The invading NATO forces, in an action allegedly aimed at the defeat of terrorism in a country which had no tradition of terrorist activities, appeared to act with no inkling of the lessons that could have been learned.
Europeans, like most other inhabitants of the planet, are currently facing the crisis of ’politics as we know it’ – a state of “interregnum”, as the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci described a time in which the old is already dead or dying, but the new has not yet been born.
At the weekend police fired teargas at demonstrators in Istanbul, attempting to enter Taksim Square to mark the anniversary of the Gezi Park protests—another battle in the struggle for rights and freedoms in Turkey
How do Salafi and Salafi-Jihadi groups in Syria use education and flags to foster supportive identities among school students in liberated areas’? These play a significant role in drawing the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in Syrian society.
The argument that economic development should precede human rights is tired and dangerous, though often seen. It will only be a matter of time until this becomes clear (again) in Egypt – but how much time will that take, with how much repression suffered beforehand?
We must take seriously all the new parties in the European Parliament, not least because they might well be doing us a favour.
There remains a class in Turkey who have been left behind. They may be supporters of the government – Soma was an AKP stronghold – but they have not seen many of the benefits of the new Turkey.
