Turkey Threatens to Reopen the Refugee Floodgates to Europe

Even if you’ve only been paying a superficial amount of attention to the European refugee crisis, you’ll be aware of the fact that earlier this year the EU and Turkey agreed to a deal on migrants where in exchange for concessions, Turkey would stem the flow of migrants from its shores. The deal went through and … Read more

Turkish Court Convicts Former Miss Turkey of “Insulting the President”

Hundreds of Turkish academics are waiting to find out whether they will be prosecuted or sacked for spreading “terrorist propaganda”, after they signed a petition calling for violence to end in Turkey’s southeast, where government forces have been fighting Kurdish separatists. After the petition provoked a furious response from Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, several … Read more

As Turkey Turns Totalitarian, EU Officials Move to Accelerate EU Membership Bid

The EU is turning a blind eye to an opposition crackdown in Turkey that’s polarizing society and complicating efforts to find a political solution to the nation’s Kurdish conflict, Demirtas said in an impromptu interview en route to Brussels. European leaders are expected to ink an agreement with Turkey on Monday that will offer faster … Read more

Will a Turkey Related Event Spark a Much Wider Regional War?

I haven’t commented on the Middle East in a while, but a lot has been going on. In particular, Turkey continues to concern me the most, as president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears increasingly unstable, paranoid and tyrannical. The latest example came last month, when his government went ahead and arrested academics merely for signing a … Read more

U.S. Ally Turkey Arrests Academics for the Crime of Signing a Peace Petition

A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’” ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored — indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition. Which then begs the question as to why … Read more

So Who’s Really Sponsoring ISIS? Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Other U.S. “Allies”

Mass surveillance at home and endless military projection abroad are the twin sides of the same coin of national security, which must simply be maximized as much as possible.  Conspicuously missing from President Hollande’s decisive declaration of war however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship. A senior Western official familiar with a … Read more

Turkey Bombs Kurds Fighting ISIS, Then Hires Same Lobbying Firm Supporting U.S. Presidential Candidates

The one group in the Middle East that is actually standing up to ISIS and successfully resisting it militarily are the Kurds. So what does U.S. ally Turkey do to the Kurds? It bombs the shit out of them, naturally. From the New York Times: On the same day that Turkey announced it would help fight … Read more

Baltimore Public School Students Miss Lunch as WholeFoods Hands Out Turkey Sandwiches to the National Guard

If you’re a high-end grocery store specializing in organic foods operating in the city of Baltimore, and want to ensure your windows don’t get busted in, what do you do? Hand out free turkey and cheese sandwiches to National Guard troops and brag about it on Instagram, of course! Sure, thousands of public schools students … Read more

Tor Usage Soars in Turkey Following the Government’s Attempted Twitter Ban

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. – John Gilmore We’ve already seen authoritarian governments lash out against Twitter in the recent pasti Most notably, last May when the Saudi “religious police chief” stated that “anyone using social media sites – and especially Twitter – “has lost this world and his afterlife”. … Read more

Turkey’s Prime Minister: “There is a Now a Menace Which is Called Twitter”

You know a government is losing it when its leaders express public frustration with a social media website called Twitter.  I highlighted how the Saudi government recently had a panic attack about it, saying users would go to hell. Now, in the midst of a widespread uprising that began when Turks protesting the razing of a … Read more