Geography Archives: Turkey

  • "Kissing Death" by Ali Arkady

    The sunrise will be the same for those who wake and those who never will

    Disregard by the dominant powers of human lives in places such as Iraq has a long history. It goes back a hundred years.

  • Turkish consumer confidence index

    The Turkish economy: worse than a recession

    Turkey’s economy is back in the news, and not in a good way. After the release of an economic report by the Turkish Statistical Institute, a big dispute has arisen over whether or not Turkey has entered a recession.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    A nasty witch and apes—not from Oz

    Even little victories are rare in the East German industrial landscape. But it is always worthwhile to oppose evil witches and even defy autocrats wearing golden caps full of diamonds and rubies.

  • U.S. and Turkey agree on joint control of Manbij, Syria, violating Syrian sovereignty and confounding claims by Western corporate and alternative media of ‘Russia-Turkey collusion’

    Agreement between the two NATO allies highlights wrongheaded analysts in corporate and alternative media in the West who have played up ‘U.S.-Turkey conflict’ over Syria and falsely argued that Russia is backing Turkey’s anti-Kurdish violations of Syrian sovereignty.

  • Shoppers at the clothing retailer Zara were confronted with the company's unfair business practices recently, as factory workers attached notes to products drawing attention to the wages they were owed. (Photo: MIke Mozart/Flickr/cc)

    ‘I made this… but didn’t get paid’: Garment workers appeal directly to shoppers

    Factory workers draw attention to mistreatment and unpaid wages with notes hidden inside clothing items.

  • Soldiers of the Faith Movement (Harakah al-Yaqin) or Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army

    The Pentagon is preparing a new war in South-East Asia

    You are probably aware that you are incompletely informed about what is brewing in Myanmar, and you probably haven’t heard about the military coalition that is preparing to attack that country. Don’t take sides before you read this article and digest the information.

  • Syria, March 31, 2013

    Controlling the Narrative on Syria

    Since 2011, the torrent of ill-informed, inaccurate and often entirely dishonest analysis of events in Syria has been unremitting. I have written previously about the dangers of using simplistic explanations to make sense of the conflict, a problem that has surfaced repeatedly over the past five years. However, there is a greater problem at large.

  • How Employers Limit Worker Rights, Using the Power of Government and Market Forces

    The escalating attack on worker rights in the United States has taken several forms in recent years.  In some American states, right-wing politicians have passed laws denying public employees such as teachers, janitors, police, and firefighters the right to organize into unions and bargain collectively.  Some of these laws strip recognition and power from existing […]

  • Turkey: A War of Two Coups

    On the night of 15-16 July, Turkey went through a cataclysm that stunned the world: a huge section of the armed forces of the country (TSK in its Turkish acronym) attempted to take power from the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP, came very close to its objective, but was ultimately defeated.  Official […]

  • Now Is No Time to Wait

      With the failure of the attempted coup of 15 July, the true danger begins now: an attempt to transform the de facto presidential system into overt fascism with the support of a racist and reactionary militant mass movement buoyed by the rhetoric that the “coup was thwarted by popular resistance” “#NATO partner #Erdoğan uses […]

  • Who Is to Blame?

    Back in 1963 Bob Dylan (soon to be 75) wrote a bitter song; Pete Seeger also sang it often.  It asks, after the death of a young boxer: “Who killed Davey Moore?  How come he died, and what’s the reason for?”  Then came the alibis of all those responsible, from the manager and media to […]

  • Cuius Regio, Eius Religio

    Turkish Islamists used to dismiss the European Union as a “Christian club.”  Their claim has acquired greater plausibility now that EU leaders have appointed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Europe’s refugee gatekeeper, bolstering his Islamist government in order to keep Muslims out of Europe.  Such was the import of the agreement the two sides reached last November, […]

  • We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime!

    The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime. As a result, the right to life, liberty, and security, and in particular the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment protected by the constitution and international conventions have been violated.

  • Germany: Icy Times and Rays of Hope

      2016 began here with an icy chill, not only with the weather but far worse, with human relations.  It also offered some, like myself, at least a few warm rays of hope. First the larger scene.  The huge influx of immigrants and asylum seekers, over a million in 2015, saw Germany effectively split in […]

  • #CizreyeSesVer / #GiveVoiceToCizre: Urgent Call for International Action

    Turkey is increasingly drifting into a civil war.  Politics of violence have escalated after the general elections of June 7 led by the AKP provisional government.  Today, the peace and negotiation process between PKK and the Turkish state has come to a halt and war has started again. Just within the last month, severe clashes […]

  • Immigrants, Welcome and Unwelcome

    A silent three-year-old, lying drowned on a Turkish beach; the tearful protest of a Syrian man as he, his wife and baby are torn from the tracks next to a locomotive by Hungarian police; desperate families jammed into tiny, leaky boats, hoping to reach Europe alive or, if they do, facing ever new obstacles from […]

  • German Know-Nothings Today

    “I don’t know.”  Those words, often repeated 160-odd years ago in the USA, earned the gang of those using them the nickname “Know-Nothing Party.”  Those were no expressions of intellectual modesty; party doings were secret, so members were not supposed to disclose anything about them, but just say, “I don’t know.”   Their patriotic title was […]

  • ΟΧΙ!

    For some in other lands and continents Greece may seem distant and marginal, a few narrow peninsulas and scattered archipelagos jutting out of the sea.  Some may vaguely recall school knowledge about it.  “Didn’t some fellow named Prometheus steal fire from the gods?  Or was it Alexander the Great untying some “Gordian knot”?  Or a […]

  • Mulberry, Respect Freedom of Association and Rehire the Dismissed Workers at SF Leather!

    “90% of production at SF Leather is for Mulberry brand.  Mulberry is producing luxury bags at SF Leather.  But wages of workers at SF are minimum wage.  Working time is very long.” — Makum Alagöz Appeal for support from workers in Izmir, Turkey – 13 May Sisters and brothers, We are the dismissed workers from […]

  • Je Suis Cumhuriyet: Charlie Hebdo as Seen from Turkey

    Seeing the crowned heads of Europe march in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo has aroused vigorous dissent from many liberals and leftists in western countries — aimed both at the display of European unity and at the content of the cartoons themselves.  Are these images bold anti-clerical statements or rather racist caricatures of a despised minority?  […]