Word: symbolics
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...install one of its members, Abdullah Gul, as Turkey's President. The military objected, but Erdogan called early elections and appointed him anyway. The AKP then passed a constitutional amendment to lift a ban on head scarves in universities. Since many secularists view head scarves as a political symbol of an Islamic lifestyle, that amendment - struck down by the high court last month - became a key exhibit in the case against...
...members of the transgender community - the last thing they need is to have to choose between two bathroom doors: male or female. Fortunately for students at the Kampang high school in rural northern Thailand, there's now a third option. Introduced in May, the third bathroom features a symbol on its door of a human figure divided vertically, its blue side wearing pants and its red side sporting a skirt. The Kampang school's principal says he decided to build the new bathroom after a poll found that nearly 10% of the school's 2,500 students identify themselves...
...Instead, the authorities attempted to negotiate. It didn't work. By the time the government laid siege to the Red Mosque and the adjacent seminary, it had become a symbol of religious defiance, not only for militant Muslims, but for many Pakistanis who were increasingly disillusioned with the military dictatorship led by President Pervez Musharraf. Though the students had harassed and frightened many in the nation's capital, who feared their attempts at Talibanization, they were largely revered as martyrs upon their death at the hands of the government security forces. The siege of the Red Mosque was a turning...
...during the culture wars of the late '60s and early '70s that the flag lapel pin truly took off and became the simultaneously uniting and divisive symbol that it is today. Republican candidates in the 1970 congressional race wore them as a symbol of patriotic solidarity against anti-Vietnam protesters like Abbie Hoffman - who donned a shirt made of the flag - or others who stitched the flag onto the seat of their pants. But it was Richard Nixon who brought the pin to national attention. According to Stephen E. Ambrose's biography Nixon, the President got the idea for sporting...
...befits a tradition that reached its height during the Nixon years, flag lapel pins have - fairly or not - become to many a shibboleth of America's War on Terror, and a symbol of the "either you're with us or against us" ethos that has often prevailed since September 11, 2001. And while the country hasn't yet reached anything close to a consensus on what a flag pin says about its wearer, Barack Obama seems to have discovered that symbols matter - even if one doesn't agree with the way they are used...