title: Veronica Cartwright

text: She co-starred in the fourth version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Invasion" (2007). She appears on the cover art for the Scissor Sisters' 2006 single "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" and on their second album "Ta-Dah". In 2014, Cartwright reprised her role as Joan Lambert for DLC episodes in "" based on the original film, and appeared in the remake of "The Town That Dreaded Sundown". She played the role of Sibley Gamble, a psychic on General Hospital between July 8, 2019 and July 16, 2019.


title: Veronica Cartwright

text: Cartwright's many theatre credits include "Electra", "Talley's Folly", "The Bat" and "The Master Builder", for which she received brilliant reviews. Her performances in "The Hands of its Enemy", "The Triplet Collection" and "Homesteaders" brought her Drama-Logue Awards for Best Actress.


title: Science fiction film

text: Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.


title: Science fiction film

text: The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema, when Georges Melies' "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) employed trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature length in the genre) was the film "Metropolis" (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick's landmark "" (1968), the science fiction film genre was taken more seriously. In the late 1970s, big-budget science fiction films filled with special effects became popular with audiences after the success of "Star Wars" (1977) and paved the way for the blockbuster hits of subsequent decades.


title: Science fiction film

text: Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies science fiction films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters’ taxonomy, stating that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres.  The other ten super-genres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, romance, slice of life, sports, thriller, war, and western.


title: Science fiction film

text: Science fiction film is "a film genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or 2.0 speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown" (Sobchack 63).


title: Science fiction film

text: This definition suggests a continuum between (real-world) empiricism and (supernatural) transcendentalism, with science fiction film on the side of empiricism, and happy film and sad film on the side of transcendentalism. However, there are numerous well-known examples of science fiction horror films, epitomized by such pictures as "Frankenstein" and "Alien".


title: Science fiction film

text: The visual style of science fiction film is characterized by a clash between alien and familiar images. This clash is implemented when alien images become familiar, as in "A Clockwork Orange", when the repetitions of the Korova Milkbar make the alien decor seem more familiar. As well, familiar images become alien, as in the films "Repo Man" and "Liquid Sky". For example, in "Dr. Strangelove", the distortion of the humans make the familiar images seem more alien. Finally, alien images are juxtaposed with the familiar, as in "The Deadly Mantis", when a giant praying mantis is shown climbing the Washington Monument.


title: Science fiction film

text: Cultural theorist Scott Bukatman has proposed that science fiction film allows contemporary culture to witness an expression of the sublime, be it through exaggerated scale, apocalypse or transcendence.


title: Science fiction film

text: Science fiction films appeared early in the silent film era, typically as short films shot in black and white, sometimes with colour tinting. They usually had a technological theme and were often intended to be humorous. In 1902, Georges Méliès released "Le Voyage dans la Lune", generally considered the first science fiction film, and a film that used early trick photography to depict a spacecraft's journey to the Moon. Several early films merged the science fiction and horror genres. Examples of this are "Frankenstein" (1910), a film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1920), based on the psychological tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. Taking a more adventurous tack, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1916) is a film based on Jules Verne’s famous novel of a wondrous submarine and its vengeful captain. In the 1920s, European filmmakers tended to use science fiction for prediction and social commentary, as can be seen in German films such as "Metropolis" (1927) and "Frau im Mond" (1929). Other notable science fiction films of the silent era include "The Impossible Voyage" (1904), "The Motorist" (1906), "The Conquest of the Pole" (1912), "Himmelskibet" (1918; which with its runtime of 97 minutes generally is considered the first feature-length science fiction film in history), "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), "The Mechanical Man" (1921), "Paris Qui Dort" (1923), "Aelita" (1924), "Luch Smerti" (1925), and "The Lost World" (1925).


title: Science fiction film

text: In the 1930s, there were several big budget science fiction films, notably "Just Imagine" (1930), "King Kong" (1933), "Things to Come" (1936), and "Lost Horizon" (1937). Starting in 1936, a number of science fiction comic strips were adapted as serials, notably "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers", both starring Buster Crabbe. These serials, and the comic strips they were based on, were very popular with the general public. Other notable science fiction films of the 1930s include "Frankenstein" (1931), "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), "Doctor X" (1932), "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931), "F.P.1" (1932), "Island of Lost Souls" (1932), "Deluge" (1933), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "Master of the World" (1934), "Mad Love" (1935), "Trans-Atlantic Tunnel" (1935), "The Devil-Doll" (1936), "The Invisible Ray" (1936), "The Man Who Changed His Mind" (1936), "The Walking Dead" (1936), "Non-Stop New York" (1937), and "The Return of Doctor X" (1939). The 1940s brought us "Before I Hang" (1940), "Black Friday" (1940), "Dr. Cyclops" (1940), "The Devil Commands" (1941), "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941), "Man Made Monster" (1941), "It Happened Tomorrow" (1944), "It Happens Every Spring" (1949), and "The Perfect Woman" (1949). The release of "Destination Moon" (1950) and "Rocketship X-M" (1950) brought us to what many people consider "the golden age of the science fiction film".


title: Science fiction film

text: In the 1950s, public interest in space travel and new technologies was great. While many 1950s science fiction films were low-budget B movies, there were several successful films with larger budgets and impressive special effects. These include "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), "The Thing from Another World" (1951), "When Worlds Collide" (1951), "The War of the Worlds" (1953), "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), "This Island Earth" (1955), "Forbidden Planet" (1956), "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957), "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1959) and "On the Beach" (1959). There is often a close connection between films in the science fiction genre and the so-called "monster movie". Examples of this are "Them!" (1954), "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953) and "The Blob" (1958). During the 1950s, Ray Harryhausen, protege of master King Kong animator Willis O'Brien, used stop-motion animation to create special effects for the following notable science fiction films: "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (1955), "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956) and "20 Million Miles to Earth" (1957).


title: Science fiction film

text: The most successful monster movies were kaiju films released by Japanese film studio Toho. The 1954 film "Godzilla", with the title monster attacking Tokyo, gained immense popularity, spawned multiple sequels, led to other kaiju films like "Rodan", and created one of the most recognizable monsters in cinema history. Japanese science fiction films, particularly the tokusatsu and kaiju genres, were known for their extensive use of special effects, and gained worldwide popularity in the 1950s. Kaiju and tokusatsu films, notably "Warning from Space" (1956), sparked Stanley Kubrick's interest in science fiction films and influenced "" (1968). According to his biographer John Baxter, despite their "clumsy model sequences, the films were often well-photographed in colour ... and their dismal dialogue was delivered in well-designed and well-lit sets."


title: Science fiction film

text: With the Space Race between the USSR and the USA going on, documentaries and illustrations of actual events, pioneers and technology were plenty. Any movie featuring realistic space travel was at risk of being obsolete at its time of release, rather fossil than fiction. There were relatively few science fiction films in the 1960s, but some of the films transformed science fiction cinema. Stanley Kubrick's "" (1968) brought new realism to the genre, with its groundbreaking visual effects and realistic portrayal of space travel and influenced the genre with its epic story and transcendent philosophical scope. Other 1960s films included "Planet of the Vampires" (1965) by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, that is regarded as one of the best movies of the period, "Planet of the Apes" (1968) and "Fahrenheit 451" (1966), which provided social commentary, and the campy "Barbarella" (1968), which explored the comical side of earlier science fiction. Jean-Luc Godard's French "new wave" film "Alphaville" (1965) posited a futuristic Paris commanded by an artificial intelligence which has outlawed all emotion.


title: Science fiction film

text: The era of crewed trips to the Moon in 1969 and the 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in the science fiction film. Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" (1972) and "Stalker" (1979) are two widely acclaimed examples of the renewed interest of film "auteurs" in science fiction. Science fiction films from the early 1970s explored the theme of paranoia, in which humanity is depicted as under threat from sociological, ecological or technological adversaries of its own creation, such as George Lucas's directional debut "THX 1138" (1971), "The Andromeda Strain" (1971), "Silent Running" (1972), "Soylent Green" (1973), "Westworld" (1973) and its sequel "Futureworld" (1976), and "Logan's Run" (1976). The science fiction comedies of the 1970s included Woody Allen's "Sleeper" (1973), and John Carpenter's "Dark Star" (1974).


title: Science fiction film

text: "Star Wars" (1977) and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) were box-office hits that brought about a huge increase in science fiction films. In 1979, "" brought the television series to the big screen for the first time. It was also in this period that the Walt Disney Company released many science fiction films for family audiences such as "The Black Hole", "Flight of the Navigator", and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". The sequels to "Star Wars", "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983), also saw worldwide box office success. Ridley Scott's films, such as "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982), along with James Cameron's "The Terminator" (1984), presented the future as dark, dirty and chaotic, and depicted aliens and androids as hostile and dangerous. In contrast, Steven Spielberg's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), one of the most successful films of the 1980s, presented aliens as benign and friendly, a theme already present in Spielberg's own "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".


title: Science fiction film

text: The big budget adaptations of Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon", as well as Peter Hyams's sequel to "2001", "" (based on "2001" author Arthur C. Clarke's sequel novel ""), were box office failures that dissuaded producers from investing in science fiction literary properties. Disney's "Tron" (1982) turned out to be a moderate success. The strongest contributors to the genre during the second half of the 1980s were James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven with "The Terminator" and "RoboCop" entries. Robert Zemeckis' film "Back to the Future" (1985) and its sequels were critically praised and became box office successes, not to mention international phenomena. James Cameron's sequel to "Alien", "Aliens" (1986), was very different from the original film, falling more into the action/science fiction genre, it was both a critical and commercial success and Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Academy Awards. The Japanese cyberpunk anime film "Akira" (1988) also had a big influence outside Japan when released.


title: Science fiction film

text: In the 1990s, the emergence of the World Wide Web and the cyberpunk genre spawned several movies on the theme of the computer-human interface, such as "" (1991), "Total Recall" (1990), "The Lawnmower Man" (1992), and "The Matrix" (1999). Other themes included disaster films (e.g., "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact", both 1998), alien invasion (e.g., "Independence Day" (1996)) and genetic experimentation (e.g., "Jurassic Park" (1993) and "Gattaca" (1997)). Also, the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy began with the release of "", which eventually grossed over one billion dollars.


title: Science fiction film

text: As the decade progressed, computers played an increasingly important role in both the addition of special effects (thanks to "" and "Jurassic Park") and the production of films. As software developed in sophistication it was used to produce more complicated effects. It also enabled filmmakers to enhance the visual quality of animation, resulting in films such as "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) from Japan, and "The Iron Giant" (1999) from the United States.


title: Science fiction film

text: During the first decade of the 2000s, superhero films abounded, as did earthbound science fiction such as the "Matrix" trilogy. In 2005, the "Star Wars" saga was completed (although it was later continued, but at the time it was not intended to be) with the darkly themed "". Science-fiction also returned as a tool for political commentary in films such as "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", "Minority Report", "Sunshine", "District 9", "Children of Men", "Serenity", "Sleep Dealer", and "Pandorum". The 2000s also saw the release of "Transformers" (2007) and "" (2009), both of which resulted in worldwide box office success. In 2009, James Cameron's "Avatar" garnered worldwide box office success, and would later become the highest-grossing movie of all time. This movie was also an example of political commentary. It depicted humans destroying the environment on another planet by mining for a special metal called unobtainium. That same year, "Terminator Salvation" was released and garnered only moderate success.


title: Science fiction film

text: The 2010s saw new entries in several classic science fiction franchises, including "Predators" (2010), "" (2010), a resurgence of the "Star Wars" series, and entries into the "Planet of the Apes" and "Godzilla" franchises. Several more cross-genre films have also been produced, including comedies such as "Hot Tub Time Machine" (2010), "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" (2012), "Safety Not Guaranteed" (2013), and "Pixels" (2015), romance films such as "Her" (2013), "Monsters" (2010), and "Ex Machina" (2015), heist films including "Inception" (2010) and action films including "Real Steel" (2011), "Total Recall" (2012), "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014), "Pacific Rim" (2013), "Chappie" (2015), "Tomorrowland" (2015), and "Ghost in the Shell" (2017). The superhero film boom has also continued, into films such as "Iron Man 2" (2010) and "3" (2013), several entries into the X-Men film series, and "The Avengers" (2012), which became the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. New franchises such as "Deadpool" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" also began in this decade.


title: Science fiction film

text: Further into the decade, more realistic science fiction epic films also become prevalent, including "Battleship" (2012), "Gravity" (2013), "Elysium" (2013), "Interstellar" (2014), "" (2015), "The Martian" (2015), "Arrival" (2016), "Passengers" (2016), and "Blade Runner 2049" (2017). Many of these films have gained widespread accolades, including several Academy Award wins and nominations. These films have addressed recent matters of scientific interest, including space travel, climate change, and artificial intelligence.


title: Science fiction film

text: Alongside these original films, many adaptations were produced, especially within the young adult dystopian fiction subgenre, popular in the early part of the decade. These include the "Hunger Games" film series, based on the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, "The Divergent Series" based on Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, and the "Maze Runner" series, based on James Dashner's "The Maze Runner" novels. Several adult adaptations have also been produced, including "The Martian" (2015), based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel, "Cloud Atlas" (2012), based on David Mitchell's 2004 novel, "World War Z", based on Max Brooks' 2006 novel, and "Ready Player One" (2018), based on Ernest Cline's 2011 novel.


title: Science fiction film

text: Independent productions also increased in the 2010s, with the rise of digital filmmaking making it easier for filmmakers to produce movies on a smaller budget. These films include "Attack the Block" (2011), "Source Code" (2011), "Looper" (2012), "Upstream Color" (2013), "Ex Machina" (2015), and "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" (2017). In 2016, "Ex Machina" won the Academy Award for Visual Effects in a surprising upset over the much higher-budget "" (2015).


title: Science fiction film

text: Science fiction films are often speculative in nature, and often include key supporting elements of science and technology. However, as often as not the "science" in a Hollywood science fiction movie can be considered pseudo-science, relying primarily on atmosphere and quasi-scientific artistic fancy than facts and conventional scientific theory. The definition can also vary depending on the viewpoint of the observer.


title: Science fiction film

text: Many science fiction films include elements of mysticism, occult, magic, or the supernatural, considered by some to be more properly elements of fantasy or the occult (or religious) film. This transforms the movie genre into a science fantasy with a religious or quasi-religious philosophy serving as the driving motivation. The movie "Forbidden Planet" employs many common science fiction elements, but the film carries a profound message - that the evolution of a species toward technological perfection (in this case exemplified by the disappeared alien civilization called the "Krell") does not ensure the loss of primitive and dangerous urges. In the film, this part of the primitive mind manifests itself as monstrous destructive force emanating from the Freudian subconscious, or "Id".


title: Science fiction film

text: Some films blur the line between the genres, such as films where the protagonist gains the extraordinary powers of the superhero. These films usually employ quasi-plausible reason for the hero gaining these powers.


title: Science fiction film

text: Not all science fiction themes are equally suitable for movies. Science fiction horror is most common. Often enough, these films could just as well pass as Westerns or World War II films if the science fiction props were removed. Common motifs also include voyages and expeditions to other planets, and dystopias, while utopias are rare.


title: Science fiction film

text: Film theorist Vivian Sobchack argues that science fiction films differ from fantasy films in that while science fiction film seeks to achieve our belief in the images we are viewing, fantasy film instead attempts to suspend our disbelief. The science fiction film displays the unfamiliar and alien in the context of the familiar. Despite the alien nature of the scenes and science fictional elements of the setting, the imagery of the film is related back to humankind and how we relate to our surroundings. While the science fiction film strives to push the boundaries of the human experience, they remain bound to the conditions and understanding of the audience and thereby contain prosaic aspects, rather than being completely alien or abstract.


title: Science fiction film

text: Genre films such as westerns or war movies are bound to a particular area or time period. This is not true of the science fiction film. However, there are several common visual elements that are evocative of the genre. These include the spacecraft or space station, alien worlds or creatures, robots, and futuristic gadgets. Examples include movies like "Lost in Space", "Serenity", "Avatar", "Prometheus", "Tomorrowland", "Passengers", and "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets". More subtle visual clues can appear with changes of the human form through modifications in appearance, size, or behavior, or by means a known environment turned eerily alien, such as an empty city "The Omega Man" (1971).


title: Science fiction film

text: While science is a major element of this genre, many movie studios take significant liberties with scientific knowledge. Such liberties can be most readily observed in films that show spacecraft maneuvering in outer space. The vacuum should preclude the transmission of sound or maneuvers employing wings, yet the soundtrack is filled with inappropriate flying noises and changes in flight path resembling an aircraft banking. The filmmakers, unfamiliar with the specifics of space travel, focus instead on providing acoustical atmosphere and the more familiar maneuvers of the aircraft.


title: Science fiction film

text: Similar instances of ignoring science in favor of art can be seen when movies present environmental effects as portrayed in "Star Wars" and "Star Trek". Entire planets are destroyed in titanic explosions requiring mere seconds, whereas an actual event of this nature takes many hours.


title: Science fiction film

text: The role of the scientist has varied considerably in the science fiction film genre, depending on the public perception of science and advanced technology. Starting with Dr. Frankenstein, the mad scientist became a stock character who posed a dire threat to society and perhaps even civilization. Certain portrayals of the "mad scientist", such as Peter Sellers's performance in "Dr. Strangelove", have become iconic to the genre. In the monster films of the 1950s, the scientist often played a heroic role as the only person who could provide a technological fix for some impending doom. Reflecting the distrust of government that began in the 1960s in the United States, the brilliant but rebellious scientist became a common theme, often serving a Cassandra-like role during an impending disaster.


title: Science fiction film

text: Biotechnology (e.g., cloning) is a popular scientific element in films as depicted in "Jurassic Park" (cloning of extinct species), "The Island" (cloning of humans), and (genetic modification) in some superhero movies and in the "Alien" series. Cybernetics and holographic projections as depicted in "RoboCop" and "I, Robot" are also popularized. Interstellar travel and teleportation is a popular theme in the "Star Trek" series that is achieved through warp drives and transporters while intergalactic travel is popular in films such as "Stargate" and "Star Wars" that is achieved through hyperspace or wormholes. Nanotechnology is also featured in the "Star Trek" series in the form of replicators (utopia), in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in the form of grey goo (dystopia), and in "Iron Man 3" in the form of extremis (nanotubes). Force fields is a popular theme in "Independence Day" while invisibility is also popular in "Star Trek". Arc reactor technology, featured in "Iron Man", is similar to a cold fusion device. Miniaturization technology where people are shrunk to microscopic sizes is featured in films like "Fantastic Voyage" (1966), "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" (1989), and Marvel's "Ant-Man" (2015).


title: Science fiction film

text: The late Arthur C. Clarke's third law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Past science fiction films have depicted "fictional" ("magical") technologies that became present reality. For example, the Personal Access Display Device from "Star Trek" was a precursor of smartphones and tablet computers. Gesture recognition in the movie "Minority Report" is part of current game consoles. Human-level artificial intelligence is also fast approaching with the advent of smartphone A.I. while a working cloaking device / material is the main goal of stealth technology. Autonomous cars (e.g. KITT from the "Knight Rider" series) and quantum computers, like in the movie "Stealth" and "Transcendence", also will be available eventually. Furthermore, although Clarke's laws do not classify "sufficiently advanced" technologies, the Kardashev scale measures a civilization's level of technological advancement into types. Due to its exponential nature, sci-fi civilizations usually only attain Type I (harnessing all the energy attainable from a single planet), and strictly speaking often not even that.


title: Science fiction film

text: The concept of life, particularly intelligent life, having an extraterrestrial origin is a popular staple of science fiction films. Early films often used alien life forms as a threat or peril to the human race, where the invaders were frequently fictional representations of actual military or political threats on Earth as observed in films such as "Mars Attacks!", "Starship Troopers", the "Alien" series, the "Predator" series, and "The Chronicles of Riddick" series. Some aliens were represented as benign and even beneficial in nature in such films as "Escape to Witch Mountain", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "The Fifth Element", "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "Avatar", "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", and the "Men in Black" series.


title: Science fiction film

text: In order to provide subject matter to which audiences can relate, the large majority of intelligent alien races presented in films have an anthropomorphic nature, possessing human emotions and motivations. In films like "Cocoon", "My Stepmother Is an Alien", "Species", "Contact", "The Box", "Knowing", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and "The Watch", the aliens were nearly human in physical appearance, and communicated in a common earth language. However, the aliens in "Stargate" and "Prometheus" were human in physical appearance but communicated in an alien language. A few films have tried to represent intelligent aliens as something utterly different from the usual humanoid shape (e.g. An intelligent life form surrounding an entire planet in "Solaris", the ball shaped creature in "Dark Star", microbial-like creatures in "The Invasion", shape-shifting creatures in "Evolution"). Recent trends in films involve building-size alien creatures like in the movie "Pacific Rim" where the CGI has tremendously improved over the previous decades as compared in previous films such as "Godzilla".


title: Science fiction film

text: A frequent theme among science fiction films is that of impending or actual disaster on an epic scale. These often address a particular concern of the writer by serving as a vehicle of warning against a type of activity, including technological research. In the case of alien invasion films, the creatures can provide as a stand-in for a feared foreign power.


title: Science fiction film

text: While monster films do not usually depict danger on a global or epic scale, science fiction film also has a long tradition of movies featuring monster attacks. These differ from similar films in the horror or fantasy genres because science fiction films typically rely on a scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) rationale for the monster's existence, rather than a supernatural or magical reason. Often, the science fiction film monster is created, awakened, or "evolves" because of the machinations of a mad scientist, a nuclear accident, or a scientific experiment gone awry. Typical examples include "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953), "Jurassic Park" films, "Cloverfield", "Pacific Rim", the "King Kong" films, and the "Godzilla" franchise or the many films involving Frankenstein's monster.


title: Science fiction film

text: The core mental aspects of what makes us human has been a staple of science fiction films, particularly since the 1980s. Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", examined what made an organic-creation a human, while the "RoboCop" series saw an android mechanism fitted with the brain and reprogrammed mind of a human to create a cyborg. The idea of brain transfer was not entirely new to science fiction film, as the concept of the "mad scientist" transferring the human mind to another body is as old as "Frankenstein" while the idea of corporations behind mind transfer technologies is observed in later films such as "Gamer", "Avatar", and "Surrogates".


title: Science fiction film

text: Films such as "Total Recall" have popularized a thread of films that explore the concept of reprogramming the human mind. The theme of brainwashing in several films of the sixties and seventies including "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Manchurian Candidate" coincided with secret real-life government experimentation during Project MKULTRA. Voluntary erasure of memory is further explored as themes of the films "Paycheck" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Some films like "Limitless" explore the concept of mind enhancement. The anime series "Serial Experiments Lain" also explores the idea of reprogrammable reality and memory.


title: Science fiction film

text: The idea that a human could be entirely represented as a program in a computer was a core element of the film "Tron". This would be further explored in the film version of "The Lawnmower Man", "Transcendence", and "Ready Player One" and the idea reversed in "Virtuosity" as computer programs sought to become real persons. In "The Matrix" series, the virtual reality world became a real-world prison for humanity, managed by intelligent machines. In movies such as "eXistenZ", "The Thirteenth Floor", and "Inception", the nature of reality and virtual reality become intermixed with no clear distinguishing boundary.


title: Science fiction film

text: "Telekinesis" and "telepathy" are featured in movies like "Star Wars", "The Last Mimzy", "Race to Witch Mountain", "Chronicle", and "Lucy" while precognition is featured in "Minority Report" as well as in "The Matrix" saga (in which precognition is achieved by knowing the artificial world).


title: Science fiction film

text: Robots have been a part of science fiction since the Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the word in 1921. In early films, robots were usually played by a human actor in a boxy metal suit, as in "The Phantom Empire", although the female robot in "Metropolis" is an exception. The first depiction of a sophisticated robot in a United States film was Gort in "The Day the Earth Stood Still".


title: Science fiction film

text: Robots in films are often sentient and sometimes sentimental, and they have filled a range of roles in science fiction films. Robots have been supporting characters, such as Robby the Robot in "Forbidden Planet", Huey, Dewey and Louie in "Silent Running", Data in "", sidekicks (e.g., C-3PO and R2-D2 from "Star Wars", JARVIS from "Iron Man"), and extras, visible in the background to create a futuristic setting (e.g., "Back to the Future Part II" (1989), "Total Recall" (2012), "RoboCop" (2014)). As well, robots have been formidable movie villains or monsters (e.g., the robot Box in the film "Logan's Run" (1976), HAL 9000 in "", ARIIA in "Eagle Eye", robot Sentinels in "", the battle droids in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, or the huge robot probes seen in "Monsters vs. Aliens"). In some cases, robots have even been the leading characters in science fiction films; in the film "Blade Runner" (1982), many of the characters are bioengineered android "replicants". This is also present in the animated films "WALL-E" (2008), "Astro Boy" (2009), "Big Hero 6" (2014), "Ghost in the Shell" (2017) and in "Next Gen" (2018).


title: Science fiction film

text: Films like "Bicentennial Man", "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", "Chappie", and "Ex Machina" depicted the emotional fallouts of robots that are self-aware. Other films like "The Animatrix (The Second Renaissance)" present the consequences of mass-producing self-aware androids as humanity succumbs to their robot overlords.


title: Science fiction film

text: One popular theme in science fiction film is whether robots will someday replace humans, a question raised in the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" (in jobs) and in the film "Real Steel" (in sports), or whether intelligent robots could develop a conscience and a motivation to protect, take over, or destroy the human race (as depicted in "The Terminator", "Transformers", and in ""). Another theme is remote telepresence via androids as depicted in "Surrogates" and "Iron Man 3". As artificial intelligence becomes smarter due to increasing computer power, some sci-fi dreams have already been realized. For example, the computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion in 1997 and a documentary film, "", was released in 2003. Another famous computer called Watson defeated the two best human "Jeopardy" (game show) players in 2011 and a NOVA documentary film, "", was released in the same year.


title: Science fiction film

text: Building-size robots are also becoming a popular theme in movies as featured in "Pacific Rim". Future live action films may include an adaptation of popular television series like "Voltron" and "Robotech". The CGI robots of "Pacific Rim" and the "Power Rangers" (2017) reboot was greatly improved as compared to the original "" (1995). While "size does matter", a famous tagline of the movie "Godzilla", incredibly small robots, called nanobots, do matter as well (e.g. Borg nanoprobes in "Star Trek" and nanites in "I, Robot").


title: Science fiction film

text: The concept of time travel—travelling backwards and forwards through time—has always been a popular staple of science fiction film and science fiction television series. Time travel usually involves the use of some type of advanced technology, such as H. G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine", the commercially successful 1980s-era "Back to the Future" trilogy, the "Bill & Ted" trilogy, the "Terminator" series, "Déjà Vu" (2006), "Source Code" (2011), "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014), and "Predestination" (2014). Other movies, such as the "Planet of the Apes" series, "Timeline" (2003) and "The Last Mimzy" (2007), explained their depictions of time travel by drawing on physics concepts such as the special relativity phenomenon of time dilation (which could occur if a spaceship was travelling near the speed of light) and wormholes. Some films show time travel not being attained from advanced technology, but rather from an inner source or personal power, such as the 2000s-era films "Donnie Darko", "Mr. Nobody", "The Butterfly Effect", and "".


title: Science fiction film

text: More conventional time travel movies use technology to bring the past to life in the present, or in a present that lies in our future. The film "Iceman" (1984) told the story of the reanimation of a frozen Neanderthal. The film "Freejack" (1992) shows time travel used to pull victims of horrible deaths forward in time a split-second before their demise, and then use their bodies for spare parts.


title: Science fiction film

text: A common theme in time travel film is the paradoxical nature of travelling through time. In the French New Wave film "La jetée" (1962), director Chris Marker depicts the self-fulfilling aspect of a person being able to see their future by showing a child who witnesses the death of his future self. "La Jetée" was the inspiration for "12 Monkeys", (1995) director Terry Gilliam's film about time travel, memory and madness. The "Back to the Future" trilogy and "The Time Machine" go one step further and explore the result of altering the past, while in "" (1996) and "Star Trek" (2009) the crew must rescue the Earth from having its past altered by time-travelling cyborgs and alien races.


title: Science fiction film

text: The science fiction film genre has long served as useful means of discussing sensitive topical issues without arousing controversy, and it often provides thoughtful social commentary on potential unforeseen future issues. The fictional setting allows for a deeper examination and reflection of the ideas presented, with the perspective of a viewer watching remote events. Most controversial issues in science fiction films tend to fall into two general storylines, Utopian or dystopian. Either a society will become better or worse in the future. Because of controversy, most science fiction films will fall into the dystopian film category rather than the Utopian category.


title: Science fiction film

text: The types of commentary and controversy presented in science fiction films often illustrate the particular concerns of the periods in which they were produced. Early science fiction films expressed fears about automation replacing workers and the dehumanization of society through science and technology. For example, "The Man in the White Suit" (1951) used a science fiction concept as a means to satirize postwar British "establishment" conservatism, industrial capitalists, and trade unions. Another example is "HAL 9000" from "" (1968). He controls the shuttle, and later harms its crew. "Kubrick's vision reveals technology as a competitive force that must be defeated in order for humans to evolve." Later films explored the fears of environmental catastrophe, technology-created disasters, or overpopulation, and how they would impact society and individuals (e.g. "Soylent Green", "Elysium").


title: Science fiction film

text: The monster movies of the 1950s—like "Godzilla" (1954)—served as stand-ins for fears of nuclear war, communism and views on the cold war. In the 1970s, science fiction films also became an effective way of satirizing contemporary social mores with "Silent Running" and "Dark Star" presenting hippies in space as a riposte to the militaristic types that had dominated earlier films. Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" presented a horrific vision of youth culture, portraying a youth gang engaged in rape and murder, along with disturbing scenes of forced psychological conditioning serving to comment on societal responses to crime.


title: Science fiction film

text: "Logan's Run" depicted a futuristic swingers' utopia that practiced euthanasia as a form of population control and "The Stepford Wives" anticipated a reaction to the women's liberation movement. "Enemy Mine" demonstrated that the foes we have come to hate are often just like us, even if they appear alien.


title: Science fiction film

text: Contemporary science fiction films continue to explore social and political issues. One recent example is "Minority Report" (2002), debuting in the months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and focused on the issues of police powers, privacy and civil liberties in a near-future United States. Some movies like "The Island" (2005) and "Never Let Me Go" (2010) explore the issues surrounding cloning.


title: Science fiction film

text: More recently, the headlines surrounding events such as the Iraq War, international terrorism, the avian influenza scare, and United States anti-immigration laws have found their way into the consciousness of contemporary filmmakers. The film "V for Vendetta" (2006) drew inspiration from controversial issues such as the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, while science fiction thrillers such as "Children of Men" (also 2006), "District 9" (2009), and "Elysium" (2013) commented on diverse social issues such as xenophobia, propaganda, and cognitive dissonance. "Avatar" (2009) had remarkable resemblance to colonialism of native land, mining by multinational-corporations and the Iraq War.


title: Science fiction film

text: Lancaster University professor Jamaluddin Bin Aziz argues that as science fiction has evolved and expanded, it has fused with other film genres such as gothic thrillers and film noir. When science fiction integrates film noir elements, Bin Aziz calls the resulting hybrid form "future noir", a form which "... encapsulates a postmodern encounter with generic persistence, creating a mixture of irony, pessimism, prediction, extrapolation, bleakness and nostalgia." Future noir films such as "Brazil", "Blade Runner", "12 Monkeys", "Dark City", and "Children of Men" use a protagonist who is "...increasingly dubious, alienated and fragmented", at once "dark and playful like the characters in Gibson's "Neuromancer", yet still with the "... shadow of Philip Marlowe..."


title: Science fiction film

text: Future noir films that are set in a post-apocalyptic world "...restructure and re-represent society in a parody of the atmospheric world usually found in noir's construction of a city—dark, bleak and beguiled." Future noir films often intermingle elements of the gothic thriller genre, such as "Minority Report", which makes references to occult practices, and "Alien", with its tagline "In space, no one can hear you scream", and a space vessel, Nostromo, "that hark[s] back to images of the haunted house in the gothic horror tradition". Bin Aziz states that films such as James Cameron’s "The Terminator" are a subgenre of "techno noir" that create "...an atmospheric feast of noir darkness and a double-edged world that is not what it seems."


title: Science fiction film

text: When compared to science-fiction literature, science-fiction films often rely less on the human imagination and more upon action scenes and special effect-created alien creatures and exotic backgrounds. Since the 1970s, film audiences have come to expect a high standard for special effects in science-fiction films. In some cases, science fiction-themed films superimpose an exotic, futuristic setting onto what would not otherwise be a science-fiction tale. Nevertheless, some critically acclaimed science-fiction movies have followed in the path of science-fiction literature, using story development to explore abstract concepts.


title: Science fiction film

text: Jules Verne (1828–1905) became the first major science-fiction author whose works film-makers adapted for the screen - with Méliès' "Le Voyage dans la Lune" (1902) and "20,000 lieues sous les mers" (1907), which used Verne's scenarios as a framework for fantastic visuals. By the time Verne's work fell out of copyright in 1950, the adaptations were treated as period pieces. Verne's works have been adapted a number of times since then, including "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), "From the Earth to the Moon" (1958), and two film versions of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 1959 and 2008.


title: Science fiction film

text: H. G. Wells's novels "The Invisible Man", "Things to Come" and "The Island of Doctor Moreau" were all adapted into films during his lifetime (1866–1946), while "The War of the Worlds", updated in 1953 and again in 2005, was adapted to film at least four times altogether. "The Time Machine" has had two film versions (1960 and 2002) while "Sleeper" in part is a pastiche of Wells's 1910 novel "The Sleeper Awakes".


title: Science fiction film

text: With the drop-off in interest in science-fiction films during the 1940s, few of the "golden age" science-fiction authors made it to the screen. A novella by John W. Campbell provided the basis for "The Thing from Another World" (1951). Robert A. Heinlein contributed to the screenplay for "Destination Moon" (1950), but none of his major works were adapted for the screen until the 1990s: "The Puppet Masters" (1994) and "Starship Troopers" (1997). The fiction of Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) influenced the "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" films, but it was not until 1988 that a film version of one of his short stories ("Nightfall") was produced. The first major motion-picture adaptation of a full-length Asimov work was "Bicentennial Man" (1999) (based on the short stories "Bicentennial Man" (1976) and "The Positronic Man" (1992), the latter co-written with Robert Silverberg), although "I, Robot" (2004), a film loosely based on Asimov's book of short stories by the same name, drew more attention.


title: Science fiction film

text: The 1968 film adaptation of some of the stories of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke as won the Academy Award for Visual Effects and offered thematic complexity not typically associated with the science-fiction genre at the time. Its sequel, "" (inspired to Clarke's ""), was commercially successful but less highly regarded by critics. Reflecting the times, two earlier science-fiction works by Ray Bradbury were adapted for cinema in the 1960s: "Fahrenheit 451" (1966) and "The Illustrated Man" (1969). Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" was filmed in 1971 and "Breakfast of Champions" in 1998.


title: Science fiction film

text: Philip K. Dick's fiction has been used in a number of science-fiction films, in part because it evokes the paranoia that has been a central feature of the genre. Films based on Dick's works include "Blade Runner" (1982), "Total Recall" (1990), "Impostor" (2001), "Minority Report" (2002), "Paycheck" (2003), "A Scanner Darkly" (2006), and "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011). These films represent loose adaptations of the original stories, with the exception of "A Scanner Darkly", which is more inclined to Dick's novel.


title: Kalmar Union

text: The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian, and ; ; ) was a personal union in Scandinavia, agreed at Kalmar in Sweden, that from 1397 to 1523 joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including most of present-day Finland), and Norway, together with Norway's overseas colonies (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland).


title: Kalmar Union

text: The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states. However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö.


title: Kalmar Union

text: The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy wishing to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League. More personally, it was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden, Norway and Scania. Margaret succeeded in having her and Haakon's son Olaf recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway.


title: Kalmar Union

text: Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert. After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396 under the banner of the House of Griffin. His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397.


title: Kalmar Union

text: One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not.


title: Kalmar Union

text: The Union lost territory when Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. The money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland.


title: Kalmar Union

text: Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that hampered the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. The Engelbrekt rebellion, which started in 1434, led to the overthrow of King Erik (in Denmark and Sweden in 1439, as well as Norway in 1442). The aristocracy sided with the rebels.


title: Kalmar Union

text: King Erik's foreign policy, in particular his conflict with the Hanseatic League, necessitated greater taxation and complicated exports of iron, which in turn may have precipitated the rebellion. Discontent with the nature of King Erik's regime has also been cited as a motivating factor for the rebellion. King Erik also lacked a standing army and had limited tax revenues.


title: Kalmar Union

text: The death of Christopher of Bavaria (who had no heirs) in 1448 ended a period in which the three Scandinavian kingdoms were uninterruptedly united for a lengthy period. Karl Knutsson Bonde ruled as king of Sweden (1448–1457, 1464–1465 and 1467–1470), and Christian of Oldenburg was king of Denmark (1448–1481), Norway (1450–1481) and Sweden (1457–1464). Karl and Christian fought over control of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, leading Christian to seize Sweden from him from 1457 to 1464 before a rebellion led Karl to become king of Sweden again. When Karl died in 1470, Christian tried to become king of Sweden again, but was defeated by Sten Sture the Elder in the 1471 battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm.


title: Kalmar Union

text: After the death of Karl, Sweden was mostly ruled by a series of "protectors of the realm" ("riksföreståndare"), with the Danish kings attempting to assert control. First of these protectors was Sten Sture, who kept Sweden under his control until 1497 when the Swedish nobility deposed him. A peasant rebellion led Sture to become regent of Sweden again in 1501. After his death, Sweden was ruled by Svante Nilsson (1504–1512) and then Svante's son Sten Sture the Younger (1512–1520). Sten Sture the Younger was killed in the 1520 Battle of Bogesund when the Danish king Christian II invaded Sweden with a large army. Subsequently, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden, and supporters of Sten Sture were executed en masse in the Stockholm Bloodbath.


title: Kalmar Union

text: After the Stockholm Bloodbath, Gustav Vasa (whose father, Erik Johansson, was executed) travelled to Dalarna, where he organized a rebellion against Christian II. Vasa made an alliance with Lübeck and successfully conquered most of Sweden. He was crowned King of Sweden in 1523, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. After the Northern Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Stettin (1570) saw Frederick II renounce all claims to Sweden.


title: Kalmar Union

text: One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of the Count's Feud, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province. This did not happen. Instead, Norway became a hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when prince Carl of Denmark, a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden, was elected king of Norway.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo (Louisiana Creole: Gombo) is a soup popular in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and is the official state cuisine. Gumbo consists primarily of a strongly-flavored stock, meat or shellfish (or sometimes both), a thickener, and the Creole "holy trinity" ― celery, bell peppers, and onions. Gumbo is often categorized by the type of thickener used, whether okra or filé powder (dried and ground sassafras leaves).


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo can be made with or without okra or filé powder. The preferred method in the historical New Orleans variation is with a French dark roux. The flavor of the dish has its origins in many cultures. Creole gumbo generally contains shellfish, and a dark roux, filé, or both. Today, tomatoes are occasionally found in Creole gumbo and frequently appear in New Orleans cuisine but many gumbo cooks believe that tomatoes should never be used in gumbo. Cajun gumbo is generally based on a dark roux and is made with shellfish or fowl. Sausage or ham is often added to gumbos of either variety. After the base is prepared, vegetables are cooked down, and then meat is added. The dish simmers for a minimum of three hours, with shellfish and some spices added near the end. If desired, filé powder is added after the pot is removed from heat. Gumbo is traditionally served with rice. A third, lesser-known variety, the meatless gumbo z'herbes, is essentially a gumbo of slow-cooked greens.


title: Gumbo

text: The dish combines ingredients and culinary practices of several cultures, including African, French, Spanish, and Native American Choctaw. Gumbo may have been based on traditional native dishes, or may be a derivation of the French dish bouillabaisse, or Choctaw stew, but most likely all of these dishes contributed to the original recipe. It was first described in 1802, and was listed in various cookbooks in the latter half of the 19th century. The dish gained more widespread popularity in the 1970s, after the United States Senate dining room added it to the menu in honor of Louisiana Senator Allen Ellender. The popularity of chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s spurred further interest in the dish.


title: Gumbo

text: The name of the dish comes most likely from Africa by way of Louisiana French. Scholars and chefs have offered various explanations for the etymology of the word "gumbo". The dish was likely named after one of its two main ingredients, okra or filé. In the Niger–Congo languages spoken by many enslaved people from West Africa, the vegetable okra was known as "ki ngombo" or "quingombo"; the word is akin to the Umbundu "ochinggômbo" and the Tshiluba "chinggômbô" "okra". In the language of the native Choctaw people, filé, or ground sassafras leaves, is called "kombo".


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is a heavily seasoned stew that combines several varieties of meat or seafood with a sauce or gravy. Any combination of meat or seafood can be used. Meat-based gumbo may consist of chicken, duck, squirrel, or rabbit, with oysters occasionally added. Seafood-based gumbo generally has shrimp, crab meat, and sometimes oysters. Andouille sausage is often added to both meat and seafood gumbos to provide "piquancy, substance, and an additional layer of flavor" to the dish. The key is to use a tender andouille so it does not become too chewy. Most varieties of gumbo are seasoned with onions, parsley, bell pepper, and celery. Tomatoes are sometimes used in seafood gumbo, but traditionally few other vegetables are included.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo broth or gravy derives from three primary thickeners: okra, filé powder, and roux. Traditionally, okra and filé powder are not used in the same dish, although this rule is sometimes broken. Roux can be used alone or in conjunction with either of the other thickeners. Okra is more often used as a thickener in seafood gumbos than those with meat. This mucilaginous vegetable is usually cooked first, and other ingredients added once the desired consistency is reached. According to "The Oxford Companion to Food", okra-based gumbos are becoming less popular, as the okra texture has become less palatable to changing tastes.


title: Gumbo

text: Ground sassafras leaf, known as filé, is generally not added to the gravy until after the vegetables and meats or seafood have finished cooking and have been removed from the heat source. If added during the boiling process, filé makes the gumbo too ropey; when added at the end, the gumbo gains a slightly stringy texture.


title: Gumbo

text: Roux has become the most popular thickener, made from cooking together a roughly equal proportion of flour and fat (traditionally hog lard, although increasingly made with butter since the mid-20th century). The length of cooking time determines the final flavor and texture, since the longer the roux is cooked before being added to the gumbo, the darker it becomes and the less thickening power it retains. A very dark roux provides a much thinner sauce with a more intense flavor than a light roux.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is typically divided into two varieties. Combinations traditionally common in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana are known as "Creole" after the Louisiana Creole people, descendants of the area's French, Spanish, and African immigrants. "Cajun" combinations were common in southwestern Louisiana, which was populated primarily by Cajuns, descendants of the French-speaking settlers expelled from Acadia (located within the modern-day Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) in the mid-18th century.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is usually identified by its dark roux, cooked until it is a color "a few shades from burning". The roux is used with okra or filé powder. Seafood is popular in gumbo the closer to the water the people are, but the southwestern areas of Louisiana often use fowl, such as chicken or duck, and sausage. The fowl is generally not deboned, and onions, celery, and bell pepper are not strained out of the dish. Cajun gumbo is usually topped with parsley and green onions.


title: Gumbo

text: Creole gumbo most often consists of seafood, tomatoes, and a thickener. Before the latter half of the 20th century, celery was rarely used in Creole gumbo.


title: Gumbo

text: When Catholics were expected to abstain from eating meat during Lent, a meatless variety of gumbo, known as gumbo z'herbes (from "gumbo aux herbes", or "gumbo of greens"), was often served. This variety combined varied greens – typically including turnips, mustard greens, and spinach. The greens were cooked to mush and strained through a sieve to produce a thick green liquid. Preparation for this variety of gumbo was time-consuming, and as Lenten restrictions have relaxed, the dish has become less popular. It is very rarely served in restaurants. In modern times, ham or crabmeat is occasionally added to this type of gumbo.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo z'herbes may have originated with the French/Spanish/West Africans. It has similarities to the French dish "potage aux herbes" ("soup with greens"), as well as to the Afro-Caribbean callaloo. The meatless dish also bears striking resemblance to a dish often eaten in Germany on Maundy Thursday. German Catholics, obeying the Lenten rules, often served a stew made of seven different greens on this date.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is often used as a metaphor for the mix of cultures that exist in southern Louisiana. The dish combines the culinary practices of Africans, Native Americans, French, and Spanish. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people from these cultures lived within a fairly small area with minimal mobility. In this environment, cultures could influence each other and meld to create new traditions and cuisine.


title: Gumbo

text: The establishment of New Orleans in 1718 marked the beginning of the French colony of Louisiana. French settlers allied with various native tribes including the Choctaw, Alabama, and Cherokee, from whom they learned new methods of cooking and ways to identify edible indigenous plants.


title: Gumbo

text: Slave ships began arriving in Louisiana in 1719. The first ships carried rice and men who were experienced in its cultivation. The grain adapted well to its new environment, and within a few years, rice was commonly grown along the Mississippi River.


title: Gumbo

text: In 1721, 125 Germans settled from New Orleans, and introduced the art of making sausage. By 1746, the white population of Louisiana was estimated to be 3,200, with an estimated 4,730 black people. Enslaved Africans outnumbered whites in most areas of Louisiana for at least the next 40 years.


title: Gumbo

text: The colony was transferred from French to Spanish control in 1762. The Spanish government actively recruited settlers for Spanish Louisiana. About 2,000 people from the Canary Islands moved to the area south of New Orleans. These settlers were primarily fishermen who soon began supplying large amounts of shrimp, crab, and oysters to the food markets in New Orleans. The Canary Islanders also brought "a love for well-seasoned food", including use of ground cayenne pepper, a spicy hot red chili pepper. Spanish authorities also granted permission for many French-speaking Acadian exiles to relocate from northeastern North America to Louisiana. From 1755 through 1795, almost 3,000 of these settlers, soon known as Cajuns, moved to the areas south and west of New Orleans. Louisiana was secretly returned to France in 1800, then purchased by the United States in 1803. The southernmost part of territorial Louisiana, including New Orleans, became the state of Louisiana in 1812.


title: Gumbo

text: By 1800, the slave trade had introduced new foods to Louisiana, including the African vegetable okra, and hot pepper plants which likely came from Haiti. Onions and bell peppers were long part of cooking in both the Spanish and African traditions. Tomatoes were introduced to the region shortly thereafter.


title: Gumbo

text: Scholars agree that gumbo originated in Louisiana in the early 18th century, but its uncertain etymology makes it difficult to pinpoint the origins of the food. Although no conclusive evidence exists, cultural markers indicate several plausible scenarios.


title: Gumbo

text: As aforementioned, while its exact origins are unknown, gumbo is often believed to be a dish of mixed origins of French, Spanish, African, Native American, Caribbean and German influence. Enslaved African-Americans often exchanged or combined ingredients in order to make the dish, allowing it to serve as a means of community and identity.


title: Gumbo

text: West Africans used the vegetable okra as a base for many dishes, including soups. In Louisiana, gumbo includes ingredients introduced by several cultural groups. Surviving records indicate that by 1764 Africans in New Orleans mixed cooked okra with rice to make a meal.


title: Gumbo

text: Though highly unlikely, gumbo could be a derivation of traditional French soups, particularly the fish stew bouillabaisse. During the cold winters, Acadians generally cooked soups, using whatever ingredients were readily available. When the Acadians moved to Louisiana in the mid-18th century, they were unable to find many of their traditional ingredients, including turnips and cabbage. In this scenario, Acadian colonists substituted local ingredients for those commonly included in the original stew. Instead of the fish, settlers used shellfish. The dish was later modified to include ingredients common in other cultures.


title: Gumbo

text: Some culinary experts in the early 20th century, including Celestine Eustis, maintained that gumbo was an early special occasion dish for native tribes. This is further implied by a late 18th-century Cajun practice. At that time, rice was a luxury for many Cajuns. They served gumbo over corn grits, a pairing common in the stews of native tribes. The use of corn and filé powder may imply that the dish was derived from native cuisine.


title: Gumbo

text: These theories are intermixed in the local legend of the Frying Pan Revolt, or Petticoat Insurrection. According to legend, in 1722, female French colonists gathered in New Orleans at the home of Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to protest the lack of familiar ingredients. Bienville's housekeeper, Madame Langlois, taught the women how to improve the basic gumbo. Langlois used okra, an ingredient which the women had previously been introduced to by the African people they were enslaving. Spanish and Choctaw introduced ingredients common in Choctaw cuisine – shrimp, crawfish, and filé powder.


title: Gumbo

text: The first written references to gumbo appear in the early 19th century. In 1802, John Sibley described "the dish they call gumbo which is made principally of the ochre into a thick kind of soop & eat with rice, it is the food of every body for dinner and supper." The following year, French governor Pierre Clement de Laussat hosted a soirée in which 24 different gumbos were prepared. According to author Cynthia Lejeune Nobles, these two events "give clues to gumbo's Spanish colonial popularity and illustrate that the dish could be both humble and refined".


title: Gumbo

text: An 1824 cookbook, Mary Randolph's "The Virginia House-Wife", was the first to include a recipe for gumbo. Called "Gumbo – A West India Dish", the simple recipe described how to boil okra and bore little resemblance to the stew commonly known as gumbo. The same book contained a recipe for "Ochra Soup" made with okra, onions, fowl, bacon, tomatoes, and lima beans thickened with flour. Although this recipe bore similarities to gumbo, it more closely resembled the Caribbean dish callaloo.


title: Gumbo

text: A more familiar version of the dish was described in an 1879 cookbook by Marion Cabell Tyree. Her "Housekeeping in Old Virginia" described "Gumbo Filit A La Creole", a filé-based gumbo with chicken and oysters and spiced with allspice, cloves, red and black pepper, parsley, and thyme. The 1881 cookbook "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking", dictated by former slave Abby Fisher, contained three gumbo recipes. "Oyster Gumbo Soup" used a filé base, while "Ochra Gumbo" and "Chicken Gumbo" used okra as a base. Four years later, the cookbook "La Cuisine Creole" documented eight varieties of gumbo. None used sausage, but almost all of them contained ham.


title: Gumbo

text: Until the 1970s, gumbo was primarily popular on the Gulf Coast of the United States. It gained a broader profile after the death of United States Senator Allen Ellender. A native of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, Ellender had often cooked gumbo for his colleagues, including five American presidents. After Ellender died in 1972, the Senate directed that their cafeteria add Louisiana Creole Gumbo, made with seafood, to its menu in his honor. The dish became more widely popular in the 1980s, when chef Paul Prudhomme's popularity spurred interest in Creole and Cajun cooking.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is cooked for a minimum of three hours, and often simmers all day. Meat (but not seafood) is often browned beforehand and removed from the heat. Okra and roux are cooked before other vegetables and seafood. Okra is removed from heat when it reaches the desired consistency, while roux remains in the pot. Seasoning vegetables are then added to the sauce. When these have turned to mush (more commonly called "cooked down"), the meat and okra are added to the pot along with water or stock, then boiled uncovered until the desired tenderness of the meat is reached. Seasonings, including red, black, and white pepper, bay leaves, thyme, hot sauce, and salt, are added to taste. According to Nobles, "proper seasoning of gumbo is essential, and in Louisiana adding just the right zing is considered an art". Because seafood cooks fairly quickly, it is not added to the pot until the end of the process. As the gumbo finishes cooking, green onions and parsley are sometimes sprinkled on it. When desired, filé powder is added last.


title: Gumbo

text: Creole and Cajun gumbos are served with hot rice, which helps the dish to feed a larger number of people. Gumbo z'herbes is served with rice on the side. Gumbo is almost always served directly from the pot on the stove, although in wealthier or fancier homes the dish might be transferred to a tureen on the table. Often, gumbo and bread are the sole courses in a meal, although many Cajun families provide a side dish of potato salad. Occasionally, gumbo is served as part of a larger menu.


title: Gumbo

text: Soniat gives examples of the main types of creole gumbos, along with descriptions of family traditions about them.


title: Gumbo

text: In "Cajun Foodways", C. Paige Gutierrez describes gumbo as "an economical dish" useful for "feed[ing] a large number of people with a small amount of meat or seafood". Nobles concurs that "one of the hallmarks of gumbo is that, with a big enough pot, it can easily be doubled or tripled and is always a good choice to feed a crowd". With this dish, cooks can use up small portions of various ingredients that were not sufficient for an individual meal. The dish is an efficient way to use up leftover perishable meats and seafood. Gumbo, contrary to popular belief, is good for leftovers if it is frozen or refrigerated within two hours. Also, gumbo made without filé powder stores better because it will not get stringy.


title: Gumbo

text: Since the 19th century, gumbo has often been served at social gatherings or other special occasions in Louisiana. Local fais do-do (dance parties) usually provided gumbo beginning at midnight. Many families "have a gumbo", or host a casual social gathering where friends and family chat and enjoy alcoholic beverages and gumbo.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is prepared and enjoyed by Louisianians of all races and ethnicities, and its multicultural influences have evolved it through the years. Gumbo is a feature in both urban and rural areas of Louisiana.


title: Gumbo

text: In rural Acadiana in southern Louisiana, gumbo is a central feature of Mardi Gras celebrations. On Mardi Gras, local men wander from house to house and beg for gumbo ingredients in an event known as courir de Mardi Gras. Members of the local community then gather in a central location while the men cook the gumbo. When it is ready, the group eats and dances until midnight, when Lent begins.


title: Gumbo

text: Gumbo is the official cuisine of the state of Louisiana. Many southern Louisiana cooking competitions center around gumbo, and it is a central feature of many local festivals. The self-described "Gumbo Capital of the World", Bridge City, Louisiana, holds an annual Gumbo Festival. The festival features gumbo cooked in a cast-iron pot 3 ft (0.9 m) deep and in diameter. More commonly, festival gumbo pots measure 2 ft (0.6 m) in depth and diameter.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The Justice and Development Party (, ; AKP), abbreviated officially AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democrat. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chairman of AKP since the 2017 Party Congress. The AKP is the largest party in the Grand National Assembly, the Turkish national legislature, with 285 out of 600 seats, having won 42.6% of votes in the 2018 Turkish parliamentary election. It forms the People's Alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The current AKP parliamentary leader is İsmet Yılmaz.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Founded in 2001 by members of a number of parties such as FP, ANAP and DYP, the party has a strong base of support among people from the conservative tradition of Turkey, though the party strongly denies it is Islamist. The party positioned itself as pro-liberal market economy, supporting Turkish membership in the European Union. Orange is the party's main colour. Other colours include white for the logo, blue for the flag, and orange-white-blue-red for the corporate design.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP is the only party in Turkey with a significant presence in all provinces of Turkey. Since the beginning of Turkey's multiparty democracy in 1946, AKP is the only party to win six consecutive parliamentary elections. The AKP has headed the national government since 2002 under Abdullah Gül (2002–2003), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2003–2014), Ahmet Davutoğlu (2014–2016), Binali Yıldırım (2016–2018) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2018–present). AKP's rule has been marked with increasing authoritarianism, expansionism, censorship and banning of parties or dissent.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The party was an observer in the European People's Party between 2005 and 2013. After disappointment of not being granted full membership in the EPP, the party became member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP was established by a wide range of politicians of various political parties and a number of new politicians in 2001. The core of the party was formed from the reformist faction of the Islamist Virtue Party, including people such as Abdullah Gül and Bülent Arınç, while a second founding group consisted of members of the social conservative Motherland Party who had been close to Turgut Özal, such as Cemil Çiçek and Abdülkadir Aksu. Some members of the True Path Party, such as Hüseyin Çelik and Köksal Toptan, joined the AKP. Some members, such as Kürşad Tüzmen had nationalist or Ertuğrul Günay, had center-left backgrounds while representatives of the nascent 'Muslim left' current were largely excluded. In addition. a large number of people joined a political party for the first time, such as Ali Babacan, Nimet Baş, Egemen Bağış and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Controversies over whether the party remains committed to secular principles enshrined in the Turkish constitution have dominated Turkish politics since 2002. Turkey's constitution established the country as a secular state and prohibits any political parties that promote Islamism or shariah law.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Since coming to power, the party has brought about tighter regulations on abortion and higher taxes on alcohol consumption, leading to allegations that it is covertly undermining Turkish secularism. Some activists, commentators, opponents and government officials have accused the party of Islamism. The Justice and Development Party has faced two "closure cases" (attempts to officially ban the party, usually for Islamist practices) in 2002 and 2008.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Just 10 days before the national elections of 2002, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Sabih Kanadoğlu, asked the Turkish constitutional court to close the Justice and Development Party, which was leading in the polls at that time. The chief prosecutor charged the Justice and Development Party with abusing the law and justice. He based his case on the fact that the party's leader had been banned from political life for reading an Islamist poem, and thus the party had no standing in elections. The European Commission had previously criticized Turkey for banning the party's leader from participating in elections.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The party again faced a closure trial in 2008 brought about by the lifting of a long-standing university ban on headscarves. At an international press conference in Spain, Erdoğan answered a question of a journalist by saying, "What if the headscarf is a symbol? Even if it were a political symbol, does that give [one the] right to ban it? Could you bring prohibitions to symbols?" These statements led to a joint proposal of the Justice and Development Party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party for changing the constitution and the law to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves at state universities. Soon afterwards, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, asked the Constitutional Court of Turkey to close down the party on charges of violating the separation of religion and state in Turkey. The closure request failed by only one vote, as only 6 of the 11 judges ruled in favor, with 7 required; however, 10 out of 11 judges agreed that the Justice and Development Party had become "a center for anti-secular activities", leading to a loss of 50% of the state funding for the party.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In September 2012, two-year-old conservative-oriented People's Voice Party (HAS Parti) dissolved itself and joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with a majority of its delegates' votes. In July 2012, following long-held speculation that former HSP leader Numan Kurtulmuş was on Prime Minister Erdoğan's mind as his possible successor as party head, Erdoğan personally proposed to Kurtulmuş the idea of merging the parties under the umbrella of the AKP.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The party has won pluralities in the six most recent legislative elections, those of 2002, 2007, 2011, June 2015, November 2015, and 2018. The party held a majority of seats for 13 years, but lost it in June 2015, only to regain it in the snap election of November 2015 but then lose it again in 2018. Its past electoral success has been mirrored in the three local elections held since the party's establishment, coming first in 2004, 2009 and 2014 respectively. However, the party lost most of Turkey's biggest cities including Istanbul and Ankara in 2019 local elections, which has been attributed to the Turkish economic crisis, accusations of authoritarianism, as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP won a sweeping victory in the 2002 elections, which saw every party previously represented in the Grand National Assembly ejected from the chamber. In the process, it won a two-thirds majority of seats, becoming the first Turkish party in 11 years to win an outright majority. Erdoğan, as the leader of the biggest party in parliament, would have been normally given the task to form a cabinet. However, according to the Turkish Constitution Article 109 the Prime Ministers had to be also a representative of the Turkish Parliament. Erdoğan, who was banned from holding any political office after a 1994 incident in which he read a poem deemed pro-Islamist by judges, was therefore not. As a result, Gül became prime minister. It survived the crisis over the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a massive back bench rebellion where over a hundred AKP MPs joined those of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in parliament to prevent the government from allowing the United States to launch a Northern offensive in Iraq from Turkish territory. Later, Erdoğan's ban was lifted with the help of the CHP and Erdoğan became prime minister by being elected to the parliament after a by-election in Siirt.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP has undertaken structural reforms, and during its rule Turkey has seen rapid growth and an end to its three decade long period of high inflation rates. Inflation had fallen to 8.8% by 2004.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Influential business publications such as "The Economist" consider the AKP's government the most successful in Turkey in decades.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In the local elections of 2004, the AKP won 42% of the votes, making inroads against the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) on the South and West Coasts, and against the Social Democratic People's Party, which is supported by some Kurds in the South-East of Turkey.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In January 2005, the AKP was admitted as an observer member in the European People's Party (EPP). However, it left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) in 2013.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: On 14 April 2007, an estimated 300,000 people marched in Ankara to protest the possible candidacy of Erdoğan in the 2007 presidential election, afraid that if elected as president, he would alter the secular nature of the Turkish state. Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that the party had decided to nominate Abdullah Gül as the AKP candidate in the presidential election. The protests continued over the next several weeks, with over one million reported at an 29 April rally in Istanbul, tens of thousands reported at separate protests on 4 May in Manisa and Çanakkale, and one million in İzmir on 13 May.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Early parliamentary elections were called after the failure of the parties in parliament to agree on the next Turkish president. The opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote and deadlocked the election process. At the same time, Erdoğan claimed the failure to elect a president was a failure of the Turkish political system and proposed to modify the constitution.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP achieved a significant victory in the rescheduled 22 July 2007 elections with 46.6% of the vote, translating into control of 341 of the 550 available parliamentary seats. Although the AKP received significantly more votes in 2007 than in 2002, the number of parliamentary seats they controlled decreased due to the rules of the Turkish electoral system. However, they retained a comfortable ruling majority.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Nationally, the elections of 2007 saw a major advance for the AKP, with the party outpolling the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in traditional Kurdish strongholds such as Van and Mardin, as well as outpolling the secular-left CHP in traditionally secular areas such as Antalya and Artvin. Overall, the AKP secured a plurality of votes in 68 of Turkey's 81 provinces, with its strongest vote of 71% coming from Bingöl. Its weakest vote, a mere 12%, came from Tunceli, the only Turkish province where the Alevi form a majority. Abdullah Gül was elected as the President in late August with 339 votes in the third round – the first at which a simple majority is required – after deadlock in the first two rounds, in which a two-thirds majority was needed.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: After the opposition parties deadlocked the 2007 presidential election by boycotting the parliament, the ruling AKP proposed a constitutional reform package. The reform package was first vetoed by President Sezer. Then he applied to the Turkish constitutional court about the reform package, because the president is unable to veto amendments for the second time. The court did not find any problems in the package and 69% of the voters supported the constitutional changes.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The Turkish local elections of 2009 took place during the financial crisis of 2007–2010. After the success of the AKP in the 2007 general elections, the party saw a decline in the local elections of 2009. In these elections the AKP received 39% of the vote, 3% less than in the local elections of 2004. Still, the AKP remained the dominating party in Turkey. The second party CHP received 23% of the vote and the third party MHP received 16% of the vote. The AKP won in Turkey's largest cities: Ankara and Istanbul.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Reforming the Constitution was one of the main pledges of the AKP during the 2007 election campaign. The main opposition party CHP was not interested in altering the Constitution on a big scale, making it impossible to form a Constitutional Commission ("Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu"). The amendments lacked the two-thirds majority needed to instantly become law, but secured 336 votes in the 550 seat parliament – enough to put the proposals to a referendum. The reform package included a number of issues: such as the right of individuals to appeal to the highest court, the creation of the ombudsman's office, the possibility to negotiate a nationwide labour contract, positive exceptions for female citizens, the ability of civilian courts to convict members of the military, the right of civil servants to go on strike, a privacy law, and the structure of the Constitutional Court. The referendum was agreed by a majority of 58%.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In the presidential election of 2014, the AKP's long time leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected president. In the party's first extraordinary congress, former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was unanimously elected unopposed as party leader and took over as Prime Minister on 28 August 2014. Davutoğlu stepped down as Prime Minister on 4 May 2016 following policy disagreements with President Erdoğan. Presidential aide Cemil Ertem said to Turkish TV that the country and its economy would stabilize further "when a prime minister more closely aligned with President Erdoğan takes office".


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In the general election held on 7 June, the AKP gained 40.87% of the vote and 258 seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM). Though it still remains the biggest party in Turkey, the AKP lost its status as the majority party and the power to form a single-party government. Until then it had held this majority without interruption for 13 years since it had come to power in 2002. Also, in this election, the AKP was pushing to gain 330 seats in the Grand National Assembly so that it could put a series of constitutional changes to a referendum, one of them was to switch Turkey from the current parliamentary government to an American-style executive presidency government. This pursuit met with a series of oppositions and criticism from the opposition parties and their supporters, fearing the measure would give more unchecked power to the current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has drawn fierce criticisms both from home and abroad for his active role in the election, abandoning the traditional presidential role of maintaining a more neutral and impartial position in elections by his predecessors in the office. The result of the Kurdish issues-centered Peoples' Democratic Party, HDP, breaking through the 10% threshold to achieve 13.12% out of the total votes cast and gaining 80 seats in the Grand National Assembly in the election, which caused the AKP to lose its parliamentary majority.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In the 2019 local elections, the ruling party AKP lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in 15 years, as well as 5 of Turkey's 6 largest cities. The loss has been widely attributed to AKP's mismanagement of the Turkish economic crisis, rising authoritarianism as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis. Soon after the elections, the Turkish government ordered a re-election in Istanbul. The decision led to a downfall on AKP's popularity and it lost the elections again in June with an even greater margin. The result was seen as a huge blow to Erdoğan, who had once said that if his party 'lost Istanbul, we would lose Turkey.' The opposition's landslide was characterized as the 'beginning of the end' for Erdoğan, with international commentators calling the re-run a huge government miscalculation that can lead to a potential İmamoğlu candidacy in the next scheduled presidential election. It is suspected that the scale of the government's defeat could provoke a cabinet reshuffle and early general elections, currently scheduled for June 2023.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Although the party is described as an Islamist party in some media, party officials reject those claims. According to former minister Hüseyin Çelik, "In the Western press, when the AKP administration – the ruling party of the Turkish Republic – is being named, unfortunately most of the time 'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us." Çelik added, "The AKP is a conservative democratic party. The AKP's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues." Also in a separate speech made in 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, "We are not an Islamic party, and we also refuse labels such as Muslim-democrat." Erdoğan went on to say that the AKP's agenda is limited to "conservative democracy".


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: On the other hand, according to at least one observer (Mustafa Akyol), under the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, starting in 2007, "hundreds of secularist officers and their civilian allies" were jailed, and by 2012 the "old secularist guard" in positions of authority was replaced by members/supporters of the AKP and the Islamic Gülen movement. On 25 April 2016, the Turkish Parliament Speaker İsmail Kahraman told a conference of Islamic scholars and writers in Istanbul that "secularism would not have a place in a new constitution”, as Turkey is “a Muslim country and so we should have a religious constitution". (One of the duties of Parliament Speaker is to pen a new draft constitution for Turkey.)


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In recent years, the ideology of the party has shifted more towards Turkish nationalism, causing liberals such as Ali Babacan and some conservatives such as Ahmet Davutoğlu and Abdullah Gül to leave the party. Several writers have also labelled the party as being right-wing populist since 2007.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The party's foreign policy has also been widely described as Neo-Ottomanist, an ideology that promotes renewed Turkish political engagement in the former territories of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire. However, the party's leadership has also rejected this label. The party's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood has drawn allegations of Islamism.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for a presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The party was an observer in the centre-right European People's Party between 2005 and 2013 and a member of the Eurosceptic Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: In November 2013, the party left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (now European Conservatives and Reformists Party) instead. This move was attributed to the AKP's disappointment to not to be granted full membership in the EPP, while it was admitted as a full member of the AECR. It drew criticism in both national and European discourses, as the driving force of Turkey's aspirations to become a member of the European Union decided to join a largely eurosceptic alliance, abandoning the more influential pro-European EPP, feeding suspicions that AKP wants to join a watered down, not a closely integrated EU. The AKP withdrew from AECR in 2018.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: From 2002 to 2011 the party passed series of reforms to increase accessibility to healthcare and housing, distribute food subsidies, increased funding for students, improved infrastructure in poorer districts, and improved rights for religious and ethnic minorities. AKP is also widely accredited for overcoming the 2001 economic crisis in Turkey by following International Monetary Fund guidelines, as well as successfully weathering the 2008 financial crisis. From 2002 to 2011 the Turkish economy grew on average by 7.5 percent annually, thanks to lower inflation and interest rates. The government under AKP also backed extensive privatization programs. The average income in Turkey rose from $2,800 U.S. in 2001 to around $10,000 U.S. in 2011, higher than income in some of the new EU member states. Other reforms included increasing civilian representation over military in areas of national security, education and media, and grant broadcasting and increased cultural rights to Kurds. On Cyprus, AKP supported unification of Cyprus, something deeply opposed by the Turkish military. Other AKP reforms included lifting bans on religious and conservative dress, such as headscarves, in universities and public institutions. AKP also ended discrimination against students from religious high schools, who previously had to meet additional criteria in areas of education and upon entry to universities. AKP is also accredited for bringing the Turkish military under civilian rule, a paradigm shift for a country that had experienced constant military meddling for almost a century.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: More recently, nationwide protests broke out against the alleged authoritarianism of the AKP in 2013, with the party's perceived heavy-handed response receiving western condemnation and stalling the party's once championed EU accession negotiations. In addition to its alleged attempts to promote Islamism, the party is accused by some of restricting some civil liberties and internet use in Turkey, having temporarily blocked access to Twitter and YouTube in March 2014. Especially after the government corruption scandal involving several AKP ministers in 2013, the party has been increasingly accused of crony capitalism. The AKP favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for a presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Critics have accused the AKP of having a 'hidden agenda' despite their public endorsement of secularism and the party maintains informal relations and support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Both the party's domestic and foreign policy has been perceived to be Pan-Islamist or Neo-Ottoman, advocating a revival of Ottoman culture often at the expense of secular republican principles, while increasing regional presence in former Ottoman territories.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: The AKP has been criticized for supporting a wide-scale purge of thousands of academics after the failed coup attempt in 2016. Primary, lower secondary and secondary school students were forced to spend the first day of school after the failed coup d'état watching videos about the ‘triumph of democracy’ over the plotters, and listening to speeches equating the civilian counter-coup that aborted the takeover with historic Ottoman victories going back 1000 years. Campaigns have been organised to release higher education personnel and to drop charges against them for peaceful exercise of academic freedom.


title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

text: Imprisonment of political activists continues, while the chair of Amnesty Turkey has been jailed for standing up to the AKP on trumped up "terrorist charges". These charges have drawn condemnation from many western countries, including from the US State Department, the EU, as well as from international and domestic human rights organisations.


title: Berkeley, California

text: Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.


title: Berkeley, California

text: Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California System, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is considered one of the most socially progressive cities in the United States.


title: Berkeley, California

text: The site of today's City of Berkeley was the territory of the Chochenyo/Huchiun band of the Ohlone people when the first Europeans arrived. Evidence of their existence in the area include pits in rock formations, which they used to grind acorns, and a shellmound, now mostly leveled and covered up, along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the mouth of Strawberry Creek. Human remains and skeletons from Native American burials have been unearthed in West Berkeley and on campus alongside Strawberry Creek. Other artifacts were discovered in the 1950s in the downtown area during remodeling of a commercial building, near the upper course of the creek.


title: Berkeley, California

text: The first people of European descent (most of whom were of mixed race and born in America) arrived with the De Anza Expedition in 1776. The De Anza Expedition led to establishment of the Spanish Presidio of San Francisco at the entrance to San Francisco Bay (the "Golden Gate)". Luis Peralta was among the soldiers at the Presidio. For his services to the King of Spain, he was granted a vast stretch of land on the east shore of San Francisco Bay (the "contra costa", "opposite shore") for a ranch, including that portion that now comprises the City of Berkeley.