I arrived in Istanbul last September just as protests were flaring up throughout Turkey. An activist had died at a protest in a southern city, one of several victims of the confrontations with riot police over the last year. By the time I got to Taksim Square in the...
In Kurdish Syria, a Different War
On August 15, a car bomb ripped through a Beirut suburb, killing 21 people. The explosion was but the latest in a wave of attacks across Lebanon throughout 2012 and 2013 that were linked to events inside Syria. The ease with which violence in Iraq and Syria has...
The Kurdish Moment: Opportunity and Peril
For almost a century, the Kurds—one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without its own state—have been deceived and double-crossed, their language and culture suppressed, their villages burned and bombed, and their people scattered. But because of the U.S. invasion...
Turkey: Uprising’s Currents Run Deep
For the time being, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—with brutal police tactics that killed four people and injured more than 8,000—appears to have successfully crushed demonstrations aimed at blocking the demolition of Gezi Park in central Istanbul and...
The Roots of Social Rebellion? Social Movements.
The lesson from the streets of Brazil, Turkey, and the Arab world is to avoid underestimating half-baked social movements still in their infancy. With technological advancements and opportune conjunctures, the underdogs of yesterday can quickly turn into the makers of tomorrow. Not every nascent movement cascades into a full-blown revolution, but the pathfinders whose thoughts and actions carry forward to make history must get their due recognition.
Emphasis Added: the Week in Pieces (7/1)
From Erdogan to Bradley Manning.
Emphasis Added: The Foreign Policy Week in Pieces (6/13)
Emphasis, as always, added.
Erdogan’s Iron Fist
The over three million participating protesters represent a wide spectrum of ideologies, walks of life, and religious sects.
Erdogan Goes All Robert Moses on Istanbul
A prime minister rampages across Istanbul’s landscape.
Turkey Brings Refugees Out of the Shadows
More often than not, news coverage of Turkey’s treatment of refugees is negative. Last month, however, Turkey took a big step toward setting up a proper domestic legal framework and administrative infrastructure for asylum–and it’s something the United States should take note of.