult towards Greece. It could've been interesting learning about a culture I'm noticing barely gets any attention in media except for their Ancient classical civilization and some tourist spots. But I understand why Riordan didn't do it because it can be terrifying setting your book in a culture you know barely anything about and have no connection to."

And guess which comment was the only one that got downvoted? XD

Whatever, as some plain bread American I stand by with what I said. I loved books as a kid set in other cultures and learning about new places. While I still loves the series (warts and all) I do wish it could've been used to teach American kids like me more about the amazing Greek culture.

(Also off topic, but I liked one of your posts about this and there are some things I'm confused by that Google is not answering for me. What's a Greek Theia? And what's a soi? Sorry, like I said Google is a pain and not helping me here. ;n;)

-🌟Anon

Anon, you're awesome! 💙 Thank you for standing up for us and what we (aka, many Greeks) have been saying for some time now. I bet the last part on RR not knowing anything on the culture and not having any connection to it felt like a burn to them but it's the (uncomfortable, for many fans) truth.

You stated your opinion respectfully and didn't trash the series, merely pointed something out. You may have just opened a few eyes and started some thoughts and discussions, and more people will realize your take has merit. I love your "plain bread American" approach, saying it like it is and letting the truth shine on its own.

Onto the words!

Theia directly translates to "(she) divine" or "(she) nurser" (if seen both, there's not a clear conclusion) and it's the word for aunt/auntie. The Spanish tia derives from it, in case you're familiar with the language. They're pronounced exactly the same, only theia has a "th" (as in "thorn"). Theitsa, as in my url, is a diminutive for aunty (-itsa suffix), also meaning "auntie", but in a more endearing way.

Soi means "the family/the clan/the bunch/the sort". It's a Turkish loanword. Examples of use that probably make sense in English: "The whole bunch came to town for her birthday" and "What sort of person is he, that he doesn't care about his fellow man?"

Hopefully this clears some things up 😁💙 But don't hesitate to ask more questions.

[justforbooks]

Fethullah Gülen

Imam who sponsored dialogue between Christians and Muslims but was accused of terrorism by the president of Turkey

In 1962, a 21-year-old imam, Fethullah Gülen, arrived in the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun to finish his military service. He also gave sermons in the town’s main mosque. This was the heyday of secular Turkey, and he quickly ran into difficulties from a secularist commanding officer who, seeing his sermons as a threat to the republic, ordered that he should be detained for two weeks.

Another officer, however, had a different approach. Spotting that the young soldier was highly intelligent and well-read in Islamic religious texts, but with almost no formal education inside the conventional school system, he recommended that Gülen should start reading western literary classics as well. The young recruit began to read, and enjoy, Dante, Camus and Dostoevsky, eventually developing a taste even for the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

This was perhaps the moment when the career pursued by Gülen, who has died aged 83, began to deviate sharply from that of most Turkish imams. In the next six decades he became internationally famous, feted especially in the US, while writing about 50 books, sponsoring dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and heading a global religious brotherhood with a great number of schools in five continents and a vast international business network. However, this trajectory would end in mortal conflict with the Turkish state, with Gülen accused of terrorism by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and tens of thousands of his followers in jail, stripped of assets or in exile.

To his admirers, including US members of Congress and Christian theologians, Gülen remained a virtual saint, a Muslim cleric on friendly terms with the western world. In Turkey, among many Turks other than his own following, Gülen was a deeply sinister figure whose efforts to capture the state culminated in 2016 in a botched military coup in which more than 200 people died.

One of eight children, Gülen was born in the village of Korucuk in north-eastern Turkey at a time of severe wartime hardship. His father, Ramiz, was a village imam connnected with the conservative Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood, while his mother, Refia, combined raising livestock and a family with teaching Qur’an classes for girls.

Gülen had only three years of formal primary schooling. However he knew parts of the Qur’an by heart at the age of four and the whole of it when he was eight. At 13 he became a pupil for five years at an underground theological school at the Kurşunlu mosque in Erzurum. In his mid-teens he joined a new brotherhood, the Nurcus, who supported the adoption of western science while vehemently opposing the republic founded by Kemal Atatürk and its westernising reforms. Gülen worked with the Nurcus until he set up his own brotherhood in the early 1970s.

In 1959, Gülen received his icazetname (Islamic studies diploma) as a preacher, making him an official of Turkey’s presidency of religious affairs, a state Sunni organisation, which posted him to a mosque in Edirne. He remained a government imam until 1981. His powerful emotional sermons quickly won him a wide reputation, and he was known as “the weeping imam”. His followers wept with him. He began organising teaching and discussion meetings, usually before prayers. These marked the first beginnings of his global movement.

Around 1966, Gülen was transferred to a mosque in Izmir on the Aegean, and it was there that his career took flight. In 1971 he suffered a severe setback when the military threw out Turkey’s civilian government and he was arrested and imprisoned for seven months. By the mid-70s, though, Gülen had become a well-known lecturer as well as preacher, travelling across the country to talk on topics such as the gift of prophecy, the Qur’an and science, and Darwinism.

Nevertheless, he learned to live discreetly and to disguise his actions. Even though he publicly supported Turkey’s 1980 military coup because it crushed communism and opened the way to religious education, he lived under cover for six years because some in the pro-military establishment saw him as an Islamist.

“You could say I was protected by high friends in Ankara,” he told the Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand in 1998. After a tipoff during a pilgrimage to Mecca, he returned to Turkey by hiring a smuggler to take him over the mountains, minefields and barbed wire of the Syrian border. Another time he was detained and taken to a military barracks, to be released only after then prime minister Turgut Özal held a midnight cabinet meeting about the case.

Gülen’s teachings extracted universal values from Islam, accepted their commonalities with those of other cultures and religions, and promoted the study of western science. His genius lay in doing so without being so specific as to offend pious Muslim values. “I tried to show the way. It’s as if a crystal broke into little pieces, scattered left and right. I’m trying to bring this society’s pieces back together again, to provide education, and as much as I can, to advise people to serve what I believe in,” he said.

His rise was assisted by the steady growth in the numbers of Turkish students studying in Islamic vocational schools, partly as a result of moves by the military after the 1980 coup to stem the growth of leftist movements by encouraging religious education. In towns across Turkey, businessmen joined the brotherhood, prayed with it, and paid up to a fifth of their income to it, apparently in return for a promise that they would never be allowed to fail commercially.

The movement was eventually a founding influence on more than 1,000 schools in Turkey and abroad as well as several universities of its own. Some had high academic standards and were especially popular in under-served countries in Africa and Central Asia. For a time they were even standard-bearers of expanding Turkish commercial and cultural influence. However, the Gülenist movement is also suspected of using the schools as a means to recruit high-performing new members.

The way in which these various activities were organised and financed remained very mysterious. Though there seem to have been “imams” in charge of different parts of Turkey and “abis” (big brothers) issuing strict orders at the local level, no hierarchy or plan was ever revealed. Gülen himself claimed that he had only set up a few model institutions, which were copied and spread spontaneously. The Gülenist movement has long preferred to call itself “Hizmet”, or service.

Gülen lived modestly as a celibate cleric beside a teaching centre and mosque. He maintained that the Prophet Muhammad had come to him in a dream and told him not to marry. By the 90s his health was failing because of diabetes and heart problems, but he had become an internationally leading figure in Islamic-Christian dialogue, even meeting Pope John Paul II in 1998.

In March 1999, he received a tip-off, apparently from sources within the government of Bülent Ecevit, that the security forces and the country’s intelligence services were about to arrest him, and he escaped in haste to the US. In Turkey the military put him on trial in his absence.

The most damning piece of evidence produced by the security services was a clandestine video of Gülen telling his followers to capture state power by waiting and “moving within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centres”. The accusations against him did not prevent Gülen from being given a green card to reside in the US, in 2002.

At the end of that year, Turkey’s Islamists finally took power in Turkey and Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP) formed a strong government. Gülen stayed in the US, despite sharing much of the AKP’s religious-nationalist world view and repeated invitations to return to Turkey. He declined to do so even after the court charges against him collapsed.

Meanwhile the influence of his followers grew steadily. The Gülenists had very few ministers in AKP cabinets, but they increasingly dominated the police, the ministry of justice, parts of the foreign ministry, and many government agencies, as well as much of the press. Their main obstacle was the army, until then supremely powerful in Turkey.

In 2008 prosecutors from Gülen’s movement began a series of arrests against army officers, journalists and others, on what proved eventually to be completely bogus terrorism and conspiracy charges, relying on faked evidence. By 2011, the crackdown had forced into submission the old military elite, long dominant as the country’s self-appointed guardians of Atatürk’s secularist legacy.

In 2012 Gülenist prosecutors attempted to question the head of the security services over secret truce talks with Turkey’s Kurdish terrorists. The incident rang alarm bells in the government, and in 2013 relations between the ruling AKP and Gülen and his followers turned into undisguised conflict. In a bid to impede Erdoğan’s government in December that year, Gülenist prosecutors ordered two rounds of arrests of figures close to ministers on corruption charges.

Erdoğan and Gülen were locked in a power struggle, but by the end of 2014 the government had broken the power of the movement in the police and the judiciary. Many senior Gülenist officials began fleeing abroad and Gülen’s press and media empire came under pressure.

One institution where the Gülenists retained secret supporters was the armed forces. This is why Erdoğan’s government blamed Gülen’s movement for the bloody but curiously clumsy attempt at a military takeover on 15 July 2016. Gülen denied the accusations against him, claiming that Erdoğan set up the coup as a false flag event in order to seize sole control of the country.

Whatever the real cause, Erdoğan has ruled supreme since then. The Gülenist movement has never recovered. Gülenists were purged throughout the country. Even in villages, followers were detained, lost jobs, saw property confiscated, suffered discrimination from state institutions or were ostracised. Ankara moved sharply to seize control of or close down as many of the Gülenist schools as possible.

The Turkish government issued a “red” international arrest warrant for Gülen and made numerous attempts to have him extradited to Turkey, but all were rejected by the US authorities. Though stateless, he continued to live in Pennsylvania.

He is survived by some of his seven siblings, and many nephews and nieces.

🔔 Mohammed Fethullah Gülen, religious leader, born 27 April 1941; died 20 October 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[bookaddictedrose]

~~~Rose's Book Diary~~~ The Grandest Game Pt 1

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I GOT THE BOOOOKKKK!!!

Pre-reading thoughts here

Prologue: Rohan, 1 year ago

Not sure how I feel about Rohan?

I don't like the Proprietor. He gives Dumbledore vibes (yes I'm a hater)

Chapters 1-3: Lyra

Nooo Lyra 🥺 she's gone through so much 😭

The test taking? I'm taking notes ✍️

So SOMEBODY sent her the letter 🧐 hmm...

Chapter 4: Gigi

Gigi's entrances always remind me of Percy Jackson: no context at all, just a bunch of ADHD chaos.

Katara is the therapy attack cat and we love her.

Everyone has trauma 😭 and Gigi's falling apart

So Savannah's gonna get the ticket...but I'm sure Gigi's gonna get in

Gigi protecting Savannah 🥺

Chapter 5: Rohan

So he got TWO??? damn

Wait did Gigi get her card? Give her a card 🔫

Another gun at the back of your head, another tenner, Rohan

GIGGGIIIIIIII

I'm writing this as I read, so prepare for a lot of crazy and chaos

I would like to see Rohan in "nothing but a lush Turkish cotton robe" 😏

SORRY not sorry

Odette Morales... possibly Alice Hawthorne

Brady Daniels... hurt Gigi? 😡

Knox Landry... no clue at all

The queen 👑 *cue dramatic music*

Chapter 6-8: Lyra

Jamesonnnn :) with a helicopter!

GRAYSONNNN

She still knows his voice 🥹

She thinks he didn't care 😭 tbh he was kinda an asshole to her

Rohan... There is chemistry between him and literally everyone else

Odette has reverse violet sorrengail hair lol

Who chose the Hawthorne Island. Seriously.

Gives caraval. "Explore this foreign place all you want, but return before sundown or you're kicked out of this mysterious, prestigious, invitation-only game."

Jameson watching Grayson watching Lyra. That's all.

The ruins 🙀

Oh my god Grayson literally just popped out of nowhere. Just poof.

THE CLIFFFFF

he knows her voice 🥰

"stay away from the cliffs" ain't no way—

Chapter 9-11: Gigi

So Savannah did come...and is colder than ever.

Hmm, mysterious new person. That gigi finds attractive. What about slate 😭

XANDER

I need to see Xander and Gigi together. They would be the best of friends 💜

So Savannah's competition, too, huh? 🤨

Viking style epics are the best. Let Gigi win, if only for that 😭🙏

Caffeine.

So I'm getting some tension between our beloved sisters...

MANGA...RA. immediately anagraming it.

OMG DID YOU KNOW IF YOU GOOGLE ANAGRAM IT WILL SAY DID YOU MEAN: NAG A RAM

Anagram. The anagram for "mangara" is anagram.

Unless someone erased letters??

I love opera glasses! Opera glasses, wine, ball gowns and violins. 🍷

I like Odette. And ponies.

Sooo Brady and Knox are friends, and they're discussing a dead girl?

I thought em*ly wasn't in the book??

"the world just loves women who try. Unless and until we try too hard. FROM ONE WOMAN WHO TRIED TOO HARD TO ANOTHER" 🥺

This is just a bunch of confused ADHD thoughts, but thanks for staying!

Come back for part two!