Anniversaries are dangerous days. There is often a flash of attention, lots of words and supposedly deep thought and meaningful promises. Then the sun goes down, and life goes on as before. The world often notes an anniversary without real thought or determination on how to take the steps needed to make it meaningful. As […]
Co-Authored by Azadeh Pourzand and Reza Akhlaghi The Region at A Glance 2012 was the year that the Middle East entered a period of turbo instability. This period accentuated itself in different parts of the region in different forms. Syria’s civil war reached a point of no-return-to-normalcy, ensuring only one outcome for Bashar Al-Assad’s […]
At thirty-nine years old, Selahattin Demirtas is the Chairman of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Turkish parliament. He has held this position since January 2010 and was first elected to parliament in 2007 as the MP for the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir, after which he joined the now-defunct Democratic Society Party […]
The possible Balkanization of Syria is an increasingly likely prospect – at least for the short-term – and could provide a historic counterpoint in the Middle East to what the West did to carve up the region almost a century ago. With the Ottoman Empire defeated after World War I, the triumphant Allies sought to ensure their […]
It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did — but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered. So as Kurdish refugees clung to the freezing […]
I have recently concluded an e-mail interview with the Southeast European Times on the kidnapped Turkish deputy; Mr. Hüseyin Aygün of the Republican People’s Party – CHP. Here is the full version of the interview: ————— August 14, 2012 What happens to the ones that are being kidnapped by PKK? PKK doesn’t have a monolithic […]
You hear many words of wisdom traveling through the Mideast, all which offer insightful pondering to events past and present. Watching the tragic escalation of events in Syria and the failing efforts to bring the fighting to a close bring to mind words often spoken by the Kurds of the region, who are well-versed in […]
This article originally appeared on the Fikra Forum (March 22, 2012) —————————– In recent months, as uncertainty over Assad’s future continues, Turkey’s position with regard to its potential military or humanitarian intervention has been heavily debated. While Turkish leaders have condemned the Syrian government’s brutal suppression of dissent since February 2011 and warned several times […]
2011 proved a tumultuous year for states. The Arab Spring evidenced that stifling dissent through oppression and supporting autocracies should not be the status quo policy of the United States. Now we see states being made anew. How will these states fully differ from their previous forms? Will their previous economic or political strongmen truly be ousted […]
2011 evidenced our inability to predict substantial change and respond to tumultuous events. The ramifications of foreign policy decisions will not show their true colors for some time. Below, I discuss notable states – Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Cuba, Burma, Ivory Coast, Norway, Israel, and Palestine – that I believe are important because of their effects on peace […]
Officials said about 10,000 Turkish infantry and special forces punched into northern Iraq on Oct. 19 in an effort to destroy bases of the Kurdish Workers Party. They said the operation was in response to a PKK strike in southeastern Turkey in which at least 26 soldiers were killed. In order to understand this last […]
Is Turkey’s grandstanding vis-a-vis the Palestine issue hypocritical in light of its own continually deleterious approach to another stateless group – the Kurds? What conditions support the notion that there should or should not be a dichotomy between Turkey’s approach to the two groups – Kurds and Palestinians? With this, how does the apparent contrast […]
Various sources report that dozens of Turkish journalists are jailed, and hundreds are facing trial. Chief among the reasons for so many to be jailed and facing legal action is their criticism of the government. Over 40 journalists are in jail, and over 700 more are facing lawsuits with the threat of imprisonment, according to […]
Maliki’s political endurance hangs on the support of the Kurdish faction.
Last week, in a December 22th Wall Street Journal op-ed, Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uluom, a former Iraqi oil minister and current member of the Iraqi National Alliance (a political party), lamented the recent Iraqi oil lease auctions and suggested transferring as much of Iraq’s oil wealth directly to its citizens in the form of shares in […]