by Mark Weston | Jul 8, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
I have just spent two weeks holed up in a sleepy Turkish fishing village in the far eastern corner of the Mediterranean. Even there, one cannot escape the storms raging in the west of the country.
The culture wars are hotting up: the industrialist Rahmi Koc, one of Turkey’s richest men, has banned his companies from employing anyone with a mustache or beard. As well as ruling out pretty much any man over the age of about 45, this can only inflame radical and also many moderate Muslims, who are already smarting over the reaffirmation of the ban on headscarves in universities. Koc’s move was criticised by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdo?an, who is the subject of a new book which accuses him and his wife of being “Moses’s Children” (in other words, Jews). The book has become a bestseller and the topic of heated and righteous conversation among the same desperate secularists who a few minutes later, straightfaced, will tell you Erdo?an wants to turn their country into a new Iran (which wants to exterminate the Jewish race). Confused? Me too.
Further arrests of retired generals in the Ergenekon case have raised the stakes in the battle between secular fundamentalists and the moderately Islamic governing AK Party. The army and media are now arguing that the case is a revenge attack by the government in response to the imminent ban on its activities – a suggestion undermined by the fact that the first Ergenekon arrests came months before the case against the government was launched. If enough newspapers peddle this story, however, Turks start believing it – few ask whether in fact the prosecution of the government may be an attempt to protect the generals.
Meanwhile, on an overnight coach journey to Istanbul, we are stopped at a checkpoint. It is 3am. A young gendermarie officer marches through the bus collecting ID cards. He strikes lucky. A few minutes later, he comes back onto the bus and calls out a name. A young male passenger stands up, and is led off into a waiting car. After half an hour, he is brought back on to collect his bags, and then spirited away, face full of fear, into the vast Anatolian night. Speculation among the remaining passengers is rife that he may have been linked to the Kurdish-separatist PKK group (we began our journey near the Syrian border), but the coach driver later tells me that the man had dodged military service; the army’s grip on the country, as Daniel noted last week, remains vicelike.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 8, 2008 | Off topic
Having just read Alex and David’s new paper, I wonder whether the we have not moved away from an Age of Nation-States to an Age of Continents? I don’t mean that continents will replace the nation-state as the primary focus of political sentiments or public policy delivery. The EU shows both how far you can go and the limits to continent-wide, supranational governance.
Rather, I mean that we will be forced to think more “continentally” about how to solve energy problems, trade issues, crime etc. etc. Strictly speaking, of course, this is not new; mankind probably began thinking “continentally” in the 15th century. Conversly, with 9/11 we saw that thinking continentally may not be enough. What happens in one continent….you know the rest.
But we may now be returning to this in a new and different way, as our failure – even by the U.S – to project sustained intercontinental power becomes apparent. Must think about this some more…
by Alex Evans | Jul 8, 2008 | Articles and Publications, Speeches
Speech by Alex Evans at UK Parliament (8 July 2008)
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by Alex Evans | Jul 8, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa, Off topic
Those of you who follow Middle East politics will be aware of the endless succession of peace envoys who head to the region to try their hand (latterly our beloved former PM). But now, reports Yossi Alpher (co-editor of Bitter Lemons and a former Mossad official), there’s a new player in town – as he and a Palestinian colleague recently discovered:
We had been asked to be interviewed for a documentary that would explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the youth of the world. A worthy cause. The producers explained that our interviewer, a German rock star, was the perfect person to establish strong communication with our audience.
At this point, British or American audiences might begin to sniff the air suspiciously – looking, perhaps, for the faintest scent of a rat on the breeze.
They took us down winding stone stairs and through long corridors, ostensibly to have some make-up dabbed on our noses for the cameras, in fact to meet the interviewer and test his disguise. We confronted a tall, blond-ish man in his thirties, dressed in leather and studs, his face heavily powdered, his arms and chest shaven. He spoke in a heavy German accent, his movements and mannerisms ultra-gay. He tried to write down our names, but they came out dyslexic.
“This guy is going to interview us?”
Yes, dear readers: Sacha Baron Cohen – or rather his alter ego, Bruno – is loose in the Middle East.
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