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Talk:Shefa-Amr

jewish terror in shefa-amr
why does this article include a jewish terror section but the article about tel aviv doesn't include an arab terror section? or the article about herzliya, netanya, kfar sava, jerusalem.. and the list goes on. the terror in the city is already covered in the article about netan zada. this section should be removed or a terror section should be added to every city in israel that was attacked by arab terror. Erwin138 14:48, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Because a POV-pusher renamed "Violence in Shfar'am" to "Jewish terror in Shefa-Amr". I've reverted to the previous version now.  Tomer TALK  17:48, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * he renamed it because the section deals only with jewish terror. i'd expect to see a review about violence in genereal in Shefa-Amr like rapes, thefts, murders etc, and maybe a few words about the reasons why natan zada was killed. because today israeli networks showed footages in which he is seen alive in the bus, the policemen are with him but they can't do anything to save him. Erwin138 21:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Greek Orthodox?
Now the article states that the two male victims of the 2005 shootings were buried in a "Christian" cementary. But were they not Greek Orthodox? ...I seem to remember having seen that somewhere? Perhaps a link to Orthodox Church of Jerusalem is correct? Does anybody know? Huldra 09:19, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Most Israelis who are Jews don't recognize the different movements in Christianity so if an Israeli wrote that they were buried in a Christian cemetery, he could've meant Greek Orthodox, catholic, or anything. This can easily be fixed. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 19:46, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

They were both catholic and were burried in the catholic cemetery, i've updated it. Golfgti 13:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

two things
1. The Hebrew version says that Shefaram was only recognized as a city in 1987, contrary to what the article says. I don't know who's right.
 * All that stuff was unreferenced which is a good way to introduce errors. I could not find anything anywhere else. The material about Arab towns having to struggle for recognition is of dubious truth value and relevance here - so I just took it all out. If we can find out when it became a city then we should add it. I don't think Nazareth had any trouble being recognized has a city. If there were towns that had trouble in this respect, it should be recorded there.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mewnews (talk • contribs) 02:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

2. There is a lot more to add about the ancient history of the city. I think it was one of the centers of the Sanhedrin, (if i recall correctly) and I am sure there is much more.

Also, I think the beginning of the article should be rewritten. The second and third paragraphs do not really focus on city; The stuff about the mayor and knesset member should appear maybe at the end of the article. nadav 04:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Article name
Shefa-Amr, according to Google, is a more popular name for the city than Shfar'am or Shefar'am - unsurprisingly, given its ethnic composition. - Mustafaa 07:25, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Mustafaa, you are wrong about the google results. "Shfaram" yields 55,700 results in Google. Shefa-Amr gives 15,600 results. Is the Wikipedia policy that more popular (by Google) versions be used for names? If so we'd have to change it, but personally I think it does seem unfair since its residents today are Arab. nadav 04:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

 * OK then why is it listed as Shefa-Amr and called Shefa-Amr. It is not a town in an Arab country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mewnews (talk • contribs) 02:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What's the self-contradiction
Why is the template on the article? AnonMoos 03:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Ancient "ARAB" town
Shfaram, which is the correct and official name, was not an Arab town in ancient times, as the article itself shows. It was Jewish. The name of the town, and the name of the entry in Wikipedia, should be Shfaram. Towns in Poland that were formerly German are not listed only under their German name. Mewnews (talk) 11:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

when i wrote it i stated it was an ancient cenaany town then jewish and afterwards arab, someone change it. you are right, please change it back. about the name i think it should stay as it is because its an arab town nowadays. M5Power (talk) 11:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I seem to have changed it or someone did so it is just ancient. When we find out ancient what then we can say more. Mewnews (talk) 02:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

History section
I did some copy editing. But there was a claim that it was a Canaanite city which is possible, but no evidence was produced and no references. I removed it because I didn't know what could be said with accuracy. If someone has a reference to archaeological digs or other info it should be added. Also if it is mentioned in the bible that should be added. All the Jewish references are late and we should have specifics of where it is mentioned in connection with revolts and which revolts) Thanx Mewnews (talk) 02:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I am a citizen of the city and i can tell u for sure it was a Canaanite city, its a known fact. also i have a booklet about the city which states that clearly (the name of the booklet is stated under refferances). im puting back what you deleted. and why did u delete the fact that it was declared a city ever since 1948? this fact is true and if you check the hebrew version you'll find that the vice mayor of shefa-amr stated it was diclared a city in 1905/6 thats why Israel didn't change its status. M5Power (talk) 09:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

more refs
Zerotalk 14:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * archaeological report:
 * Guérin. Galilée I, 410-14: Chefa A'mer (Chefaram)
 * Finn, Byways, p243-244.

incorrect claim removed from article
Removed for discussion:
 * "Shefa-'Amr was part of the area allocated to the Jewish state by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, the partition plan of November 29, 1947. It was defended by Arab Liberation Army troops led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, but conquered by Israeli forces on July 14, 1948. [Herzog and Gazit, 2005, p. 79.]

I haven't been able to see page 79 of this source, but other pages seem rather propagandistic. The reason I removed it is that it starts with a completely false claim. Shefa-'Amr was in the Arab part of the partition. You can check this for yourself on this UN map; look east from Haifa, the village location is at the lower left corner of the "S" of "Shafa". You can also read the formal description in Resolution 181 but it is hard to follow without a map of the village lands. Since this basic fact is wrong, I think we need a better source for the rest of the sentence too. Zerotalk 08:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The source says no such thing, and it is not propagandistic. I have reviewed the entire chapter and the facts presented in the source seem solid to me. Good call on finding the incorrect information. The only sentence mentioning Shfaram is:
 * As soon as it became evident from the disposition of the Lebanese Army that the Lebanese would not intervene from the north, Laskov directed his forces eastward towards Nazareth, taking Shfaram on the Acre-Nazareth road on 14 July.
 * —Ynhockey (Talk) 03:32, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that all of the two sentences apparently cited to Herzog and Gazit don't appear there? As I mentioned, I didn't see p79 at all.  There are other sources saying the ALA was stationed there, so I have no objection to that being in the article.  Zerotalk 06:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I am assuming that the person who inserted the information sourced the second part ("It was defended by Arab Liberation Army troops led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, but conquered by Israeli forces on July 14, 1948"), but the first part somehow got in there (maybe inserted by another editor). I don't think it's worth our effort at this point to find out exactly how the information got there (although if you have spare time, feel free to do so). In any case, the information about the date of capture and defenders seems accurate and I have found no source that contradicts it. —Ynhockey (Talk) 00:16, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No Move at this time. Although there may be sufficient sentiment to move to a new title, there is not sufficent consensus on what that new title should be. Any move should be held in abeyance until consensus is reached on a specific new title. (see comments at end of this dicussion) Mike Cline (talk) 14:31, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

relisting for further discussion --Aervanath (talk) 02:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC) relisting see below Andrewa (talk) 01:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Shefa-& → Shefar'am – Per WP:Naming conventions (geographic names), Shefar'am (and variations in spelling) seem to be by far more common in English than the current name of the article. A google books search returns about 12,000 4,470 hits for Shefar'am (and another ~6,000 for Shfaram and Shefaram which are variations), and about 8,500 2,220 for Shefa-'Amr. In general google searches the ratio is also about 2:1 for Shefar'am. Totals with variations (feel free to add more):
 * Google:
 * Shefar'am - ~200,700 - Shefar'am   44,700   Shefaram   16000        Shfaram     140,000

 * Shefa 'Amr  ~417,000  "Shefa 'Amr" 309,000  "Shafa 'Amr"  60,700  "Shafa Amer" 47,900

 * Google books:
 * Shefar'am - ~8,900 - Shefar'am 4,430, Shefaram 2,140, Shfaram 2,320
 * Shefa-'Amr - ~6,300 - Shefa 'Amr 2,210, Shafa 'Amr 4,090 "Shafa Amer" 86

 * News sites (counting only English results and not blogs or talkbacks):
 * BBC:
 * Shfaram - 10
 * Shefa-Amr - none.
 * CNN:
 * Shfaram - 7
 * Shefa-Amr - none.
 * Guardian:
 * Shfaram - 7
 * Shefa-Amr - none.
 * Reuters:
 * Shfaram - 4
 * Shefa-Amr - none.

(the current list is the result of multiple edits. Not sure if I'm supposed to sign each one. Some of the responses below might relate to less information than is currently present) No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 22:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The town's official web site uses Shefaram in the url. See http://www.shefaram.muni.il/dynamika/default.asp?id=3078

 * Disagree. The difference in usage is too small to compensate for the dissonance of using a Hebrew name for an Arab location. Zerotalk 08:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 2:1 is not a small difference and policy says we use the name most commonly used in English. Shefar'am is one of the two official names of the place, and "the dissonance of using a Hebrew name for an Arab location" doesn't strike me as a policy based argument. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 09:22, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In regular Google, using the variations you mention, I get Shefa-'Amr: 89,500; Shefar'am: 23,700; Shfaram: 39,900; Shefaram: 13,800. A win for the current spelling.  We could add Shfa Amr: 3,640; Shefa Amer: 2,700; Shfa Amer: 2,300 to emphasize it. We should both note the warning at WP:Naming conventions (geographic names) about the reliability of large Google counts, but the fact is that you didn't prove your case. Zerotalk 09:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In regular google I get 318,000 for Shefar'am, 137,000 for Shefa-'Amr, but I think google books is considered more reliable for this. Anyway, I believe I did prove my case, but we'll see what other people think. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 09:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Compare these: Shefar'am (315,000), "Shefar'am" (23,700).  Because of the punctuation character in the word, you have to use quotes or it will match pages with "Shefar" and "am" in different places.  Go forward a few thousand hits and you will see even things like "She's far" in one place and "am" in another. Zerotalk 11:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right. There are still substantially more hits in google books for Shefar'am though. I'll correct the request. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 20:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Support per No More Mr. Nice Guy--Geewhiz (talk) 17:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The g-hits argument put forward by NMMNG doesn't bear out as demonstrated by Zero0000. Current title seems to be both the most common name used in English and the transliteration of the Arabic name used by the inhabitants of the town. I don't see a convincing policy based rationale to change it to an English transliteration of the Hebrew name for the town which is not the name used by those who live there.  T i a m u t talk 19:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The google books argument (as ignored by Zero) does indeed bear out. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 20:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it does, given that you did not include alternate spellings for the Arabic name in English, such as "Shafa 'Amr" 4,090 hits and "Chefa'Amr" 570 hits, among others mentioned by Zero0000 above (and others still not mentioned). So as he said, the difference is negligible and a general google search clearly favours the current title. Being in widespread use, in line with our naming policies and representative of what the people living there call it, why change it to something not clearly more widespread and not what its inhabitants call it?  T i a m u t talk 21:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "Chefa'Amr" contains no English sources that I could see. Shafa 'Amr also contains many non-English sources (and hundreds of repetitions of one document), but even if we include it, there is still a large advantage to Shefar'am. What its inhabitants call it is not a consideration (I learned that from you, among other people). See WP:Naming_conventions_%28geographic_names%29. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, what's the "large advantage" to Shefar'am exactly? The current title is the local name for the place, and is practically on par in a google scholar search. Yes there are more google book hits for Shefar'am than Shefa'Amr but Shafa'Amr gets almost as many hits as the name you are proposing. I'm not seeing what in the naming conventions is supporting your proposal for a name change. And the local name for a place is a consideration, "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local name." In this case, we have multiple English transliterations for this place that are widely used. Using the one that coincides with local name is appropriate and in line with the recommendations as I read them.  T i a m u t talk 22:19, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you take a closer look at the google scholar results, you'll see that in the case of Shefa Amr many of those are just in the address. Filter out the zip code and you're at almost 2:1.
 * Anyway, I'll add the totals at the top of this section for easier reference. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 22:30, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Support. The crucial criterion is prevailing use in modern English sources, and that is best determined with reference to Google Books and Google Scholar. As both of those indicate that Shefar'am is the accepted modern convention when referring to the town, the article should accordingly be renamed Shefar'am. Regarding User:Tiamut's dissent on account of what the town's inhabitants supposedly call it, beyond the fact that the claim itself is debatable depending on the circumstances, WP:EN still instructs us to follow what's "most common in the English language," i.e. Shefar'am.—Biosketch (talk) 09:12, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I see no evidence that the English spelling for the current name of the town is in fact Shefar 'am. In fact, looking at the first page of the results of this search shows exactly 1 result using the Hebrew transliteration for a current name of a town (Perspectives on Israeli anthropology By Esther Hertzog is the one). The rest of the results are discussing Crusader-era history, and to use those results here is anachronistic. Some more evidence is necessary. But even if one were to accept that all of the sources are valid for determining the common English name for this town (which I dont), the results of the google searches are not indicative of one name being more common. Less than a 1.5:1 ratio is not overwhelming. I point others to what WP:EN says: Search engines are problematic unless their verdict is overwhelming; modified letters have the additional difficulties that some search engines will not distinguish between the original and modified forms, and others fail to recognize the modified letter because of optical character recognition errors. The verdict here is certainly not overwhelming, even less so when one examines individual results.  nableezy  - 16:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Your search results might be because you're searching for a variant with ~150 hits. If you search for "Shefar'am" as I linked to above, you will see most of the hits on the first page are modern, not to mention that if this is an issue, the first page of a search for "Shefa-'Amr" returns mostly pre-1948 usage. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, pretty overwhelming in English news sources, don't you think? See the links I added in the request. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 23:32, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Based on the news results I would support a move to Shfaram. Not Shefar'am.  nableezy  - 00:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC) s/o on 20:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC), see below for reasons.  nableezy  - 20:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's the same word only transliterated in a slightly different way. I'm not sure which should be used according to wiki policy. The "proper" Shefar'am (which is more popular in books apparently) or Shfaram which is more common in news sources. It's pretty obvious that in English language sources the Hebrew name is more common, though. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 02:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Support Per WP:COMMONNAME. Filibustering to the contrary just does not count. Sorry.-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 22:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Zero. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support—I was actually very surprised by this, but the nominator clearly showed the prevalence of Shefar'am in major English-language media. Combined with the fact that we don't know the general WP:COMMONNAME (as Nableezy points out), it appears that there's no reason to use a name less well-known to English speakers. —Ynhockey (Talk) 14:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per BioSketch, Ynhockey. Plot Spoiler (talk) 22:57, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

 * If I understand the proposal, the article is currently at Shefa-'Amr, a transliteration of the شفاعمرو, Šafā ʻAmr and the proposal is to move to Shfar'am or a similar transliteration of the שְׁפַרְעָם, Šəfarʻam. Tell me if I've got that wrong, I think it's important and it wasn't obvious from discussion above.

 * The town in question is in the North District of Israel, and in the arguably undisputed part of it (rather than in the Golan Heights). However the population of the town is predominantly Arabic rather than Hebrew speaking.

 * Evidence seems to be all based on Internet searches of some sort, which tend to favour the Hebrew, and the argument is that this represents the common name in English. But does it? Unconvinced. I think this bears more reflection, so relisting. Andrewa (talk) 01:29, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Thank you for accurately summarizing what was unstated in the move proposal. There does not seem to be a clear winner among any of the proposed article names. The two leaders in google book searches are Shefar'Am (an English transliteration of the town's biblical Hebrew name) and Shafa'Amr (an English transliteration of its Arabic name). Looking at what RS have to say about the name, I found the following:

 * "On another occassion, the unit was sent by night to attack a house near Shefa-'Amr (Shefar'Am in Hebrew)."

 * "MG western Galilee to MG HQ, "Imposing Curfew of Shefar'am", 16 November 1949, ISA 179, 1/25 (note: "Shefar'am" is the Hebrew spelling for the Arabic village Shefa'Amr)"

 * Discussing the Israeli policy of renaming Palestinian towns and villages after the creation of the state of Israel, Nadia Yaqub writes : "Shafa'Amr, which contains an old synagogue but has not had Jewish residents since the 1920s, is identified as Shefar Am"

 * In my view, the sources seem to be using the Arabic transliterations Shefa'Amr or Shafa'Amr as the modern name, with Shefar'Am identified as the Hebrew or Israeli name.  T i a m u t talk 17:42, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Two of your three examples are pre-1948 usage. Looking at google books it's pretty obvious that Shefar'am is used both in an historical contemporary context, so your argument doesn't really hold water. Not to mention that many if not most of the references to Shefa-'Amr are also of a historical nature.
 * Major English-language media outlets seem to use Shefaram exclusively and this unquestionably attests to modern usage, so per WP:COMMONNAME that's what we should use. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:07, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Funny, I see it differently. The sources are all written after 1948. And they all use an English transliteration of the Arabic form in their neutral voice as the default form. True, the first one is discussing events that took place before 1948, but I don't think that's evidence of the usage being in deference to the historical period being discussed. While they don't explicitly say the Arabic form is the most common name or modern form, they do all identify the English transliteration of the Hebrew form as being the Hebrew or Israeli name for the place. They don't identify this Hebrew or Israeli form as the most common English form or the modern name. The content of thr sources I have presented seem to support the current article name.  T i a m u t talk 20:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks pretty obvious both are using the name common at the era they are discussing. Anyway, what do you think about the fact that major English language media outlets seem to use "Shfaram" exclusively? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 09:17, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I originally closed this as no consensus, but I have re-opened this for more discussion by request.--Aervanath (talk) 02:56, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Which name?
As there's a pretty obvious consensus to move the article, we need to decide which name to move to. I'm not aware of any guideline that tells us what to do, so based on the exclusive use of "Shfaram" in major English language media outlets, I think that should be the new name. If we're required to use the "proper" transliteration, then it should be "Shefar'am". Thoughts? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 03:10, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, Shfaram is the proper transliteration. The vowel is dropped due to smihut.--Geewhiz (talk) 04:35, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No More Mr Nice Guy; please do not misrepresent the discussion; as the admin above noted: there is no consensus. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 14:22, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the suggestion set forth by No More Mr Nice Guy is sound and reasonable.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 17:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The admin who closed the discussion thought there was no consensus on what name to change to, not that there was no consensus to move the page, which 7:3 !votes certainly is. You can read all about it on their talk page. Please don't make such obviously false accusations. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Really? In addition to the 3 votes (which were counted) there were 2 others who voiced objections (but who were not counted). Also, I have added the google-search above (as you wrote we should feel free to add material). NB: you might get slightly other numbers (I do not get the same numbers as Zero and NMMNG above, but the difference is not so big that it should alter the result significantly. (I believe I get another result, as I am in a Non-English-speaking country. Even when I  type in google.com, I am  automatically  redirected to my local google.)
 * So: we have almost twice as many "common" usage name of Shefa 'Amr as of Shefar'am. At books, Shefar'am "leads" about 3:2. I actually agree with NMMNG that books should "weigh" more than usual google-search, but to let 8,900 count as  significantly more than  6,300 for books, while completely rejecting that  362,000  is significantly more than 200,700 for "normal" google: If one didn´t "assume good faith" here, one could be thinking that some people were looking for a principle which matched their POV.
 * Also: let us look in some detail as to why Shefar'am scores that highly on books: if you look at the result, it is because there is about a zillion books published about "old" Jewish history, and they of course virtually all use the Hebrew name. Hardly any scholars writing about the town´s history for the last millennium or two use the Hebrew name. For a start I checked my books by:  Meron Benvenisti, Yoav Gelber, Ilan Pappe, Walid  Khalidi,  Benny Morris, Andrew Petersen, & Schölch: every single one of them use "Shafa-'Amr"   "Shafa 'Amr"  "Shafa'amr". So, perhaps we should move the article to that name?  Cheers, Huldra (talk) 19:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you please move the arguments about why you think the article should not be moved to the section above (where your oppose !vote is already noted)? This part is for discussing what name the article should have if it is moved. I'll be happy to address your points there. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 20:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The comments by Huldra have convinced me that the current name is the best one for the article, so I do not support any move.  nableezy  - 20:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That's interesting since she didn't add any arguments not already presented by someone else, but you are of course entitled to change your !vote for whatever reason.
 * So we're currently at 7 in favor of moving (myself, Geewhiz, Biosketch, Brewcrewer, Ynhockey, Plot Spoiler, and Jiujitsuguy) and 4 opposing (Zero, Tiamut, Huldra and Nableezy). Still looks like a consensus to move to Shfaram. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Someone else listed what name scholars writing about the town´s history for the last millennium or two used? So sorry; missed that. Eeeeeh, could you please point it out? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * To clear it up for NMMNG, it was specifically the books she cited that convinced me to change my mind. I can be convinced to change once again if you can provide sources of comparable quality using whatever alternative you wish to be the article name.  nableezy  - 23:39, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, which books did she cite? All she did is name a few authors which as we all know write mainly about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That doesn't show what contemporary name is used for the place as opposed to current news reports which do. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:08, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You are correct, I misspoke. The authors she cited, and by extension the books by those authors. Thank you for bringing this mistake to my attention.  nableezy  - 01:16, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * So she "convinced" you to change your mind by listing some historians she claims used a certain term in a context we don't know (but is very likely historical)? That's interesting. Like I said, you're entitled to change your !vote for whatever reason. Too bad you can't be honest about it, though. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 01:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am being honest, and the claim that I am not is both malicious and without basis. I have no reason to doubt Huldra, unlike others here I have never seen her misrepresent a source, and your effort to denigrate her comments on the usage by various sources is likewise without basis. Kindly refrain from such bad faith tactics as making unfounded attacks against other editors. Thank you for your cooperation.  nableezy  - 03:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I did not denigrate Huldra's comments. I noted she did not actually provide any sources and that we do not know the context in which her list of historians use the term, but that's it's probably a historical context. Kindly refrain from accusing me of personal attacks where there are none. As for your being honest about why you changed your !vote, I'll leave that for other editors to draw their own conclusions. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 05:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The denigration was the use of the word claim to describe her comments on the use by each of the listed authors. And the claim that I am being dishonest is very obviously a personal attack. Kindly refrain from continuing to make such attacks. If you persist, I might be inclined to say why exactly I think you are pushing for this, and you may not appreciate that. Again, thank you for your cooperation.  nableezy  - 13:18, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this. Is it seriously being proposed that we Move this article to Shfaram based on a handful of google news hits? So we ignore the usage by the topmost scholars in the field when discussing the modern day Arab town, and go with what reporters use? On what basis? 7-4? That is not what consensus or our naming policies call for.  T i a m u t talk 17:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's quite elementary actually. We have two policies WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSENSUS, and both support the page move.-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 17:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:COMMONNAME clearly is against a move; see my google-search above. Huldra (talk) 11:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps when reading WP:COMMONNAME you missed the part where it says "When using Google, generally a search of Google Books and News Archive should be defaulted to before a web search". As you said in your first comment in this section, "If one didn´t "assume good faith" here, one could be thinking that some people were looking for a principle which matched their POV". No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 23:14, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah yes; in general. But there is the hitch: to repeat: the reason that the Hebrew version comes up with so many hits for books, is because there are a zillion books discussing a site which was there some 2000 years ago, or so. Therefore, not the most relevant to discuss the present city. You have simply not addressed this issue, AFAIK. (And sorry, no; I will not move my objections; that would look as if I accept your premise that the article should be moved. I don´t. ) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 00:26, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I have addressed that point above. There are "a zillion" books that use both terms historically, for example, the ones you posted in the section below use "Shefa-'Amr" in a historical context. The news sources, which show current usage in English are quite conclusive. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Except that it hasnt been demonstrated that the common English name of the town is the Hebrew transliteration, and the discussion was closed as no consensus prior to the closing admin being lobbied to reverse his or her decision. So, yes, it is elementary, in that because there is no consensus for the move and because no specific name has been shown to be the common name the article should remain at this title.  nableezy  - 19:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is a link to the short discussion I had with the admin after he or she closed the request. Kindly stop misrepresenting their decision as no consensus to move or my asking for clarification as "lobbying". They thought there was no consensus on what to move to, and had no problem reopening the discussion so that could be clarified. That the same 4 editors who originally objected continue to object is not surprising. The evidence from the news sources really doesn't leave much room for interpretation and as brewcrewer noted above, policy is also quite clear. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Really, misrepresenting? Look above, I originally closed this as no consensus, but I have re-opened this for more discussion by request. Kindly refrain from continuing the bad faith arguments that largely characterize your contributions here. Thank you.  nableezy  - 17:24, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, misrepresenting. Look at the discussion on the admin's talk page which both he and I linked to. He thought there was a consensus to move but not on what to move to, and asking for clarification and more discussion based on that clarification can hardly be charactarized as "lobbying". Calling my argument "bad faith" when you are deliberately misrepresenting what happened was a nice touch. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I quoted exactly what the admin wrote above, that you persist in such bad faith tactics as attacking me demonstrates the quality of your contributions here. Bye.  nableezy  - 21:39, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Awww, don't go away mad. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 22:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Not mad, mildly amused, but also tired of dealing with those who resort to such bad faith gamesmanship. Bye.  nableezy  - 22:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Speaking of mildly amusing, the levels of projection in your last statement were kinda funny. But ok, not mad and not going away, just repeatedly saying "bye". No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 23:14, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Im sorry my farewell displeases you. Ill try to satisfy you this time. I hope it will be more acceptable to your tastes. But unless you have something else to say besides calling me dishonest or whatever else you feel like projecting, I dont see what else there is to say about this. Huldra's arguments, both on the search results for each of the possible Arabic transliterations, as well as the use by books written by top quality authors, remain convincing to me. As I said, you can convince me to change my mind, but just calling people who disagree with you liars wont do that. Fare thee well my dearest, sincerely yours, forever and ever,  nableezy  - 00:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Au contraire mon ami, your farewell pleases me greatly. Mainly because you always come back to try and get the last word in. Will you be able to hold it in this time? Oh, the suspense is almost too much to bear. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Jewish Town?
Why does this article refer to this region as being once a "Jewish" town when the word "Jew" is a recent introduction? This region's ancient roots are either Canaanite or Hebrew, both groups who were of African origins. The river where the general was healed were pervasive throughout that region and is where the ancient African water goddess' Isis, known as "Beth" dwelled. It was part of her temple in Bethlehem. All of that region was once under the rule of the ancient Egyptians, including Israel & Palestine. You have not dug deep enough into this ancient history, and clarity must be made that the current occupants of this region, including the present day Jews of Israel, are not ancestrally related to those ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament.74.229.102.208 (talk) 01:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

 * Another question, what does "A definite indication of a Jewish presence in Shefa'amr was in the 18th century" actually mean?? It is sourced to:

......the language in the article is not very clear, to say the least, Huldra (talk) 22:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Huh?
User:Greyshark09:  This edit I don´t understand. Somehow a Christian population was introduced in 1596; but Hutteroth and Abdulfattahs numbers show a fully Muslim place. Huldra (talk) 21:11, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I merely rearranged the sections of the article on history, with minor additions. Can your specify which paragraph are you referring to?GreyShark (dibra) 08:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Greyshark09: Sorry, my bad, I see now that the mistake was already in the article when you edited it. It was in fact an IP who vandalised  it, changing  "Muslim" to "Christian", back in February 2011,....and nobody noticed. Sigh. Huldra (talk) 21:07, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Mini rome
I think you should mention that the city has been nicknamed mini Rome due to it's  similarities  between  itself and rome such  as its protected and have been built on the hils  near by and for its large catholic population. Vaziy (talk) 16:57, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Look in the Geography section. It needs a citation. Do you know of a suitable one? -- M.boli (talk) 23:16, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Shefa-Amr


text:
List of prime ministers of Turkey

The position of Prime Minister of Turkey was established in 1920, during the Turkish War of Independence. The prime minister was the head of the executive branch of the government along with the Cabinet. Following the 2017 constitutional referendum, the office of prime minister was abolished and the President became the head of the executive branch after the 2018 general election.

For a list of grand viziers of the predecessor Ottoman Empire, see List of Ottoman grand viziers.

Prime Ministers of the Republic of Turkey (1923–2018)
{{legend|#E6E6AA|Denotes acting prime minister}}
 * Status

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: List of prime ministers of Turkey


text:
Intergalactic

Intergalactic may refer to:

 * "Intergalactic" (song), a song by the Beastie Boys
 * Intergalactic (TV series), a 2021 UK science fiction TV series
 * Intergalactic space
 * Intergalactic travel, travel between galaxies in science fiction and speculation
 * "Intergalactic", a song by the Smashing Pumpkins from Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts

title: Intergalactic


text:
Talk:Bates method

Bates Method Review
I believe that the article is very neutral and informative. However, there is always room for more information! Especially the topics that are shorter and passive. --157.252.162.94 (talk) 01:10, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * One of the external links at the bottom needs to be updated. The Orfield article is now here. LaLeLiLou (talk) 21:02, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You are likely a sock-puppet of Belteshazzar so we do not need to update anything. You are indef blocked here. Psychologist Guy (talk) 21:14, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks like Belteshazzar is still creating sock-puppets SixteenSquared and Small Jars Lack Gold although his tactic appears to now create throwaway accounts and not edit in months so it's not worth me filing an SPI. Psychologist Guy (talk) 22:12, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Seems to have worked for me
(Title refactored, previously reading, "This is incredibly negative without any reason. I have improved my eyesight so much with the Bates method, I no longer use my glasses." --Hipal (talk) 16:14, 21 June 2022 (UTC))

Research this in more depth before being discouraged. 31.60.2.187 (talk) 14:24, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

 * That's fantastic. I myself no longer have to wear my specs while driving, but I didn't use the Bates method, just the results of old age. I'm rather pleased that wikipedia is based on what reliable sources say, rather than some rando on the internetz. -Roxy the grumpy dog . wooF 14:52, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This study found it was effective in elderly people: 200.37.56.107 (talk) 03:33, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * User:Roxy the dog, you're old? That's very disappointing. Drmies (talk) 21:14, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Drmies In the Great Department Store of life, I'm in the elevator and the tinny little speaker is announcing, in that forced bright way, "Third floor, Senility, Dotage and Decomposition. Going Up" -Roxy the dog 19:52, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The citations in that paper are amazing.
 * My favorite part of that paper is where it explains "The eye is the sensory organ responsible for gathering visual stimuli to assist people in communicating with the world around them." and then cites that sentence to an electrical engineering textbook.
 * My second favorite part is the sentence "Eye exercises allow the eye muscles to move freely.", which is cited to a paper about designing robots based on insect physiology.
 * Most relevant is probably the line that says "Bates therapy is useful to restore visual acuity." that is referenced to a paper about gene therapy that doesn't seem to even mention the Bates Method.
 * What a joke. ApLundell (talk) 04:09, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ... but you did have an amusing few minutes doing due diligence, and I enjoyed your observations. Thank you very much. -Roxy the grumpy dog . wooF 05:43, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My own favourite: "The Bates method has never been shown to improve eyesight in a substantial or long-term way" referenced to a paper on 'Effectiveness of slow back massage on quality of sleep among ICU patent’s [sic]'. -- Jmc (talk) 09:03, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bates method


text:
Fort Holmes

Fort Holmes is a fortified earthen redoubt located on the highest point of Mackinac Island. Originally built in 1814 by British forces during the War of 1812, the redoubt was improved by that army throughout the course of the war (1812–1814) to help defend the adjacent Fort Mackinac from a possible attack by the U.S. Army.

The British named the redoubt Fort George and reinforced it with cannon, a blockhouse, and a magazine for gunpowder and other munitions. However, Fort Holmes never functioned as an independent military fortification. It was always a dependent outpost of nearby Fort Mackinac.

When United States armed forces reoccupied Mackinac Island in 1815 under the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, they took possession of Fort George. They surveyed and measured their prize, which they renamed Fort Holmes in honor of Major Andrew Holmes, a casualty in the 1814 Battle of Mackinac Island. However, the American army soon abandoned Fort Holmes. The earthworks and buildings of the former redoubt slowly eroded and disappeared over the course of more than a century.

In 1936, as part of its mission to provide employment through public works projects during the nationwide Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration used the original 1817 American survey to rebuild Fort Holmes to its War of 1812 appearance. , however, most of the reconstructed buildings of Fort Holmes had again disappeared, except for the redoubt's earthen walls.

In 2015 the Mackinac Island State Park completed a second reconstruction of Fort Holmes that resumes the appearance that the redoubt had in 1817. The blockhouse includes interpretive panels inside, and is open in the summer. Many visitors come to the fort site for a view of the Straits of Mackinac, much of which is visible from this lookout point approximately 320 ft above the surface of Lake Huron and 890 feet (271 m) above sea level. The redoubt and blockhouse can be rented for special occasions.

title: Fort Holmes


text:
User:Tpahl

Travis Pahl from Seattle.

title: User:Tpahl


text:
Talk:Buddhist music

Philip Glass
Do we have a source for the Philip Glass reference? Academics and commentators have attempted to infer Buddhist influence in Glass' music, so it feels to me like this comment should be fleshed out a little more. Perhaps if I have some time, I'll look into it, but it's been years since I studied Glass's music... -- Seth Ilys 07:38, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * We do! Though it appears he may have not said the shoe thing. I don't have the book in front of me, and I reached my limit of pages on Amazon.com, but I was completely 100% sure he had said it...
 * A: "I would have to say, Buddhism has affected my life more directly than my work" Q: "How you put on your shoes?" A: "...Funny, isn't it? It turns out the pie in the sky is the same pie that's in your refrigerator." (327)
 * "The real impact of Buddhist practice affects how you live your life on a daily basis, not how you do your art. How you live day by day, moment by moment. The impact of Buddhism is not theoretical, as in how you paint or how you write a novel. That's hardly as intersting as how you live on a daily basis, don't you think?" (322)
 * "First Lesson, Best Lesson" (1992) Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism by Richard Kostelanetz

Hyacinth 18:49, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks! I've incorporated some of that into the article text. -- Seth Ilys 19:30, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Taiko
Is taiko connected somehow with Buddhism? Fg2 05:26, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Removed: Contemporary Tibetan music
I removed the above as it is not connected to Buddhism. Hyacinth 04:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Contemporary Tibetan music: the fusion of contemporary musical influences like rock and pop, with modern and traditional Tibetan musical instruments. The refugee band, JJI Exile Brothers, formed by 3 Tibetan brothers living in exile in Mcleod ganj, Dharamsala, India is an example of the genre. Examples of their songs and music featuring Buddhist thinking and calls in song for a 'free Tibet' can be found at www.chevstar.com

Please mention about Dinesh Subasinghes Oratorio on Buddhism
Hi Hyacinth and Writers, Dinesh Subasinghe's Oratorio was a popular one in Sri lanka,please mention it as in an apropriate way,coz he is a wellknown buddhist musician in sri lanka, thanx musiclanka

 * None of the sources you have tried to add under your account and various ip addresses says that Dinesh Subasinghe is a Buddhist musician. I am also not sure he is as well known as you say he is since you keep reusing the same three or four articles that are like a decade old. Helpsome (talk) 15:59, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Buddhist music


text:
John Hopfield

John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American scientist most widely known for his study of associative neural network in 1982. The model is now more commonly known as the Hopfield network, although the model was conceptualized prior to his work.

Biography
Hopfield was born in 1933 to Polish physicist John Joseph Hopfield and physicist Helen Hopfield. Helen was the older Hopfield's second wife. He is the sixth of Hopfield's children and has three children and six grandchildren of his own.

He received his A.B. from Swarthmore College in 1954, and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1958 (supervised by Albert Overhauser). He spent two years in the theory group at Bell Laboratories, and subsequently was a faculty member at University of California, Berkeley (physics), Princeton University (physics), California Institute of Technology (chemistry and biology) and again at Princeton, where he is the Howard A. Prior Professor of Molecular Biology, emeritus. For 35 years, he also continued a strong connection with Bell Laboratories.

In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Computation and Neural Systems PhD program at Caltech.

His most influential papers have been "The Contribution of Excitons to the Complex Dielectric Constant of Crystals" (1958), describing the polariton; "Electron transfer between biological molecules by thermally activated tunneling" (1974), describing the quantum mechanics of long-range electron transfers; "Kinetic Proofreading: a New Mechanism for Reducing Errors in Biosynthetic Processes Requiring High Specificity" (1974); "Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities" (1982) (known as the Hopfield Network) and, with D. W. Tank, "Neural computation of decisions in optimization problems" (1985). His current research and recent papers are chiefly focused on the ways in which action potential timing and synchrony can be used in neurobiological computation.

Awards and honours
He was awarded the Dirac Medal of the ICTP in 2001 for his interdisciplinary contributions to understanding biology as a physical process, including the proofreading process in biomolecular synthesis and a description of collective dynamics and computing with attractors in neural networks, and the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society for work on the interactions between light and solids. Hopfield was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1988. In 1985, Hopfield received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2005. He was the President of the American Physical Society in 2006. Hopfield shared the 2022 Boltzmann Medal award in statistical physics with Deepak Dhar.

Students
His former PhD students include Sir David MacKay, Terry Sejnowski, Bertrand Halperin, Steven Girvin, Erik Winfree, David Beratan, Li Zhaoping, Eric Mjolsness and José Onuchic.

title: John Hopfield


text:
Heteroglossia

Heteroglossia is the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language (in Greek: hetero- "different" and glōssa "tongue, language"). The term translates the Russian разноречие [raznorechie: literally, "varied-speechedness"], which was introduced by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1934 paper Слово в романе [Slovo v romane], published in English as "Discourse in the Novel." The essay was published in English in the book The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, translated and edited by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson.

Heteroglossia is the presence in language of a variety of "points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words, specific world views, each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values." For Bakhtin, this diversity of "languages" within a single language brings into question the basic assumptions of system-based linguistics. Every word uttered, in any specific time or place, is a function of a complex convergence of forces and conditions that are unique to that time and place. Heteroglossia is thus "the base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance" and that which always guarantees "the primacy of context over text." It is an attempt to conceptualize the reality of living discourse, where there is always a tension between centralizing and decentralizing forces. According to Bakhtin, linguistics—to the extent that it operates on the presumption that language is a system—inevitably suppresses the fundamentally heteroglot nature of language as it is lived and experienced by human beings in their day to day realities.

Languages as points of view
Any language, in Bakhtin's view, stratifies into many voices: "social dialects, characteristic group behaviour, professional jargons, generic languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendentious languages, languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing fashions". This diversity of voice is, Bakhtin asserts, the defining characteristic of the novel as a genre. When heteroglossia is incorporated into the novel, it is "another's speech in another's language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way".

Bakhtin proposes that these stratifications of language represent distinct points of view on the world, characterized by their own meanings and values. In this view, language is "shot through with intentions and accents", and thus there are no neutral words. Even the most unremarkable statement possesses a taste, whether of a profession, a party, a generation, a place or a time. To Bakhtin, words do not exist until they are spoken, and in that moment they are imprinted with the signature of the speaker.

Bakhtin identifies the act of speech, or of writing, as a literary-verbal performance, one that requires speakers or authors to take a position, even if only by choosing the dialect in which they will speak. Separate languages are often identified with separate circumstances. The prose writer, Bakhtin argues, must welcome and incorporate these many languages into their work.

Heteroglossia and linguistics
Bakhtin rejects the idea that language is a system of abstract norms and that the utterance is a mere instantiation of the system of language. In "Discourse in the Novel", he criticizes linguistics, poetics, and stylistics for misunderstanding the fact that different people and groups speak differently. According to Bakhtin, language, like the psyche and everything else in culture, is never a finished, ordered system: it is a work in progress, always ongoing, never complete. There is a constant tension in language between the attempt to impose order and the fact that life itself is essentially chaotic. Real life is complex, spontaneous, subjective, impulsive, not pre-determined, full of disorder, the unexpected, the unknown, the undefined, the indefinable, and it refuses to be (or rather it cannot be) contained in a system that imagines and imposes an order of things. These dis-ordering forces in language, which Bakhtin refers to as centrifugal, are not unified or somehow conscious of themselves as forces of opposition. Centrifugal forces are essentially disparate and disunified: attempts to unify them are an ordering project, and thus not centrifugal.

The force in culture that strives for unity and order Bakhtin refers to as centripetal. It is reflected in language in the standardisation of national languages, in rules of grammar, the writing of dictionaries, and in the science of linguistics. Bakhtin does not object to such an effort, but he insists that it must be recognized as an imposition of order on something that fundamentally lacks it: "A unitary language is not something given [дан, dan] but is always in essence posited [задан, zadan]". Disciplines like philology, linguistics, stylistics and poetics take something that is an ideal, something that is posited in a struggle for social unity, and mistake it for something that really exists. The posited system is reified and an explanatory force is arbitrarily bestowed upon it, effectively denying the existence of the living, disordered, heteroglot reality upon which it is imposed. The attempt to systematize language—to objectify, idealize and abstract it into a static set of rules and conventions for signification—is falsely posited as a descriptive or scientific activity, when in reality it is a form of socio-political activism.

According to Bakhtin, language is always a multiplicity of languages. This is not merely a matter of dialectology, but of the many different ways of speaking, which are reflections of the diversity of social experience, of differing ways of conceptualizing and evaluating. Linguistics fails to appreciate the importance of this multiplicity in the reality of language as it is actually lived and practiced. It is not merely a matter of different vocabularies, but a complex of experiences, shared evaluations, ideas, perspectives and attitudes that are "knitted together" (срастаться, srastat'sya) in an organic process: a coalescence of separate entities that have themselves been formed by such a process, which is to say by a living process of adaptation and growth. Different languages reflect different attitudes and worldviews. Linguistic features are not fixed and definitive: they are a consequence—"traces", "crystallizations", or "sclerotic deposits"―of these attitudes and worldviews, which are themselves the consequence of particular forms of active participation in life and culture. Such participation is a creative response to the circumstances and demands of daily life: "discourse lives, as it were, beyond itself, in a living impulse (направленность, napravlennost') toward the object; if we wholly detach ourselves from this impulse all we have left is the naked corpse of the word, from which we can learn nothing at all about the social situation or the fate of a given word in life."

Bakhtin points to the astonishing variety and variability of languages: there are languages within languages, languages overlapping other languages, languages of small social groups, of large social groups, enduring languages, transitory languages. Any separately identified social group might have its own language, also each year and even each "day". All these diverse groups are more or less "capable of attracting language's words and forms into their orbit by means of their own characteristic intentions and accents, and in so doing to a certain extent alienating these words and forms from other tendencies, parties, artistic works and persons". There are no "neutral" words, no words that belong to no-one. Thus linguistics, as an abstracting process, can never adequately address the reality of heteroglossia.

Dialogized Heteroglossia
Each individual participates in multiple languages, each with its own views and evaluations. Dialogized heteroglossia refers to the relations and interactions between these languages within an individual speaker. Bakhtin gives the example of an illiterate peasant, who speaks Church Slavonic to God, speaks to his family in their own peculiar dialect, sings songs in yet a third, and attempts to emulate officious high-class dialect when he dictates petitions to the local government. Theoretically, the peasant may use each of these languages at the appropriate time, prompted by context, mechanically, without ever questioning their adequacy to the task for which he has acquired them. But languages combined within an individual (or within a social unit of any size), do not exist merely as separate entities, neatly compartmentalised alongside each other, never interacting. A point of view contained in one language is capable of observing and interpreting another from the outside, and vice versa. Thus the languages "interanimate" one another as they enter into dialogue. Any sort of unitary significance or monologic value system assumed by a discrete language is irrevocably undermined by the presence of another way of speaking and interpreting.

According to Bakhtin, such a dialogizing process is always going on in language. Linguistic change is not about change, reaction, readjustment and balance in any systemic sense: it is inherently chaotic and unpredictable, produced by the unforeseeable events of everyday activity. There are no abstract forces at work, there are living people responding to the complex realities of their daily lives. People do not learn their native language from dictionaries, but from the series of exchanges with others in which they participate. Thus the individual encounters the language she assimilates as something that is already dialogized and evaluated. In the assimilation of new words and syntactic forms, which are then employed and deployed for one's own purposes, there is no thought of abstracting away their accents and addressivity in order to systematize them. Such words and forms operate in the individual as they operate in their social milieu: as living impulses.

The hybrid utterance
The hybrid utterance, as defined by Bakhtin, is a passage that employs only a single speaker—the author, for example— but uses different kinds of speech. The juxtaposition of the different speeches brings with it a contradiction and conflict in belief systems.

In examination of the English comic novel, particularly the works of Charles Dickens, Bakhtin identifies examples of his argument. Dickens parodies both the 'common tongue' and the language of Parliament or high-class banquets, using concealed languages to create humor. In one passage, Dickens shifts from his authorial narrative voice into a formalized, almost epic tone while describing the work of an unremarkable bureaucrat; his intent is to parody the self-importance and vainglory of the bureaucrat's position. The use of concealed speech, without formal markers of a speaker change, is what allows the parody to work. It is, in Bakhtin's parlance, a hybrid utterance. In this instance the conflict is between the factual narrative and the biting hyperbole of the new, epic/formalistic tone.

Bakhtin goes on to discuss the interconnectedness of conversation. Even a simple dialogue, in his view, is full of quotations and references, often to a general "everyone says" or "I heard that.." Opinion and information are transmitted by way of reference to an indefinite, general source. By way of these references, humans selectively assimilate the discourse of others and make it their own.

Bakhtin identifies a specific type of discourse, the "authoritative discourse," which demands to be assimilated by the reader or listener; examples might be religious dogma, or scientific theory, or a popular book. This type of discourse is viewed as past, finished, hierarchically superior, and therefore demands "unconditional allegiance" rather than accepting interpretation. Because of this, Bakhtin states that authoritative discourse plays an insignificant role in the novel. Because it is not open to interpretation, it cannot enter into hybrid utterance.

Bakhtin concludes by arguing that the role of the novel is to draw the authoritative into question, and to allow what was once considered certain to be debated and open to interpretation. In effect, novels not only function through heteroglossia, but must promote it; to do otherwise is an artistic failure.

title: Heteroglossia


text:
John Murtha

John Patrick Murtha Jr. (June 17, 1932 – February 8, 2010) was an American politician from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Murtha, a Democrat, represented Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1974 until his death in 2010. He is the longest-serving member of the United States House of Representatives ever elected from Pennsylvania.

A former Marine Corps officer, Murtha was the first Vietnam War veteran elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A member of the Pennsylvania House from 1969 to 1974, he narrowly won a special election to Congress in 1974 and was successively reelected every two years until his death. In the first decade of the 21st century, Murtha had been best known for his calls for a withdrawal of American forces in Iraq, as well as questions about his ethics.

In 2006, after the Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections he made a failed bid to be elected House Majority Leader during the 110th Congress (2007–2009) with the support of the new House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. He lost to Steny Hoyer of Maryland. After House Republicans lost their majority in 2006 Murtha re-assumed his chairmanship of the House Appropriations' Defense Subcommittee. He had previously chaired this subcommittee from 1989 to 1995 and served as its ranking member from 1995 to 2007.

Background
Murtha was born into an Irish-American family in New Martinsville, West Virginia, near the border with Ohio and Pennsylvania, and grew up in Paden City, West Virginia and then Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a largely suburban county east of Pittsburgh. He was the son of Mary Edna (née Ray) and John Patrick Murtha.

As a youth, he became an Eagle Scout. He also worked delivering newspapers and at a gas station before graduating from The Kiski School, an all-male boarding school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania.

Murtha left Washington and Jefferson College in 1952 to join the Marine Corps and was awarded the American Spirit Honor Medal for displaying outstanding leadership qualities during training. He became a drill instructor at Parris Island and was selected for Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. He was then assigned to the Second Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. As an undergraduate, Murtha was initiated into the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.

Murtha remained in the Marine Forces Reserve and ran a small business, Johnstown Minute Car Wash (which still operates in the West End section of Johnstown). He also attended the University of Pittsburgh on the G.I. Bill, and received a degree in economics. Murtha later took graduate courses from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Murtha left the Marines in 1955. He remained in the Reserves after his discharge from active duty until he volunteered for service in the Vietnam War, serving from 1966 to 1967, serving as a battalion staff officer (S-2 Intelligence Section) with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, receiving the Bronze Star with Valor device, two Purple Hearts, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990, receiving the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.

Political career
Soon after returning from Vietnam, Murtha won the Democratic nomination for what was then the 22nd District, which was based in Johnstown. He lost fairly handily to longtime Republican incumbent John Saylor.

Murtha was elected to represent the 72nd legislative district in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in a special election on May 20, 1969. The election was triggered by the death of Representative Edward McNally, who died in November 1968. He was elected to a full term in 1970.

Congressman Saylor died in October 1973, nine months into his 13th term. Murtha immediately jumped into the special election contest in what was now the 12th District. In the February 1974 special election, which took place during the burgeoning Watergate scandal, Murtha defeated one of Saylor's former aides, Harry Fox, by only 242 votes, and was sworn in on February 20. He defeated Fox for a full term by a significantly wider margin in the general election that November and was re-elected 17 times.

Murtha faced tough primary challenges in 1982, 1990 and again in 2002. The 1982 challenge occurred when the Republican-controlled state legislature took advantage of Murtha's connection to Abscam and incorporated most of the district of fellow Vietnam War veteran and Democrat Don Bailey of Westmoreland County into the 12th District.

The 2002 challenge occurred when the state legislature redrew the district of Democrat Frank Mascara to make it more Republican-friendly, shifting a large chunk of Mascara's former territory into Murtha's district. Mascara opted to run against Murtha in the Democratic primary since the new 12th was geographically more his district than Murtha's. However, Mascara was badly defeated.

In 2006, Murtha's Republican challenger was Diana Irey, a county commissioner from Washington County, the heart of Mascara's former district. Irey attacked Murtha for his criticism of the Iraq war. Even though Irey was Murtha's strongest Republican opponent in decades, she polled well behind Murtha throughout the campaign. A poll by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on October 12, 2006, showed Murtha with a commanding lead over Irey, 57%–30%. In the November election, Murtha won 61%–39%.

On June 9, 2006, Murtha informed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that he would run for Majority Leader if the Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections. Despite Murtha receiving Pelosi's support, Steny Hoyer was elected to the post.

On March 18, 2008, Murtha endorsed Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and then senator from New York, in her bid for the presidency.

On February 6, 2010, two days before his death, Murtha became the longest-serving Pennsylvania congressman in history. Although he was not sworn into office until February 20, 1974, House of Representatives rules state that Murtha's service began at his election because the seat was vacant.

In 2009, Murtha heard details from Fort Benning U.S. Army soldiers on how their current uniforms and equipment were not providing camouflage in Iraq and Afghanistan during a personal visit. Murtha immediately took action and convinced the army to fix the camouflage problem, resulting in MultiCam being selected by the Secretary of the Army John McHugh for all incoming soldiers deploying to Afghanistan in 2010, only weeks after Murtha had died.

Abscam investigation
In 1980, during his fourth term as a Congressman, Murtha became embroiled in the Abscam investigation, which targeted dozens of congressmen. The investigation entailed FBI operatives posing as intermediaries for Saudi nationals hoping to bribe their way through the immigration process into the United States. Murtha met with these operatives and was videotaped. He did agree to testify against Frank Thompson (D-NJ) and John Murphy (D-NY), the two Congressmen mentioned as participants in the deal at the same meeting and who were later videotaped placing the cash bribes in their trousers. The FBI videotaped Murtha responding to an offer of $50,000, with Murtha saying, "I'm not interested... at this point. [If] we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't," right after Murtha had offered to provide names of businesses and banks in his district where money could be invested legally. The U.S. Attorney's Office reasoned that Murtha's intent was to obtain investment in his district. Full length viewing of the tape shows Murtha citing prospective investment opportunities that could return "500 or 1000" miners to work.

Earmarks and campaign contributions
Murtha was targeted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress.

In September 2006, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) listed Murtha under Five Members to Watch in its Second Annual Most Corrupt Members of Congress Report. The report cited Murtha's steering of defense appropriations to clients of KSA Consulting, which employed his brother Robert, and the PMA Group, founded by Paul Magliocchetti, a former senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense.

In 2008, Esquire Magazine named him one of the 10 worst members of Congress because of his opposition to ethics reform and the $100 million a year he brought to his district in earmarks. The Wall Street Journal has called him "one of Congress's most unapologetic earmarkers." According to the Pennsylvania Report, Murtha was one of "Pennsylvania's most powerful congressmen" and a "master of crossing the aisle and bringing pork into his district."

In February 2009, CQ Politics reported that Murtha was one of 104 U.S. representatives to earmark funds in the 2008 Defense appropriations spending bill for a lobbying group that had contributed to his past election campaigns. The spending bill, which was managed by Murtha in his capacity as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, secured $38.1 million for clients of the PMA Group in the single fiscal law. The PMA Group was under investigation by the FBI.

In March 2009, the Washington Post reported that a Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two "handlers" close to Murtha while it received nearly $250 million in federal funding via Murtha's earmarks. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha's campaign supporters.

Views on the 2003 Iraq War
Murtha voted for the October 2002 resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq. However, he later began expressing doubts about the war. On March 17, 2004, when Republicans offered a "War in Iraq Anniversary Resolution" that "affirms that the United States and the world have been made safer with the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from power in Iraq," when J. D. Hayworth called for a recorded vote, Murtha voted against it.

Still, in early 2005 Murtha argued against the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. "A premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable could rapidly devolve into a civil war which would leave America's foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America's judgment but also its perseverance," he stated.

In 2006, after Murtha became a leading critic of the Iraq War, a conservative website, the Cybercast News Service (part of L. Brent Bozell III's Media Research Center) published an article that "quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts." The attack recalled the "swiftboating" tactic used against Senator John Kerry two years early. A Murtha spokesman called the allegations "an attempt to distract attention from what's happening in Iraq."

2005 Resolution on removing American forces from Iraq
On November 17, 2005, Murtha submitted H.J. Res. 73 in the House of Representatives, calling for the redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying, "The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."

The bill cited lack of progress towards stabilizing Iraq, the possibility that a draft would be required to sustain sufficient troop numbers, Iraqi disapproval of US forces and approval of attacks on the soldiers, and the increasing costs of the war. The bill proposed that deployment to Iraq be suspended and that US Marines establish an "over-the-horizon" presence in nearby countries.

Murtha's comments forced a heated debate on the floor of the House on November 18. Republicans led by Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, responded by proposing their own resolution (H. Res. 571), which many Republicans said was intended to demonstrate that those calling for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq were "out of the mainstream." Murtha himself took the floor during debate on the resolution after the Democrats yielded all their time to him, and denounced the Hunter resolution as a sham. As expected, Hunter's resolution was defeated, with only three congressmen voting aye.

Jean Schmidt and the "coward" controversy
On November 19, 2005, during debate on adopting the rule for the resolution, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) made a statement attributed to Danny Bubp, an Ohio state Representative and Marine Corps reservist. The statement, "He also asked me to give Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run; Marines never do," was seen as an unwarranted "cheap shot" against Murtha, and outraged Democrats brought House business to a halt for ten minutes until Schmidt herself asked and received permission to withdraw her comments. Bubp has since stated that he never mentioned Murtha when making the quoted comment. He added that he would never question the courage of a fellow Marine. Bubp later said, "I don't want to be interjected into this. I wish (Congresswoman Schmidt) never used my name."

Haditha, Iraq, killings
The Haditha incident occurred on November 19, 2005, and since then there have been differing accounts of exactly what took place.

In November 2005 Murtha announced that a military investigation into the Haditha killings had concluded that U.S. Marines had intentionally killed innocent civilians. Referring to the first report about Haditha in Time magazine, Murtha said:

"It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what the report is going to tell."

The Marine Corps responded to Murtha's announcement by stating that "there is an ongoing investigation; therefore, any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process." Murtha was criticized by conservatives for presenting a version of events as simple fact before an official investigation had been concluded.

In August 2006, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich filed a lawsuit against Murtha for character defamation during an ongoing investigation into the Haditha incident. In April 2009 this suit was dismissed by a federal appeals court, which ruled that Murtha could not be sued because he was acting in his official role as a lawmaker when he made the statements.

On December 21, 2006, the US military charged Wuterich with 12 counts of unpremeditated murder against individuals and one count of the murder of six people "while engaged in an act inherently dangerous to others." Charges were subsequently dropped against seven of the eight Marines involved: Capt. Lucas McConnell, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, Capt. Randy Stone, and 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson. Only Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich still faced trial on 9 counts of involuntary manslaughter, and in 2012 as part of a plea deal he pleaded guilty to one count of negligent dereliction of duty.

Sun-Sentinel story and correction
In a speech at Florida International University on June 24, 2006, Murtha said that the military presence in Iraq was hurting U.S. credibility, citing a poll by the Pew Research Center indicating that people in several countries considered the U.S. in Iraq to be a greater threat to world peace than either Iran or North Korea. When the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported the speech on June 25, it asserted without further evidence that it was Murtha's own view that the U.S. was a greater threat to world peace: "American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Representative John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon."

The Sun-Sentinel story was picked up by the wire services and the Drudge Report website, leading several conservative pundits, including Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson, and Newt Gingrich to comment. After the Sun-Sentinel issued a correction, O'Reilly publicly apologized.

2008 presidential election
After having endorsed Hillary Clinton, commenting on the prospects for the election of Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, Murtha became the subject of controversy after deriding many of his own constituents as "racists" who would not vote for Obama because he is black. In response to the outrage at his comments, he apologized but then reiterated the point by saying, "[T]here's still folks that have a problem voting for someone because they are black. This whole area, years ago, was really redneck."

Political views
Murtha generally opposed gun control, earning an "A" rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund.

In 2004, he was one of only two congressmen to vote for a measure proposing reinstatement of the draft.

Murtha voted for the Affordable Healthcare for America Act (HR 3692), which passed the House 220–215 on November 7, 2009. He said of the bill, "For nearly a century, both Democrats and Republicans have failed to enact comprehensive health care reform. Today's historic vote moves us closer to solving America's health care crisis." However, Murtha did not support allowing abortions as part of health care reform. He voted for the Stupak–Pitts Amendment to the health care bill that prohibits elective abortions for people covered by the public healthcare plan and to prohibit people receiving federal assistance from purchasing a private healthcare plan that includes abortions, except when the woman's life is in danger. He also voted for a bill to prohibit pregnant minors from crossing state borders to obtain abortions.

In August 2009, Murtha refused Republican challenger Tim Burns' invitation to attend a town hall meeting focused on healthcare (at the time, Murtha had not yet hosted a town hall meeting); however, Murtha had held several conference call sessions with his constituents focused on healthcare.

Murtha, an anti-abortion Democrat, did not receive favorable ratings from abortion and reproductive health interest groups. Planned Parenthood, whose stated purpose is "to provide comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care," gave him a rating of 50% in 2009. He received a rating of 50% from the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which advocates "access to voluntary, comprehensive and culturally sensitive family planning and reproductive health care services and... reproductive freedom for all".

Personal life
He married his wife Joyce on June 10, 1955. They had three children: a daughter, Donna, and twin sons, Patrick and John M., who live in Johnstown.

Death and legacy
Murtha was first hospitalized with gallbladder problems for a few days in December 2009 and had surgery on January 28, 2010, at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Longtime friend and fellow Pennsylvania Democratic representative Bob Brady said Murtha's large intestine was damaged during the normally routine laparoscopic surgery, causing an infection. Due to the complication, Murtha was again hospitalized two days later, and died on the afternoon of February 8, 2010, in the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Virginia, with his family by his side. He was buried on February 16, 2010, at Grandview Cemetery in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a statement on the day of his death, "With the passing of John Murtha, America has lost a great patriot." House Republican Leader John Boehner said, "Our nation has lost a decorated veteran."

On April 9, 2010, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus signed an official memo to the Chief of Naval Operations, designating the naming of an amphibious transport dock (LPD), a type of naval warship, as the USS John P. Murtha (LPD-26). The Navy Times said the official announcement "added fuel to an already smoldering backlash online."

In October 2011, it was revealed that the FBI had investigated Murtha for possible ethics violations. No charges were ever filed.

A special election was held to fill the seat left vacant by the late congressman, taking place on May 18 to coincide with that state's primaries for Senate and governor. The Democratic candidate, Mark Critz, defeated Republican candidate Tim Burns to win Murtha's seat.

The University of Pittsburgh houses The John P. Murtha Congressional Papers containing the documentation of Representative Murtha and his duties while in office. The collection contains correspondence, legislative files, reports, subjects covering the Defense Department, the Department of the Interior, economic development, energy, and labor. The collection also contains photographic and audio-video materials, memorabilia, and awards.

The John Murtha Johnstown–Cambria County Airport is named after the Congressman.

title: John Murtha


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Turgut Özal

Halil Turgut Özal (13 October 1927 – 17 April 1993) was a prominent Turkish politician, bureaucrat, engineer and statesman who served as the 8th President of Turkey from 1989 to 1993. He previously served as the 26th Prime Minister of Turkey from 1983 to 1989 as the leader of the Motherland Party. He was the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey in the military government of Bülend Ulusu between 1980 and 1982.

After working briefly at the World Bank in the United States and as a university lecturer, Özal became the general secretary and later the leader of the main miners' trade union of Turkey in 1979, serving as a chief negotiator during large-scale industrial action in 1977. He unsuccessfully stood for Parliament in the 1977 general election as a National Salvation Party (MSP) candidate from İzmir. In 1979, he became an undersecretary to Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel's minority government until the 1980 military coup. As an undersecretary, he played a major role in developing economic reforms, known as the 24 January decisions, which paved the way for greater neoliberalism in the Turkish economy. After the coup, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey responsible for the economy in Bülend Ulusu's government and continued to implement economic reforms. He resigned in 1982 following disagreements over economic policy.

Özal formed the Motherland Party (ANAP) in 1983 after the ban on political parties was lifted by the military government. ANAP won a parliamentary majority in the 1983 general election and Özal subsequently became the Prime Minister of Turkey. While implementing several economic reforms concerning the exchange rate and deregulation, a rise in inflation and the growing conflict with Kurdish separatists led to ANAP winning reduced pluralities in the 1984 local elections. Despite a referendum in 1987 allowing politicians banned during the 1980 coup to resume political activities, ANAP was re-elected with a parliamentary majority in the 1987 general election, albeit with a reduced share of the vote. He survived an assassination attempt during a party congress in 1988. Özal's foreign policy focused on averting war with Greece following the Şimşek Incident and temporarily allowed Bulgarian Turks to emigrate to Turkey.

Özal was elected President of the Turkish Republic in the 1989 presidential election, while Yıldırım Akbulut replaced him as Prime Minister. Despite assuming a ceremonial role with minimal political duties, Özal remained occupied with government activities, such as intervening in the 1990 Zonguldak miners' strikes. While Akbulut took a docile approach as Prime Minister, disputes over the President's and Prime Minister's duties were dominant when Süleyman Demirel became Prime Minister after the 1991 general election. The Southeastern Anatolia development project began with the construction of the Atatürk Dam in Şanlıurfa, while Özal participated in the first ever summit of Turkic Republics in 1992 held in Ankara. He maintained close relations with the President of the United States George H. W. Bush during the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War. Özal died unexpectedly while in office in 1993, with an exhumation in 2012 leading to evidence of poisoning but the cause of death was unclear.

Early life and career
Halil Turgut Özal was born in Malatya, the eldest of three sons. His mother was originally from Çemişgezek, Tunceli and of either half or full Kurdish descent.

His parents have been described as "devout Muslims", his father having trained as an imam before becoming a branch manager at the state-owned Agricultural Bank while his mother was an elementary school teacher associated with the community of İskenderpaşa, affiliated with the Naqshbandi Sufi order, and Turgut Özal himself would get involved with the group later on.

He completed elementary school in Silifke, middle school in Mardin, and high school in Kayseri. Özal studied electrical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, graduating in 1950.

Between 1950 and 1952, he worked at the State Electrical Power Planning Administration and continued his studies in the United States on electrical energy and engineering management between 1952 and 1953. After his return to Turkey, he worked in the same organization again on electrification projects until 1958. Özal was in the State Planning Organization in 1959, and in the Planning Coordination Department in 1960. After his military service in 1961, he worked at several state organizations in leading positions and lectured at ODTÜ (Middle East Technical University). The World Bank employed him between 1971 and 1973. Then, he was chairman of some private Turkish companies until 1979. Back to the state service, he was undersecretary to Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel until the military coup on 12 September 1980.

Political career
The military junta under Kenan Evren appointed him state minister and deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs until July 1982.

Prime Ministry era (1983–1989)
In the parliamentary elections of 1977 he became a candidate for the National Salvation Party (MSP) on the insistence of his brother, but did not succeed. On 20 May 1983 he founded the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) and became its leader. His party won the elections and he formed the government to become the 19th Prime minister on 13 December 1983. In 1987 he again became prime minister after winning elections. During his tenure as a prime minister he was involved in shaping the foreign economic relations of Turkey and with his support the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEİK) was established in 1986. He also began to take delegations of business leaders on his foreign trips.

He became the head of the transformation of the social and economic outlook of Turkey which led by the Motherland Party due to the wider global trend of neoliberal transformation with anti-labor-union discourses.

Assassination attempt
On 18 June 1988 he survived an assassination attempt during the party congress. One bullet wounded his finger while another bullet missed his head. The assassin, Kartal Demirağ, was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment but pardoned by Özal in 1992. Demirağ was allegedly a Counter-Guerrilla, contracted by the movement's hawkish leader, General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu. Two months later, Yirmibeşoğlu became the Secretary-General of the National Security Council. During Yirmibeşoğlu's tenure as secretary general, Özal heard about the allegations of Yirmibeşoğlu's role in the affair and forced him into retirement. In late 2008, Demirağ was re-tried by the Ankara 11th Heavy Penal Court and sentenced to twenty years in prison. In 2013 Özal's son Ahmet Özal said that several months before the assassination attempt Özal had survived a plane incident in which his official plane lost an engine and crash-landed. The manufacturer later reported a 95% probability that the plane would have exploded under the circumstances present.

Presidency (1989–1993)

On 9 November 1989, Özal became the eighth President of Turkey elected by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the first president to be born in the Republic of Turkey rather than the Ottoman Empire.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Özal made an effort to found alliances with the Turkic countries of Central Asia as well as Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. He was also a keen proponent of the country's rapprochement with the Middle East and the Muslim countries. Ozal was very supportive of the Gulf War, urging President George H. W. Bush to go to war with Iraq, with which Turkey shared a border. He said that Saddam Hussein "must go" and called him "more dangerous than Gaddafi."

Özal's free market instinct perhaps defined some of his greatest achievements - the opening up of the Turkish economy. At a stroke, capital controls were abolished - Turks could take out or bring in whatever declared foreign currency they wished. He also liberalized the foreign exchange regime and embarked on one of the most aggressive and ambitious export-driven policies anywhere in post-war history.

The watchword of this campaign was "Export-or-Die". Turkish contractors such as Kutlutaş, Enka, STFA and Tekfen, to name but a few, alone amassed $20 billion worth of contracts in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Libyan markets in the 1980–1990 decade.

President Turgut Özal agreed to negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Apart from Özal, himself half-Kurdish, few Turkish politicians were interested, nor was more than a part of the PKK itself. A first round occurred in the early 90s, and led to a cease-fire declaration by the PKK on 17 March 1993. After the president's death on 17 April 1993, in suspicious circumstances, the hope of reconciliation evaporated, and the Castle Plan, which Özal had opposed, was enacted. Some journalists and politicians maintain that Özal's death was part of a covert military coup in 1993 aimed at stopping the peace plans.

Özal had a firm vision of a Turkey straddling as a bridge between Asia and Europe – a modern and scientific Turkey. He strongly believed that Islam is compatible with democracy and accountability, and that a Muslim country can also be modern, scientific and progressive.

Views on the Armenian genocide
The issue of the Armenian genocide was part of Özal's agenda because he came to believe that Turkey's ongoing denial policy harmed his country's international relations. He wanted to reach an agreement with the Armenians and solve the problem as soon as possible by making compromises. The reason for this was his first confrontation with the topic of the genocide in the 1950s while he was still studying in the United States. Özal noticed an emerging Armenian lobby which aimed to introduce the recognition of the Armenian Genocide on the political agenda in the United States.

When he became prime minister in 1983, the Armenian issue was one of the topics on his agenda. However, he faced tough challenges as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) intensified its attacks on Turkish diplomats abroad in the early 1980s. The ASALA factor made it very difficult to take any bold steps in domestic politics with respect to bridging the gap between Turks and Armenians. Behind closed doors, Özal defended the idea of holding negotiations with Armenians to settle a dispute that has had great potential to deal a serious blow to Turkish interests in international politics.

In 1984, Özal tasked his advisers to work out different scenarios of the political and economic costs that Turkey would have to incur if it would agree to compromise with the Armenian diaspora and recognize the Genocide. In 1991, after a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community, Özal said in front of journalists and diplomats:

"What happens if we compromise with the Armenians and end this issue? What if we officially recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide and face up to our past? Let's take the initiative and find the truth. Let's pay the political and economic price, if necessary."

Özal tried to implement several projects, including the "Van project," as part of his solution to the Genocide issue. The Van Project envisioned the return of some lands to Armenians in Van. However, Özal was unable to make concrete progress because his policies sparked criticism and fury among the Turkish public, the Motherland Party, and the Turkish military as they considered the idea of negotiating with the Armenian diaspora itself as unacceptable and unthinkable. After Özal's death, his policies of compromising with the Armenians in order to solve the conflict concerning the Armenian genocide were abandoned.

Death and exhumation
On 17 April 1993 Özal died of a suspicious heart attack while still in office, leading some to suspect an assassination. Özal had first become ill a month earlier.

He died just before he had the chance to negotiate with the Kurdish rebel organization, the PKK. His wife Semra Özal claimed he had been poisoned by lemonade and she questioned the lack of an autopsy. The blood samples taken to determine cause of death were lost or disposed of. Özal had sought to create a Turkic union, and had obtained the commitment of several presidents of the newly independent Turkic states from the former Soviet Union. His wife Semra alleged that the perpetrator might have wanted to foil the plan.

Hundreds of thousands of people attended the state burial ceremony in Istanbul, in which Özal was buried next to the mausoleum of Adnan Menderes. Among those attending were dignitaries of 72 countries, including several heads of state and government, such as Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, German President Richard von Weizsäcker, and Azerbaijani President Abulfaz Elchibey attended the funeral, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker.

On the fourteenth anniversary of his death, thousands gathered in Ankara in commemoration. Investigators wanted to exhume the body to examine it for poisoning. In September 2012, a court ruled that the grave be opened for another autopsy. On 3 October 2012 his body was exhumed. It contained the banned insecticide DDT at ten times the normal level. According to press reports, the "partially embalmed" remains were found to be well preserved, much to the experts' and public's surprise. It is reported that while the lower half of the body was subject to skeletonization, the upper half was preserved due to adipocere.

An autopsy report issued on 12 December 2012 stated his body contained poison but the cause of death was unclear. A trial charging retired general Levent Ersöz with his murder began in September 2013 who eventually was cleared of all charges.

Legacy
Numerous streets, parks, and public buildings in Turkey are named after Özal.

Family and personal life
With his wife Semra, Özal had two sons: Ahmet and Efe, and a daughter: Zeynep. Ahmet Özal, was elected to parliament after the elections of 1999, but stayed out after the elections of 2002.

Turgut was a member of a powerful Islamic order in Turkey, Community of İskenderpaşa, which is a Turkish branch of the Naqshbandi tariqah.

title: Turgut Özal