[R]ight-wing, secular ultranationalist ideologues with a nasty past (led by Dogu Perincek) are now being supported by Erdogan to purge and take over ‘vacated’ positions of power in state security agencies in order to rid himself not only of suspected Gulenists, but also his own supporters whom he no longer trusts.
Violent gentrification and neoliberal wars: Expelling the Kurds from Diyarbakir’s Old City Sur, destroying the buildings, then expropriating and gentrifying. Is Turkish-Kurdish war a screen for sanitized urban renewal?
Armed fighting has broken out again in southeast Turkey between the Kurdish PKK and Huda-Par, resulting in two deaths. Given that the AKP government is supposed to be negotiating peace with the PKK, we may well ask who or what is Huda-Par, which appears to be a far-right Islamist organization, one of many armed factions of various stripes that make up the Turkish fringe. But they’re more than that and evidence of another dangerous game being played blind in Ankara.
The December 2014 edition of Current History has a collection of articles on the Middle East by prominent scholars that give excellent analyses and updates for different countries in the region. Here’s my take on Turkey.
It appears certain that Turkey has provided military and medical assistance to ISIS (now Islamic State or IS) fighters in the past couple of years, allowing them refuge in and easy transit through Turkey to Syria. The Turkish IHH organization played a prominent role in this.
One IS member threatens on camera that if the apostate Turkish government doesn’t turn the Euphrates water back on, which Turkey has blocked with its dam, IS will come to Istanbul and turn it on from there. He is quite explicit that this is a threat. Hello, Ankara?
The biggest danger to the region — including Turkey — and arguably the world at the moment is not Russia’s expansionism or the Israel-Gaza conflagration, but Islamic State (IS), formerly ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
The situation in Turkey is so fluid and unpredictable, that all possibilities are on the table right now. PM Erdogan has been campaigning for months to become president, without actually announcing his candidacy. The opposition has floated a few candidates without any campaigning.
Clear minute-by-minute timeline of December 17, 2013, the day the corruption scandal broke, from the early morning arrests of dozens of people in PM Erdogan’s circle to frantic attempts by Erdogan and others to hide vast quantities of money and beat the rap. Incorporates video footage and wiretap recordings gathered as evidence in the corruption […]