Geography Archives: Turkey

  As’ad AbuKhalil, or Angry Arab as he is more commonly known after his blog The Angry Arab News Service, is in real life a most friendly and forthcoming man.  A Lebanese-born author of four books on the Middle East, he is professor of political science at California State University and is visiting professor at […]

  Shortly after the 1967 Middle East War, many economic boundaries for transactions between the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Israel collapsed: both labor and goods could flow freely from the OPT to Israel and vice versa. At the same time Israel started to control the external borders of the OPT.  A customs union was […]

Excerpts: In recent years, the Brazilian Government has invested heavily in South America’s integration and peace.  We have strengthened our strategic partnership with Argentina.  We have reinforced Mercosul, including through unique financial mechanisms among developing countries. The establishment of the Union of South American Nations — UNASUL — aims at consolidating a genuine zone of […]

Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal.  He is the author of Humanitarian Imperialism and co-author, with Alan Sokal, of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.  He has written critically about ‘humanitarian interventionism’ since the Kosovo war in 1999.  In […]

As he has every year since becoming President of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to New York this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.  Several important U.S. media outlets have either already conducted (MSNBC, ABC) or will conduct (PBS’ Charlie Rose and CNN’s Larry King) interviews with Ahmadinejad in connection with […]

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was established at Bretton Woods in July 1944, at the initiative of forty-five countries that had come together for the first monetary and financial conference of the United Nations.  In 2010, it had 186 member countries, with Kosovo its latest addition (it joined in June 2009). The […]

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) clips the wings of the military by constitutional amendments. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 11 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi.  Turkish voters approved […]

We noticed a small news item, reported from Tehran, which we think deserves more media attention and reflection in the West than it received.  According to the story, Chinese Transport Minister Liu Zhijun is expected to visit Iran Sunday to sign a $2 billion contract to build a 360-mile-long railway linking key Iranian destinations that […]

  In your view, does the combat troop withdrawal mean that the mission has been completed successfully? Viewed from all conceivable angles the war must be considered a strategic failure and a humanitarian disaster.  True, the US government, together with its allies primarily the United Kingdom, managed to oust Saddam Hussein who was, by all […]

Hooman Majd had another interesting piece in Foreign Policy.  His article does something that is very necessary, but which we’ve not had an opportunity to do properly over the past couple of weeks — to take on the stream of recent Western commentary arguing that the Islamic Republic is “unraveling under the weight of economic […]

August 26, 2010 Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said today that the Islamic Republic has proposed to Russia that the two countries create a joint consortium to fabricate fuel for the Bushehr reactor and other nuclear power plants that Iran plans to build in the future.  Salehi reportedly […]

We have argued for some time that the policy debate about Iran here in the United States is distorted by a number of “myths” — myths about the Islamic Republic, its foreign policy, and its domestic politics.  One of the more dangerous myths currently affecting America’s Iran debate is the proposition that, through concerted diplomatic […]

August 5, 2010 Yesterday, President Obama called a small group of journalists into the White House to talk about Iran.  According to the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, Obama’s agenda was to signal Iran that the United States might “accept a deal that allows Iran to maintain its civilian nuclear program, so long as Iran provides […]

Rarely has an economic idea had such a brief revival.  After several years of almost undisputed sway of monetarist ideology over economic policy makers across the world, suddenly Keynesian ideas were back in fashion, in particular the idea that active state intervention in the form of increased state expenditure is necessary to bring a market […]

The Economist (July 15) published an editorial on Egypt and Saudi Arabia (two dictatorial countries allied with the United States in the Middle East) expressing hope that they would become democratic in the future.  What is surprising, however, is that in the same issue the magazine did a favorable review of a book by Stephen […]

It seems increasingly likely that we will see another round of nuclear diplomacy with Iran in September.  This round will probably include discussions with the “Vienna Group” (the United States, Russia, and France) at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) in light of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration announced […]

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said earlier this week that the Islamic Republic is prepared to stop enriching uranium to the nearly-20 percent level required to fabricate fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), if others agree to provide new, finished fuel for the TRR, in line with the Joint Declaration that Iran negotiated with […]

  In international politics, if an action seems reckless or callous and the ones taking it are not certified loonies, usually it’s because it was made to look that way, on purpose.  To send a message. Take Israel’s attack in international waters on a civilian flotilla that resulted in the death of nine Turkish passengers. […]

What is the British government’s role in the conflict?  It is officially committed to the international consensus two-state settlement, but what has our record been in practice? It’s been awful.  Britain doesn’t have an independent role — it just does what the US tells it to do.  On the other hand, the struggle is easier […]

The decrepit Arab establishment gets jealous as Iran and Turkey woo the Arab people. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 23 July 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi.  | Print