Turkey
Refugee or migrant? Sometimes the line is blurred
A dozen years before the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe’s shores would force policymakers to take heed, Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 docudrama In this World brought the inside story of international migration to the big screen. The Two Afghan boys In charting the risky, clandestine journey to Europe of two Afghans – the teenage Jamal and 30-something Ineyatullah from the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp in...
Turkey marks first anniversary of the failed military coup
A year ago, on the same date, Turkey witnessed a disastrous military coup. Some junior military leadership, over their disagreements with the incumbent president and the government, executed a military revolt against the Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government with tanks, warplanes, and helicopters. The coup plotters declared their seizure of power on the state broadcaster, bombed the country's parliament and other...
Petro-Islam: The Genesis of Islamic Radicalism and Jihadism
Nauman Sadiq | The phenomena of Islamic radicalism all over the world is directly linked to Islamic madrassahs (religious seminaries) that are generously funded by the Gulf’s petrodollars. These madrassahs attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the Third World Islamic countries, because they offer the kind of incentives and facilities which even the government-funded public schools cannot provide:...
The rise and fall of secularism in modern Turkey
Yasir M’alik | Secularism has been a dominant belief system in the republic of Turkey since 1928, the times when it was constitutionally recognized and enforced under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the founder of the Republic). Within the first three decades, state-driven secular reforms were introduced to reverse the remnants of the Ottomanism to intentionally alter the whole framework...
Waiting for Nasser in the Persian Gulf
M. K. Bhadrakumar | Do not be surprised if Arab politics reminds you of Meryl Streep feuding with Dustin Hoffman in the 1979 American drama film Kramer vs. Kramer. The Sheikhs can tear each other apart with harsh words but eventually veer around to a patch-up – something like Joanna (Streep) turning at the elevator and asking her former husband ‘How...
US-Russia ceasefire deal on Syria holding – for now
M. K. Bhadrakumar | The ceasefire brokered between Russia, US and Jordan in southwestern Syria seems to be holding for the time being. The Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he saw a new level of pragmatism in the US approach to Syria. President Donald Trump put his weight behind the ceasefire deal, posting on Twitter on Sunday, “Now it is...
Iraq: No end in sight
News Analysis | Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited Mosul to congratulate the army for driving the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group out of most of the city. ''I've come to Mosul today to follow up on our victories and on the eradication of ISIL, which we are close to achieving," Abadi said on Sunday. Despite the celebrations,...
Myths on Pakistan’s role in Saudi-led military alliance
Jan Achakzai | Apparently, an organized social media campaign is in full swing against Pakistan's principled stance to join Saudi Arabia led security alliance. It seems that the aim of this campaign is to divide Pakistanis and put pressure on Islamabad to revisit its principal decision of joining the Saudi-led alliance in the post-Trump Riyadh summit the Middle East. Gen...
Terrorism as pretext for intervention in the energy-rich Middle East
Nauman Sadiq | In order to understand the hype surrounding the phenomena of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, we need to understand the prevailing global economic order and its prognosis. What the pragmatic economists have forecasted about free market capitalism has turned out to be true; whether we like it or not. A kind of global economic entropy has set into...
All the UAE’s men: Gulf crisis opens door to power shift in Palestine
James M. Dorsey | With attention in the Middle East focused on the Gulf crisis, the United Arab Emirates is elsewhere seeking to reshape the region in ways that could alter its power dynamics. The UAE’s latest effort concentrates on clipping the wings of Hamas and installing its own man in the Gaza Strip in a move that would likely...
