Janine Rich

Janine Rich writes by day and studies by night with a BA in Middle Eastern studies and International Relations. She is an American who currently lives in Istanbul. Find her on Twitter @OyVeyYani

Pink buses and race politics

To ally campaigns for women’s rights with racism is to accept the very logic that, at its ideological core, feminism seeks to destroy.

By Janine Rich

/ 6 Sep 2017

Depoliticised and unsustainable: Jessa Crispin on why she no longer calls herself a feminist

Why I Am Not a Feminist author argues that feminism has lost touch with its politically radical roots.

By Janine Rich

/ 7 Aug 2017

Depoliticised and unsustainable: Jessa Crispin on why she no longer calls herself a feminist

Why I Am Not a Feminist author argues that feminism has lost touch with its politically radical roots.

By Janine Rich

/ 7 Aug 2017

Please stop saying that Turkey is gone!

The types of adjectives generally accompanying articles about the Middle East create a core of “knowledge” that is a distorted and narrow reality.

By Janine Rich

/ 23 Dec 2016

The 'Burkini Battle': France’s capitulation to extremism

Reduced to symbols of national identity, women are caught in the center of a tug-of-war in which any amount of violence, of coercion and regulation of their bodies is justified in order to win the battle.

By Janine Rich

/ 26 Aug 2016

Erdogan and Gülen: two sides of the same coin

A response to an article in the Huffington Post appealing to Fethullah Gülen.

By Janine Rich and Mehmet Can Öney

/ 8 Aug 2016

Opting out: why my decision to not vote has everything to do with the attacks at Atatürk Airport

By choosing not to vote, I am opting out of choosing whose life, whose community, I view as expendable. I cannot stop the next attack, or the one after that.

By Janine Rich

/ 5 Jul 2016

Bombings in Turkey – a blip on your newsfeed?

The world is closer together than ever, conflicts spilling over state borders and challenging their very existence. It is time for resistance and solidarity to travel across borders with the same fluidity.

By Janine Rich

/ 12 Apr 2016

The other "Turkeys"

There are as many Turkeys as there are people living within its borders. Is it really a good thing that we rely on proving the worth of other places and other lives by pointing out how similar they are to our own?

By Janine Rich

/ 15 Mar 2016

For expats in the Middle East

A quick guide on how to avoid accidental racism when discussing your problems or experiences living in the Middle East.

By Janine Rich

/ 17 Feb 2016

The problem with the 'women of ISIL'

Deeply problematic media narratives on Islam and women go unchallanged, distracting from the difficult questions and warping perceptions directly involved in justifying western military intervention in the Middle East.

By Janine Rich

/ 7 Aug 2015