Tragedies are tragedies. Ordinary people stand at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Guns and bombs shatter their lives in an instant. There can be no justification for such violence. It is dangerously random and wicked. Whatever frustrations produce the assailants, nothing could possibly draw a straight line from those grievances and the misfortunes they produce. Each of these attacks …
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 …
U.S. Ranks 41st In Press Freedom Index Thanks To ‘War On Whistleblowers’
The U.S. is ranked 41 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, which measures the “level of freedom of information in 180 countries.” According to the organization, the U.S. moved from 49 in 2015 to 41 this year, though it warned that the “relative improvement by comparison hides overall negative trends.” Citing the U.S. government’s “war …
Gareth Porter – US Media Hid Al Qaeda’s Syria Role
A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other. But it is a politically sensitive issue for U.S. policy, …
Derek Royden – Friend or Foe? How Turkey’s Turn Toward Authoritarianism Threatens Syria and the World
“We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.” -Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey There was a time, not so very long ago, when all seemed well with the Turkish Republic. Although the country’s long running efforts to join the EU had been stymied, through canny diplomacy Turkey had …
Graham E. Fuller -Turkey’s Perilous Crossroad
What does Turkey need to do to overcome its present foreign policy fiasco, one of the worst in modern Turkish history? The irony of all this is that those directly responsible for this mess — the team of Recep Tayyip Erdogan (now president) and Ahmet Davutoglu, (former foreign minister and now prime minister) — is exactly the team that one …
Turkey Has Repeatedly Carried Out False Flag Terror. Government Officials
This incisive article was written prior to the latest timely terrorist attack in Ankara, which resulted in 28 dead and 61 wounded. President Erdogan has vowed to retaliate. “Turkey will not shy away from using its right to self-defence at any time, any place or any occasion,” Turkey has been hit by a series of attacks in recent months, …
Pepe ESCOBAR – Planet of Fear
Facing the gleaming Doha skyline on a Persian Gulf winter carries the merit of a panoramic perspective. Most nations around it are going into melt down and the remaining ones – with the exception of Iran – exhibit neither the political leadership nor the economic and institutional infrastructure to do anything other than to meekly accept whatever tsunami hits their shores. They …
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – “The Day After” ….The Implementation of the Iran Nuclear Deal. The US Has Never Sought Peace
Not the movie about a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact and a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the Day After the Implementation Deal of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Although I said and wrote repeatedly in the past that the US stance toward Iran will not change, by now it should be …
Vijay Prashad – Turkey’s war on the Kurds
“Much of the explanation for the assault on the Kurds is to be found in Turkey’s failed policy in Syria.” Picture shows Kurds clashing with the Turkish police as they protest against the curfew imposed in Kurdish towns, in Diyarbakir. A war of words has broken out between the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the leader of the left-wing …