Articles by Engin Kurtay and IIRSS
“Mister Bernard-Henri Lévy, do you know The War has started in 2014?”
“Mister Bernard-Henri Lévy, War is not statistics!”
And now you are in Odessa, Mister BHL… But you are a loser.
Continue reading “Mister BHL, War is Not Statistics! — Anne-Laure Bonnel”
Note: This article was received from Prof Slavoj Žižek upon our publishing of the previous article “From Sartre to Zizek, freedom or Bashi-Bazouklouk — Engin Kurtay“. Professor has mentioned that he cut off all links with RT.
After the Russian attack on Ukraine, I was yet again ashamed of being a citizen of Slovenia. The Slovene government immediately proclaimed that it is ready to receive thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian occupation… OK, but when Afghanistan fell to Taliban, this same government announced that Slovenia is not ready to receive any refugees from there – the justification was that instead of escaping, people should stay there and fight Taliban with guns. Along the same lines, a couple of months ago when thousands of refugees from Asia tried to enter Poland from Belarus, Slovene government offered Poland military help, claiming that Europe is under attack there. So there are obviously two species of refugees, “ours” (European), i.e., “real refugees,” and the Third World ones who don’t deserve our hospitality. Continue reading “Ukraine and The Third World — Prof Slavoj Žižek”
“Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our oppressors wanted us to accept. And, because of all this, we were free. Because the Nazi venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment.” Continue reading “From Sartre to Zizek, freedom or Bashi-Bazouklouk¹ — Engin Kurtay”
Jan Hus was killed on 6th of July 1415. Paradoxically, Jan Hus was the translator and a defender of an English theology professor: John Wycliffe. As a surprising fact of Historical dialectics, the 15th century Britain was more advanced than the Continent.
Jan Hus and similar heroic personages opened the way to modern philosophy, critical thinking, freedom of speech, to form the distinct political and legal norms of our contemporary civilization.
You, the Judges compounding the “Supreme” Court of the UK, you are supposed to be the products of this six-century-long philosophical and societal evolution.
You are not free to deny the legacy of this six hundred years. Your “judiciary independence” is the product of this legacy.
J’accuse! You did wrong.
But you will have a second chance to decide whether you are “Supreme” or the tiny pathetic puppets of the transatlantic imperialist cooperation. Julian Assange will re-appeal.
If you do the wrong thing, your injustice will match the logic of the inquisition of the dark ages.
The monument of Julian Assange will be erected in any case. This is unavoidable and will not be related to any decision of yours.
The only difference if you will do the wrong is that it will be erected over your infamy.
And a few words to your Queen (the throne throng are not my compeer, therefore it’s you who shall forward my words to her):
Despite her age she looks still lucid enough to remember the words of De Gaulle for Sartre:
“On ne met pas Voltaire à Bastille, sinon le peuple le détruiront sur nos têtes“.
I wish you all doing a good job.
Engin Kurtay
Prof Slavoj Zizek
Our Institute’s (Istanbul Institute of Russian and Sovietic Studies (IIRSS)) legendary mentor Prof-The-Redskin has just given new pics as for the celebration of his previous birthday (14th of November). Continue reading ““Male body is like a wine!…” — Prof-The-Redskin”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The mass gathering scene of the political action film by James McTeigue, V for Vendetta (2005) reminds us the October (1928) of Sergei Eisenstein! However, there is a slight but crucial difference: the crowd in the film heads towards the Parliament.
Not to the Buckingham Palace! …
And, neither any audience nor any cocky film analyst have so far questioned what could have been going on in the Buckingham Palace during those moments of blowing the Parliament up. The film never shows anything related to the Royal Order. It successfully makes the audiences to forget the fact that there actually exists a kind of centralized power in Britain. Continue reading “Inessa Armand versus Alexey Shmakov – Engin Kurtay, Ali Polat”
Professor Zizek’s paradox is due to a false contradiction that can exchange their roles with each other like any other paradox:
A) Those who can give up their own identity and have the privilege of talking about the victimization of the victims: We call this group WASP: the initials of white; Anglo Saxon; Protestant. Male is often added to it too: WASP+male.
B) Those who can declare their own identities without being stamped as fascist: This group includes all skin colors and ethnicities other than WASP. We call this group non-WASP. However, this group is not uniform in itself. They position themselves in a spectrum of different degrees of grievances and victimizations: the farther you are from WASP, the more authentic victims you are. For example, an Afro American is more underprivileged than a “brown” (mixed blood); a Bengali is more underprivileged than a Chinese; a Chinese is more than an Italian; a muslim is more than a buddhist; a buddhist is more than a catholic; a transsexual is more than a homosexual; a lesbian woman is more than a straight woman … and they altogether are victims of the WASP+male. Continue reading “Why Kamala Harris was destined to fail? – The paradoxes of anti-WASP left – Engin Kurtay, Ali Polat”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The people of Russia, except few rickety events, remained indifferent to the centenary of the 1917 Revolution and spent the November 7th 2017 like a normal day. According to a survey commissioned by the Communist Party, 58% of the Russian population was unaware of the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution (1).
Whereas Nov. 7th was a holiday celebrated by big ceremonies, during the Soviet era.
The editor of the independent Russian TV channel, documentary filmmaker Mikhail Viktorovich Zygor proclaimed that he was very surprised by the fact that the Russian press remained indifferent to the centenary of October Revolution (2).
The Russian President V. Putin, four days prior to Nov. 7th (in November 3, 2017), said that the October Revolution was a complicated episode of their own history and that these course of events should be treated with respect in an unbiased way (3).
Continue reading “The fantasy universe of Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘October’ – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The First Workshop for Russian Studies between Boğaziçi University and Lomonosov Moscow State University will be held in Bosphorus University, in Istanbul between 10 to 13th of October 2019 by the hosting of ADK (Atatürkçü Düşünce Kulübü – The Student’s “Atatürk Thought Club“) and by the collaboration of Turkish Historical Society (Türk Tarih Kurumu – TTK).
The project aims to develop academic correspondences, sharing of information and collaboration for mutual production of knowledge between Russian and Turkish scholars in social sciences, particularly in History. This workshop is planned to focuse on topics bringing into discussion the issues that are currently under debate in Russia and -especially – controversial in the mainstream Western left-wing reading of Russian and Soviet history.
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
“Boys climbed on trees, to see what was happening. And they fell down vomitting: they saw it. We suddenly realized that there was a mass massacre that was happening there”
“Before the Nazi occupation of Kiev the housekeepers were known as the spies of the KGB. After the Nazi occupation they all suddenly converted to Nazi spies. One of them was coming to our house and saying to my mother – who was looking as Jewish because she had a big nose – “Madam, you should go to Babi Yar, why don’t you go to Babi Yar?” Continue reading “Babi Yar – 2 – Mass Massacre in Kiev”
“Jim Crow” logic has been carried till today by the liberal left’s ethnic politics:
“You are black, how come that you don’t know how to eat the chicken like a black?”
As the ‘Green Book’ sublates the ethnic problem, the film ‘Sibel’ (2019), directed by Guillaume Giovanetti and Çağla Zencirci, similarly sublates the problem of pseudo-feminism.
The negro Pushkin was more Russian than anyone else in Russia. A real art does not fit in any race, identity or ethnicity. What we call “ethnic music” cannot be an “art”. To install a revolutionary function in art, one has first to lift the whiskey glass away from the piano!
Note: This article has originally been published in Turkish, in Sendika.org
Continue reading “The Hegelian Aufhebung: ‘Green Book’ and ‘Sibel’ – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The film did not attract public interest when it was shown both in Mexico and in USA. The box office was a complete failure. Moreover, Spanish media reported that the film triggered racist attacks in Mexico. So was the reason for the lack of public interest to the film a deep reaction to bring the indigenious X white distinction and discrimination back to the top of the agenda?
In the modern-post-modern world, the relation between art and politics is as corrupted as the relation between art and the market. This relationship takes its roots from Trotsky’s art doctrine: Trotsky rejects all kinds of formalism in art, thus he rejects art education, institutionalization in art, and the patronage/support of the state apparatus on/for art. Continue reading “The Autopsy of the Film ‘Roma’: Why did Alfonso Cuaron discredit his own masterpiece? – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
(*) The title is barrowed from the book of Todd McGowan, “Enjoying what we don’t have – The political project of psychoanalysis“, University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
(Sendika.org’da Türkçe’sini okumak için tıkla)
How does the symbolization of a lack turns into fun? To understand this mechanism, I will proceed under the guidance of the articles of Professor Slavoj Zizek’s “Ego Ideal and the Superego, Lacan as a Viewer of Casablanca” and Owen Hewitson’s “What Does Lacan Say About … Jouissance?”
The ideal ego is the way the subject (small other) desires to be perceived by Other, thus, it is ‘imaginary’. Ego Ideal, by contrast, is the subject’s self-positionning into societal rules, thus, it’s “symbolic”. The superego is distinguished from Ego Ideal as its back-face, evil twin: it judges, “stigmatizes” the subject by its inadequacy to conform law. It mocks, have fun with it. Here reveals the paradoxical formula that connects ‘jouissance’ to ‘obscene’: The more Subject tends to comply, the more it becomes subject to get judged and stigmatized – and this duality of opposite agencies (Ego Ideal versus the superego) become eventually trapped into a swirl of self-perpetuating ‘obscene jouissance’. Continue reading “Enjoying what we don’t have* – Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The interview in the video above was made in the winter of 2017 with Yelena Lugovaya, Professor of History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev, the last survivor of Babi Yar. Her granddaughter, our Kiev representative and Arsenal Art Gallery curator Alisa Lozhkina made the simultaneous translation of the speech.
The testimony of Prof Lugovaya is to be compared with that of a Karaite Judaist lady living at the same period of time in Istanbul. Kiev versus Istanbul !
This part tells about the History of Jews in Kiev and the pre-War period to give our audiences a general knowledge prior to Babi Yar massacre. The aim of this study is to contrast the city lifes in Kiev and in Istanbul during the Second World War then to judge the neutrality policy of the Turkish government.
As a reminder, President İnönü was accused by the opponent party members in “killing the manhood of Turkish People” by not taking part in the War.
— Joint article with Prof Şener Üşümezsoy – The Redskin !!!! —
— And with contributions of AliPolaT – The Director !!!! —
Gilets Jaunes: «Les élites parlent de fin du monde, quand nous, on parle de fin du mois» (Raphaëlle Rérolle, Le Monde, Publié le 24 novembre 2018 à 09h20 – Mis à jour le 25 novembre 2018 à 15h32)
”New communication technologies” that we know as peaceful, democrat, pluralist, will supposingly make the world a big village where everyone should be brothers, sisters with each other, they are no longer new nor peaceful. They have already passed the competitive capitalist phase. They became oligopolistic. They eat rent. Instead of creating new jobs, they obstruct employment and economic development. They have penetrated the state, intertwined with the repressive apparatus of state, they became panopticon – Edward Snowden is in exile since he revealed this condition. Continue reading “The goose’s foot is scalloped – Article dediquée aux «Gilets Jaunes» – Engin Kurtay”
Our application is only available for devices with android operating system. If you use an iPhone, you must first discard your phone, then buy and android OS device and then install our application.
History is alive. At first hand we always have a lie. The lie immediately after the incident is the most believed, the least questioned lie. Time erodes the data but it also helps historians to find new sources. Sometimes a single document changes the whole story, sending a huge library to the trash. History is a relentless inquiry and research discipline. As you plunge deeper into the subject, the more you find out that your knowledge is limited, the more you see that the goose’s foot is more combed than you thought. In that respect History is the “hardest” of all sciences. Continue reading “The geopolitics behind the killing of Jamal Khashoggi – Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
2nd Appendix to our article “Understanding the prodigy of Sergei Eisenstein”
Marie Seton relates the depression of Eisenstein to not being able to complete Sinclair’s project in Mexico. Marie Seton’s evaluation, however, expresses only some part of the truth – the part that is compatible with the Eisenstein myth she created, making it convenient to be told to the masses. The reason why Upton Sinclair stopped the project and fired Eisenstein was the exposure of Eisenstein’s relationship with his guide. This disclosure was the last drop. Upton’s wife, Marie Craig Sinclair got off at half-cock seeing Eisenstein’s bohemian life without being able to produce any piece of viewable film having spent months for burning thousands of meters of negatives. Continue reading “The “comrade” sent to Eisenstein from USA – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
1st Appendix to our article “Understanding the prodigy of Sergei Eisenstein”
In 1925 The film Potemkin Battleship of Sergei Eisenstein + Grigory Alexandrov was only shown in Moscow in just one cinema and only for a week. People were not interested. The Bolshevik government did not support the film even though it was its own orders. The film was removed to storage. Then, with the intervention of Mayakovsky, the negatives were taken from the depot and sent to Berlin. The famous German director Piel Jutzi was commissioned to re-trim the 45 km long negatives to reform a viewable 1.7 km movie. With an international PR work, the film was shown in Berlin on December 17, 1926 with the participation of Hollywood celebrities like Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford and embassies, consuls from various countries. In the days following this glaze in Berlin, the film was introduced as a masterpiece of art and Sergei Eisenstein as a genius all over the world, with the coordinated publications of the American and British press. Continue reading “Was “Bezhin Meadow” a test bringing Shumyatsky and Babel to execution? – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
Note: This study is being elaborated by revisions and appendixes. The Log of revisions is located at then end of the article.
Known for his leftist identity, Ken Livingston’s victory in London municipal elections in 2000 created excitement in the left circles in the UK as well as around the world. One detail that escaped from the eyes was that Ken Livingston participated the municipal elections as an independent candidate from the party, even though he was a member of the Labor Party. Simple tactical explanations were invented to explain this strangeness. We can, however, try to better understand this tactical choice through Eisenstein’s story we present below, within the framework of deep decomposition on the left, whose roots go back to 1908 and 1916.
Continue reading “Understanding the prodigy of Sergei Eisenstein – Ali Polat, Engin Kurtay”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
The document above has recently been displayed and made public for the first time in the German Historical Museum. For those who don’t speak German hereunder the translation of the document: Continue reading “A Document displayed in Berlin”
Professor Zizek’s article that has recently been published in Russian Times with the title Sex in the modern world: Can even a ‘yes, yes, yes’ actually mean ‘no?’” provides a sound framework for rethinking on the impasses of nowadays feminism. At the end of the article, Lewinsky’s statements as referred by the Professor, exemplify the main theme of the #metoo movement. This theme is typically as follows: there is always a “strong” man on stage … either a famous businessman, or artist, actor, TV commentator, a man with a career and wealth or so … and the campaign is typically aiming to judge the man’s using his power on women for sex.
Continue reading “Feminism having turned to its opposite and Zizek’s warnings”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
“Bill Browder, the false crusader for justice and human rights and the self-styled No. 1 enemy of Vladimir Putin has perpetrated a brazen and dangerous deception upon the Western world. This book traces the anatomy of this deception, unmasking the powerful forces that are pushing the Western world toward yet another great war with Russia.“
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
Historian Mikhail Davydov speaks on Russias ways of development prior to 1917 !
Debates about the February and October revolutions of a century ago took up all of 2017: was it possible to avoid them? Was it possible to avoid the Civil war? Why, did Russia, after overthrowing the autocracy, soon turn out to be a totalitarian country?
Summing up the points of this discussion, “Medusa” spoke to professor Mikhail Davydov, historian at the School of History School of Economics who in November became the winner of the Yegor Gaidar Award for the book “Twenty years before the Great War. Russian modernization Witte – Stolypin.”
Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
At Right: Peter the Third, who was betrayed and dethroned by his wife, an “etatist”
What is the real stake behind the over-romanticising of October Revolution by The New York Times? It is also noticeable that Putin’s regime overlooks Lenin and the October Revolution. Is a new propanganda warfare on re-writing history between American establishment and Russian regime coming out? Could we link this warfare to Trump’s election and his neo-keynesian economy-politics aiming to overcome the current (2008) “great depression”? And the rise of Russia as the new global power undertaking huge infrastructures namely the New Silk Road, Yamal Project, Shanghai Five, rebuilding the Eurasia-centered World system as the new global converging market? Continue reading “The new ideological warfare between etatism and globalism”
The opposition between the sexual politics (“biopolitics” in Foucaultian terms) of religious fundamentalism (whose extreme cases are ISIS and Boko Haram) and the radicalism of LGBT+ forms an axis of excesses from which one should distinguish another axis [axis-y], the one of the opposition between the two “normal” (and much more predominant) stances, the “normal” conservative family ideology which is ready to deplore the extremist excesses [the red curve], and the “normal” stance of liberal permissiveness which supports feminism and gay rights but prefers to mockingly dismiss the excesses of LGBT+ [the blue curve].
The basic axis is this one [y]. And each of its two opposed poles [the closer peaks to y-axis of both red and blue curves] tends to dismiss its radicalized version (Muslim-style extreme subordination of women is rejected by moderate-conservative Muslims; the excessive measures advocated by LGBT+ are also rejected by the mainstream advocates of women’s rights and of gay rights). Each side rejects such extremes as its own pathological outgrowth, as something belonging to those who have lost the proper human measure.
Continue reading “Sexual is (not) Political – Part 4 – Prof Slavoj Žižek”
TERMPAPER SUBMITTED TO THE COURSE “TURKISH POLITICAL STRUCTURE”, DR IBRAHIM SAYLAN, FACULTY OF BUSINESS, DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DOKUZ EYLÜL UNIVERSITY, IZMIR.
Abstract:
This paper will discuss and evaluate the Village Institutes experience in Turkey. This Paper begins by analyzing the historical context of the period and moves on the evaluation of the general characteristics of Village Institutes. In the part of the general characteristic, I have tried to observe both sides’ views (peasants and governors) equally. This part also include the specific features of İsmail Hakkı Tonguç, and generally try to explain why and how does village institutes maintain itself enough to go on with. Finally, I will try to explain the story of closure process and evaluate the outcome and process assessment. Continue reading “The Villages Institutes in Turkey – Deniz Gül”
Although the LGBT trend is right in “deconstructing” the standard normative sexual opposition, in de-ontologizing it, however, it reduces this tension to the fact that the plurality of sexual positions is forcefully reduced to the normative straight-jacket of the binary opposition of masculine and feminine, with the idea that, if we get away with this straight-jacket, we will get a full blossoming multiplicity of sexual positions (LGBT etc.), each of them with a full ontological consistency: once we get rid of the binary straight-jacket, I can fully recognize myself as gay, bisexual, or whatever. From the Lacanian standpoint, however, the antagonistic tension is irreducible, it is constitutive of the sexual as such, and no amount of classificatory diversification and multiplication can save us from it. Continue reading “Sexual is (not) Political – Part 3 – Prof Slavoj Zizek”
Trudeau, profiting from the parade
The irony of this parade is that the situation from decades ago is almost symmetrically inverted: now it is heterosexuality which is tolerated, of course, but it is expected from heterosexual majority not to display their orientation with too much pride since such display would be instantly qualified as heterosexist – heterosexuality is (not explicitly but subtly) perceived as a limitation, as a sexual orientation which is opportunistically satisfied with the old established patterns and avoids the risk to explore new liberating possibilities, as an impassive submission to the libidinal order imposed by the structure of social domination.
Continue reading “Sexual is (not) Political – Part 2 – Prof Slavoj Zizek”
– JOINT ARTICLE WITH PROF ŞENER ÜŞÜMEZSOY – THE REDSKIN! –
Ethnic and religious identities are all pleb categories. They are not determinative. But they are tools in the hands of rulers. We can not understand the logic behind violence by looking at them. That nowadays typical offscouring social scientist model seeking the truth in cultural and identity researches provides the kind of information that can make these pleb categories to both embrace or combat each other. However the rulers do not take decisions according to that kind of information but they think on what to do according to systemic and geopolitical necessities that here we seek their pathways. And it is only afterwards that the rulers use that information provided by offscouring – identity politics – “academician” to fabricate whatever needed – the clash or the hug, the enmity or the fraternity – within plebs. It was for this reason that we have already explained that the nowadays type of postmodern / post-structuralist academics and academy was not able to produce “science” and “knowledge” (conoscenze; conaissance; savoir) in the real sense of the word but could just produce “information”. It produces data and stores, categorizes and presents it -in-form-of- “information”, but it can not convert it into “knowledge”, since it does not have a complete understanding of human life to come up with a political project, that is to say, a “big narrative”. In other words, they lack the jakoben spirit that they should bear by the very definition of the word “academy”. For this reason, they can not escape but being tools to rulers. Continue reading “Contradictions and possibilities tangling in Qatar”