Stephen Zunes – Turkey’s Creeping Authoritarianism: Is the Resistance Enough?

Turkey’s march towards authoritarianism took another dangerous turn this past week with the forced resignation of moderate Islamist Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, apparently at the insistence of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Though constitutionally the Turkish prime minister wields executive authority and the president is largely a figurehead, Erdoğan—who served as prime minister for eleven years before term limits forced him …

Robert Fisk – Turkey-Kurdish Conflict: Every Regional Power Has Betrayed the KurdsSo Turkish Bombing Is No Surprise

The Kurds were born to be betrayed. Almost every would-be Middle East statelet was promised freedom after the First World War, and the Kurds even sent a delegation to Versailles to ask for a nation and safe borders. But under the Treaty of Sèvres, in 1920, they got a little nation in what had been Turkey. Then along came the …