Geography Archives: Turkey

See, also, “Rojava Revolts: The Politics of Kurds in Syria” (MRZine, 24 July 2012). | Print

My wife’s uncle, Adil, was shot and killed in cold blood in a Damascus street.  He had no blackmail money.  He was poor.  So he was shot.  He was shot by killers financed and organized by the USA and Turkey, in particular by Barack Obama and Turkey’s prime minister and prime collaborator, and their equally […]

  Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment — and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO — derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, […]

In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis.  Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping […]

Email-ID 1671459 Date 2011-12-07 00:49:18 From bhalla@stratfor.com To secure@stratfor.com A few points I wanted to highlight from meetings today — I spent most of the afternoon at the Pentagon with the USAF strategic studies group — guys who spend their time trying to understand and explain to the USAF chief the big picture in areas […]

  We all know it from the movies of Costa-Gavras: once “the leaders of the free world” start visiting your country frequently, carnage won’t be far behind. Nowadays, the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, looks very much like the set of a Costa-Gavras movie (except, of course, what we really want to see happens off-camera). […]

  A new epidemic has broken out in Turkey.  It’s called “terrorism.”  This ideologically transmitted disease (ITD) appears to be extremely infectious.  Otherwise how can we explain the large and growing number of terrorists in the country? The Associated Press carried out a survey on terrorism convictions in the world.  The figures are worrying.  According […]

  According to the tally of the American Committee to Protect Journalists, there are only eight journalists in jail in Turkey.  We, as members of the Freedom for Journalists Platform, comprised of 94 national and local media associations, would like to point out that this is a grave error, unless of course it is deliberate […]

See how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses TMY (Terörle Mücadele Yasası, Anti-Terror Law) and ÖYM (Özel Yetkili Mahkemelerin, Special Courts) to deal with anyone who stands in his way. . . . Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Ayça Çubukçu, “Turkey: The ‘Progressive’ Land of Repression” (Guardian, 11 December 2011). | Print

Hurray!  Merkel won the day!  It took a long night of backroom bargaining, but except for that Tory, David Cameron, all European Union members agreed to save the euro, save the economy, save the world!  It had been on the brink of disaster, Sarkozy warned on the eve of the meeting: unless we reach agreement […]

Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law (TMY), aimed at the press. . . . Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. “500 students, 65 journalists, 8 MPs detained under Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law” (Carlos Latuff, 9 December 2011). | Print

Aijaz Ahmad: For one thing, Syria is the last remaining representative of Arab nationalism as it used to be understood historically.  It still calls itself socialist.  Even though it has implemented a great deal of neoliberal reform, the state sector is still dominant.  It bans, literally bans, religion from politics.  It will not recognize the […]

According to Le Canard enchaîné, French agents are now in Lebanon and Turkey “for the mission to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army.” French intelligence agents have been sent to northern Lebanon and Turkey to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army out of the deserters who have fled Syria, […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  Cf. “Given the impossibility of obtaining UN approval for an attack on Syria or Iran, it’s clear as the Qatar sky what’s going on.  Arm and finance a group of revolutionaries and get them to start an uprising.  When the state cracks down, get the opposition to call […]

Ibrahim Jaza is a Syrian cartoonist.  Cf. “Once one of Syria’s closest allies, Turkey is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border […]

The Obama Administration announced two weeks ago that a bumbling Iranian-American used car salesman had conspired with a U.S. government agent posing as a representative of Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.  This brought highly skeptical reactions from experts here across the political spectrum. But even if some of this tale […]

“I’m just a soccer mom.  Well, a swimming mom, if you want to be exact.”  This is how the middle-aged women holding up the “Worked 1973-2003” sign at Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street rally at Times Square described herself to me.  She stood next to a young boy leaning against his dad, the son holding up […]

Calls by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary Hillary Clinton to “unite the world in the isolation of and dealing with the Iranians,” in response to an alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador in Washington, reflect a hubristic misapprehension of reality. The Obama Administration mistakenly believes it can exploit the accusations for strategic […]

Most Western Marxists suffer from a deep resentment: they have never experienced a successful communist revolution.  For some unaccountable reason, all of those successful revolutions have happened in the ‘East’: Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Vietnam and so on.  And none of the few revolutions in the ‘West’, from Finland to Germany, […]

  Last April, former Le Monde diplomatique director Ignacio Ramonet published (in Mémoire des Luttes) a text entitled “Libya, the Just and the Unjust.”  The war had been started a few weeks earlier, inaugurated by French aircraft which had the honor of dropping the first bombs on Tripoli.  On March 19, “a wave of pride […]