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turkeyweblog-blog · 5 years ago

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Everything about Turkey

If you want to have a relaxing and happy holiday with your loved one in a beautiful atmosphere, you should consider Turkey as a nice and safe country which can give you a magnificent emotion. Turkish historical and natural places are attractive to all tourists who visit them in different seasons.

Introduction of Turkey

Turkey is a modern country, partly located in Asia and partly in Europe. This country has played the role of both a barrier and a bridge during different time periods.

This country has a shade of tradition of East and a shade of Modern life of West. Four seas have surrounded this country:

the Mediterranean Sea is located in the south and the Aegean Sea in the West.

Also, the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea are situated in the north and the northwest, respectively.

Therefore, this beautiful country has the highest amount of water in the Middle East.

After falling of Ottomon Empire, Kemal Ataturk founded Republic of Turkey in 1923. Agricultural lands of this country are about 49.7% of the total lands in this country which shows the great impact of agriculture on the economy.

The population of people in Turkey is about 85 million people and most of them live in Istanbul; also the majority of them are Muslims.

The official language of this country is Turkish. Generally, this country has hot and dry weather in the summer; and cold and wet weather in the winter; but because of the existence of various seas around it, the weather may be different in some regions.

Turkey country

Turkey is a magnificent country in the world to attract tourists because of some reasons.

Firstly, this country has an exceptional natural location with a variety ranging from great mountains and hills to the nice beaches and jungles. Secondly, Turkey has a prosperous culture and history.

Traditional and religious buildings located in different cities tell a long story about the history of this country.

Furthermore, hospitable Turkish people, who are warm-blooded, help tourists or offer them delicious local foods; and this is the most undeniable part of the culture.

Thirdly, Turkey is the sixth top country around the world to attract tourists because of modern facilities in hotels or residential locations specified to tourists.

Besides, holding various city tours by different transportation vehicles to visit a variety of historical and natural places, attract more tourists from around the world.

Turkish Cities to Visit for Tourists

There are a lot of ways to get to Turkey from different countries.

Traveling by plane, ferry or ship, train, car and bus are popular ones for tourists based on their location. Although tourism is not the most important economy in this country, government pays a close attention to tourists.

Turkey has 81 provinces, and the following ones are the major cities:

• Ankara (Capital city): situated in the center of Turkey. Some of its tourist attractions are:

o Ankara Castle: the oldest castle in this city with more than 300 years old.

o Kocatepe Mosque: the largest mosque in this city with four big minarets

o Ataturk Mausoleum: a big museum containing the tomb of Kemal Ataturk and his personal assets

o Roman Bathhouse: this place is from the 3rd century which has cold and hot water rooms, training places and a wrestling ring.

• Istanbul (largest city): it is famous for its cultural, commercial and economic aspects. Some of its tourist attractions are:

o Hagia Sophia Museum: a church which changed to a mosque; and it is the

oldest museum in this city at the moment.

o Bosphorus Bridge: it divides the city into two Asian and European parts.

o Taksim Square: a major place with a lot of historical buildings, shopping

centers, restaurants and other important places.

• Izmir (located near Aegean Sea): it is an important port. Some of its tourist attractions are:

o Konak Square: it is famous for its Clock Tower.

o Izmir Cable Car: it is situated in Kufa Mountains and has a lot of facilities for interested tourists.

• Antalya (located near Mediterranean Sea): a great option for foreign tourism with its beautiful nature:

o Dudan Waterfalls and Kursunlu Falls: beautiful waterfalls with different facilities around

As a result, if you think about finding a place, as a tourist, to relive your stress and feel relaxed, Turkey is the best option because you visit this country and enjoy its natural and historical beauty with trying a lot of tasty local foods.

#turkey #Turkey_country #istanbul #ankara

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findsunbiz · 3 years ago

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Turkey, country that occupies a unique geographic position, lying partly in Asia and partly in Europe. Throughout its history it has acted as both a barrier and a bridge between the two continents.

Turkey is situated at the crossroads of the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, and eastern Mediterranean. It is among the larger countries of the region in terms of territory and population, and its land area is greater than that of any European state. Nearly all of the country is in Asia, comprising the oblong peninsula of Asia Minor—also known as Anatolia (Anadolu)—and, in the east, part of a mountainous region sometimes known as the Armenian Highland. The remainder—Turkish Thrace (Trakya)—lies in the extreme southeastern part of Europe, a tiny remnant of an empire that once extended over much of the Balkans.

The country has a north-south extent that ranges from about 300 to 400 miles (480 to 640 km), and it stretches about 1,000 miles from west to east. Turkey is bounded on the north by the Black Sea, on the northeast by Georgia and Armenia, on the east by Azerbaijan and Iran, on the southeast by Iraq and Syria, on the southwest and west by the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea, and on the northwest by Greece and Bulgaria. The capital is Ankara, and its largest city and seaport is Istanbul.

Since its inception in 1923, Turkey has operated a mixed economy, in which both state and private enterprise contribute to economic development. The economy has been transformed from predominantly agricultural to one in which industry and services are the most productive and rapidly expanding sectors. A decade into the 21st century, the services sector engaged about one-half of the workforce, while agriculture and industry each occupied about one-fourth.

Until about 1950 the state played the leading role in industrialization, providing most of the capital for structural improvement in railways, ports, and shipping facilities and for the establishment of such basic industries as mining, metallurgy, and chemicals; it also invested in manufacturing, notably in the food-processing, textile, and building-material sectors. Emerging industries were protected by tariff barriers, and foreign investment was discouraged; the economy remained self-contained and somewhat isolated, with foreign trade playing only a minor role.

Major political developments of the early postwar period—such as the institution of a multiparty democracy and Turkey’s adherence to the Western alliance—had a profound effect on the economy, which became more open to foreign influences. Foreign aid, chiefly from the United States, arrived in large quantities and was used in part to finance agricultural expansion and to import agricultural and industrial machinery and transportation equipment. Growth accelerated, with the private sector playing an increasing role. State intervention—mainly in the form of government loans to private firms—remained strong, and economic development was guided by a series of five-year plans. By the late 1970s, however, the economy was plagued by high inflation, large-scale unemployment, and a chronic foreign trade deficit.

Turkey has a great variety of natural resources, though few occur on a large scale. Apart from Iran, Turkey is the only Middle Eastern country with significant coal deposits, mainly in the Zonguldak field. Output of lignite is substantial. There is small-scale production of oil from fields in the southeast of the country, as well as in the northwestern Thrace region; this provides for only a fraction of the country’s needs, and Turkey is thus dependent on imported petroleum products. Both lignite and oil are used in electricity generation, and hydroelectric resources are under intensive development. Among the largest hydroelectric plants are those on the Sakarya, Kemer, Kızıl, and Seyhan rivers and on the Keban and Atatürk barrages on the Euphrates. A national electricity grid covers the whole country, including nearly all villages. The most important metallic ores are iron, mainly from Divriği in Sivas province, and chromite, much of which is exported. There are significant deposits of manganese, zinc, lead, copper, and bauxite.

About one-third of Turkey’s land area is utilized for agriculture, much of it extensively. About half of the agricultural land is used for field crops and about one-third for grazing. These proportions have remained fairly stable since the 1960s, following a period of rapid change in the 1950s, when the advent of tractors supported significant expansion of arable land, mainly at the expense of grazing land. A smaller proportion of the cultivated land consists of vineyards, orchards, olive groves, and vegetable gardens. The most important field crops are cereals; these occupy one half of the cultivated area. A majority of the cereal land is sown in wheat, with smaller areas of barley, rye, oats, corn (maize), and rice. Other important crops are cotton, sugar beets, tobacco, and potatoes. Roughly one-sixth of the cropland is irrigated. Livestock farming is a major activity; Turkey has vast numbers of cattle, sheep, goats, and water buffalo. Landholdings are generally small, with family farms averaging only 15 acres (6 hectares). Agricultural products provide substantial export earnings; cotton, tobacco, fruits, vegetables, nuts, livestock, and livestock products are the main items.

Regional variations in agriculture reflect those in the physical environment, especially between the interior, where cereals and livestock are predominant, and the coastal fringes, where most of the higher-value crops are grown. The relative warmth and dampness of the Black Sea coastlands make this region one of the most intensively cultivated despite its limited lowlands. Corn is the chief cereal and supports large numbers of cattle. High-value crops include hazelnuts, tobacco, tea, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and citrus and other fruits; sugar beets, sunflowers, potatoes, and vegetables also are important. The Aegean coastlands constitute the most productive, commercialized, and export-oriented region, with a relatively low proportion of cereals. Cotton is the main industrial crop, and the Aegean coastlands are Turkey’s chief area of olive production. There are extensive vineyards, and the region is famous for its raisins, sultanas, and figs. The western part of the Mediterranean coastlands is dominated by wheat and barley, but cotton, flax, sesame, potatoes, fruits (including grapes and citrus—and even bananas, around Alanya), and rice also are grown. The Adana Plain is an important cotton-producing region. The elevated lands of the Anatolian interior are dominated by livestock and cereals, mainly wheat and barley. In the more favoured areas, especially where irrigation is possible, some cotton, fruits, tobacco, hemp, and sugar beets also are found, as are vineyards. The lowlands of Thrace and Marmara grow wheat, barley, corn, tobacco, sunflowers, vegetables, fruits, and olives. Vineyards also are present there and in the southeast, which is focused mainly on dry-farmed wheat and barley but also produces rice, fruits, and vegetables.

Turkey supports a wide range of manufacturing activities. Manufacturing plants are widely distributed, with clusters of factories in all sizable towns, although a high proportion of total output comes from four highly industrialized zones: Istanbul and the area around the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean coast around İzmir, the Adana basin, and the region around Ankara. The leading manufactures are chemicals; food, beverages, and tobacco; and textiles, clothing, and footwear.

Turkey, the Middle East’s leading steel producer, supplies most of its own domestic needs. The main plants are at Karabük, Ereğli, and İskenderun. Small-scale nonferrous metallurgy occurs at several sites, including Göktaş, Ergani, and Antalya. Engineering industries expanded rapidly during the 1970s and ’80s and now are widely dispersed, with major concentrations around Istanbul, İzmir, and Ankara. The chemical industries are located close to the oil refineries at Mersin (İçel), İzmit, and İzmir and at a variety of other sites.

The major manufacturing employer is the textile industry. The biggest plants are in the cotton-growing districts of the Adana Plain and Büyükmenderes valley, but textile production also occurs in most regional centres. The processing of agricultural products also is widely dispersed; leading branches are tobacco manufacture, mainly in the Black Sea and Aegean regions, and sugar production, in the beet-growing districts of the interior.

Foreign trade has played an increasing role in the Turkish economy since World War II. Until the 1960s most exports were derived from agriculture, and most of the remainder consisted of minerals and raw materials; imports were mainly limited to machinery, transportation equipment, and manufactured goods. The development of the manufacturing sector provided a new source of exports, and basic and miscellaneous manufactures together now contribute more than half the total. The leading exports are textile fibres, yarns, fabrics, and clothing, iron and steel, fruits and vegetables, livestock products, tobacco, and machinery. Imports include machinery, chemicals, petroleum products, transportation equipment, and consumer goods. About half of all trade is with Europe, where Germany is the main trading partner. Russia and China are major sources of imports, and significant trade also takes place within the Middle East, particularly with the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, the main recipients of Turkish exports in the region; Algeria and Israel are also trade partners in the region.

Finally, I will leave a link which includes all companies and enterprises in Turkey, for those who want to research and discover more about this island. Thanks for reading.

All businesses address in Turkey: https://findsun.net/TR

#business #turkey

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armeniaitn · 4 years ago

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Why Russia supports Armenia against Azerbaijan in the Caucasus conflict

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/economy/why-russia-supports-armenia-against-azerbaijan-in-the-caucasus-conflict-38658-22-07-2020/

Why Russia supports Armenia against Azerbaijan in the Caucasus conflict

Moscow has played a significant role in propelling the conflict between the two neighbours by creating autonomous regions in Azerbaijan and drawing controversial borders.

Behind the ongoing border conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, there are growing signs of Russia’s old realpolitik, as Moscow openly backs Yerevan against Baku.

Since the early years of its formation, Russia, which is mainly based on a synthesis of Slavism and Orthodox Christianity, has always seen itself as the protector state of Slavic nations and Orthodox Christians.

“Russia has traditionally supported Armenia very much. Traditionally, it will. Historically, Armenia has looked at Russia as its protector. That goes back to the fact that those are primarily Orthodox Christian countries. It also goes back to all the 1915 events and also Nagorno-Karabakh [dispute],” said Matthew Bryza, the former US ambassador to Azerbaijan and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

The 1915 events refer to political and military circumstances in World War I, when Russia-backed Armenians aimed to create an independent state in the Eastern Anatolian territories of the Ottoman Empire. The clashes between the Ottoman and Armenian forces caused human losses of great magnitude on both sides.

For centuries, Moscow remained focused on the Balkans in Eastern Europe, and Caucasia, which is located between the Central Asia and Russian mainlands. The Russian Empire and its Tsarist regimes fought the Ottoman Empire and its allies in both regions for centuries. The Balkans and Caucasia have always had significant Slavic and Orthodox Christian populations.

At the same time, Moscow’s policy has required the statecraft to suppress Muslim and Turkic aspirations across those regions, while allying with friendly nations like Serbia and Armenia, using them to create spheres of influence across the Balkans and Caucasia.

Russia-Armenia axis

“We can clearly say that Russia is on the side of Armenia against Azerbaijan. Armenia de facto looks like a region of Russia. Almost all of the Armenian economy has been controlled by Russia. Armenia’s defence is also at the hands of Russia,” said Bulent Aras, professor of international relations at Istanbul Policy Center-Sabanci University.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinyan take a selfie during a meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan January 31, 2020. (Credit: Sputnik/Alexander Astafyev / Reuters)

“Russia and Armenia have tight military and economic relations, which go beyond the borders of a normal alliance. This aspect can not be discardable,” Aras told TRT World.

Like Syria, Armenia also hosts a Russian military base in the east of the country across Turkey’s Kars province, which had previously been contended by Moscow as part of Russia. Ankara, which has a military base in Azerbaijan, has historically allied with Baku against Yerevan.

“Armenians feel Russian support as Azerbaijanis feel that Turkey is with them,” Aras says.

In 1945, in the wake of World War II, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin demanded to annex Kars and Ardahan from Turkey, making Ankara approach to the Western alliance. Eventually, Turkey joined NATO in the early years of the Cold War.

“Any neutral observer could easily see how much the legacy of pan-Slavism and pan-Orthodoxism affects Russian political psyche toward both the Balkans and Caucasia. Like Russia, Armenia is also an Orthodox Christian nation,” says Esref Yalinkilicli, a Moscow-based Eurasia political analyst, who has studied on Russian history and politics.

But Azerbaijanis are coming from a Turkic-origin, holding an Islamic faith. In addition to that, unlike Central Asian states, which are also mostly Muslim and Turkic, Azerbaijan has been allied with Western politics, developing close relations with Turkey, its neighbour.

Turkey and Armenia have no official relations due to severe political problems between the two countries, ranging from the 1915 incidents to Yerevan’s implicit relations to the PKK and other previous Armenian terror groups like Asala, which had assassinated many Turkish diplomats in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Strong relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey make hesitate Russia a lot because Moscow could still not get rid of its pan-Turkism schizophrenia,” Yalinkilicli told TRT World, referring to Slavic Russia’s historic fight with Turkic nations in Central Asia, parts of current Russia and the Crimean peninsula.

Azeri men living in Turkey wave flags of Turkey and Azerbaijan during a protest following clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in Istanbul, Turkey, July 19, 2020. (Murad Sezer / Reuters)

Russia’s old Turkic fears, which Armenians also partly share, could also explain the alliance between the two nations.

“In Armenia, there is also a paranoia about Turkic people and they look to Russia as a protector,” Bryza told TRT World.

There are also other factors for Russian support to Armenia.

The Armenian lobby is arguably the strongest one in Moscow as some prominent Armenian-origin journalists run Russian media outlets. Russia’s powerful and long standing Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also has an Armenian father.

“The biggest diaspora in Russia is the Armenian one,” says Yalinkilicli.

While Armenia is landlocked and source-scarce, Azerbaijan borders the Caspian Sea with vast gas and oil reserves, qualifying the country to hold the highest GDP across the region.

“The geopolitical and strategic importance of Azerbaijan pulls Russia’s attention to the country. In order to keep [its former republic] in its orbit, Russia appears to chasten Azerbaijan with Armenia,” says Yalinkilicli.

(Zeyd Abdullah Alshagouri / TRTWorld)

Russia’s Caucasia dilemma

It had taken a hundred years for the old Russian Tsardom to claim Caucasia, a region which has many resemblances of the Balkans in Eastern Europe with its various ethnicities, different faiths and a difficult geography characterised by steep mountains.

But even after claiming Caucasia, Moscow had needed to expend efforts to stabilise the political situation in the complicated region, making its historians question the merits of the invasion in the first place.

“Some Russian historians have argued that instead of putting a century-long effort to claim Caucasia, Moscow could claim the Balkans, a geopolitically more important region, with more ease and longevity. While they lamented that, they also said that after that much effort, we can not leave Caucasia,” said Esref Yalinkilicli, a Moscow-based Eurasia political analyst.

Under the Soviet Union, a communist federative state, Moscow had developed an administrative philosophy of autonomous regions, embedding them inside its fifteen republics, which included Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But with the collapse of the Soviets, Moscow has faced a growing dilemma, particularly in ethnically diverse Caucasia, as independent states like Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan had emerged there.

While the new Russian Federation does not want to leave Caucasia, it has been difficult to stay there in a powerful sense as ethnic conflicts began exploding in the respective autonomous regions, forcing Moscow to ally with countries like Armenia to stay in the region.

But again Russia wants to use these ethnic conflicts, whose focus points are particularly related to respective autonomous regions like Nagorno Karabakh created by the Soviets.

“It’s Russia’s historical pattern to use interethnic conflicts in the South Caucasia to its own advantage. Its strategy is to prevent conflicts from exploding. But they want to keep them tense so that neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia feels strong enough to feel independent,” Bryza says.

By occasionally provoking and then meditating between the two Caucasian countries, Russia wants to keep them under its control, according to Bryza.

In this photo taken on Thursday, July 16, 2020, a woman stands in front of her damaged home after the shelling by Armenian forces in the Tovuz region of Azerbaijan. (Ramil Zeynalov / AP Archive)

Yalinkilicli agrees with Bryza, but he also thinks that the loss of Georgia to the Western alliance following the Russia-Georgia War in 2008, which came after the success of the Rose Revolution in 2003, also forces Russia to rely upon Armenia more than ever in Caucasia.

“Russian access to Caucasia has been ensured through Armenia. If Armenia were not there, Russia would break away from Caucasia,” says Aras.

Last week, Russia began its military exercises with the participation of 150,000 soldiers. In September, Moscow will start another military exercise, which was named as Caucasia 2020, revealing Russia’s complicated love affair with the region.

Is Russia pushing Armenia to fight Azerbaijan

“Russia may be provoking this [recent clashes],” Bryza assesses recent escalations.

“For decades, Azerbaijanis have been forced to fight Armenians provoked by Russians,” says Yalinkilicli.

Experts also think that Russia might try to unbalance Ankara’s positioning in different conflicts against Moscow by recently pushing Armenians against Azerbaijanis.

“While Russia clearly wants to chasten Azerbaijan with Armenia [by provoking Yerevan against Baku], there is also an implicit Russian effort to limit Turkey’s geopolitical influence in Caucasia and across other regions, where Moscow and Ankara have recently been facing each other,” views Yalinkilicli.

Russia and Turkey have recently been at odds in several conflicts across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, from Libya to Syria, and now Azerbaijan, too.

“It appears that Russia wants to shift Turkey’s focus in Libya and Eastern Mediterranean [by provoking Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict] to Caucasia,” the Eurasia analyst says.

Russia and France, another country with a strong Armenian lobby and also at odds with Turkey in Libya, try to stall Ankara with the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, according to Yalinkilicli.

Russia, France and the US, where the Armenian diaspora has also a powerful presence, are the three leading countries in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk group, which was established in 1992 to address the Caucasian conflict.

“Seemingly something similar to what’s been happening in both Syria and Libya is playing out with Russia, Turkey and different sides [regarding Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict],” Bryza analyses.

Source: TRT World

Read original article here.

#Armenia #Armenians #Caucasus #Karabakh #Yerevan #Economy

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istanbuldefinition · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

The very geography of the place offers a wide outlook. As a part of his everyday experience, a resident of Constantinople lives within sight of Europe and Asia. Every day of his life, he sees the waterway that runs between the two great continents thronged with vessels of every nation, hurrying to and fro to bring the ends of the earth together. Then, how much human power has been enthroned here the dominion of Byzantium for one thousand years; the rule of Constantine and his successors for eleven centuries; the sway of the Ottoman Sultans through four hundred and fifty years. If what we see ought to do with what we are, here is a mound in which to fashion a large life. But Europe and Asia are present in more than their physical aspects, or in long periods of their history. Their civilizations also meet here.

On every side there is the pressure of a dominant Oriental society and polity, with its theocratic government, autocracy, the creed of Islam, polygamy, slavery, eunuchs, secluded and veiled womanhood, men in long robes and turbans, sluggishness, repose, the speech of Central Asia softened by the accents of Persia and Arabia, minarets, domes surmounted by the Crescent, graceful but strange salutations, festivals which celebrate events in a course of history not your own, and express joys which have never gladdened your soul And mingling, but not blended, with this world of Asiatic thought and sentiment and manner, is a European world, partly native, partly foreign, with ideas of freedom, science, education, bustle, various languages, railroads, tramways, ladies in the latest Parisian fashions, church bells, the banner of the Cross, newspapers and periodicals from every European and American capital, knitting scattered children to the life of their fatherland.

Foreign communities in Istanbul

The members of the foreign communities in the City of the Sultan do not forget the lands of their birth, or of their race and allegiance. Though circumstances have carried them far from their native shores and skies, physical separation does not sever them from the spirit of their peoples. Nay, as if to make patriotic sentiment easier, foreigners are placed under the peculiar arrangements embodied in what are termed the Capitulations, whereby, in virtue of old treaties, they enjoy the privilege of living to a great extent under the laws of their respective countries, with little interference on the part of the Ottoman Government.

When your house is your castle, in the sense that no Turkish policeman dares enter it without the authorization of your Consulate or Embassy, when legal differences between yourself and your fellow-countrymen are submitted to judges, and argued by barristers, bred in the law which rules in your own land, when your church and school can be what they are at home, and when you can forward your letters, not only to foreign countries but even to some parts of the Turkish Empire, with a stamp bearing the badge of your own Government, it is natural that European residents in Constantinople should be able to preserve their special character, both after living here for many years, and also from generation to generation.

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staristan · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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istanbulfoodtour · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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bookingistanbul · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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hagiasophiart · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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istlifestyle · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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hitistanbul · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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istanbulhippodrome · 5 years ago

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Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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bonpourlorient · 6 years ago

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The Moment I Realized I Wasn’t White and other half-thoughts on race

“Wait a minute, do you self identify as white?” I got asked this question nearly a year ago at a friends house. I was trying to explain how, for a certain group of Turkish people, relatively well off, ethnically Turk or at least passing, cis, hetero, male, “white,” etc. authoritarianism was less palpable, or at least more conveniently hidden. My friend (who was himself Jewish) was confused. I explained that “white Turk” (Beyaz Türk) in Turkey is a particularly confusing marker of identity, that imagines a bundle of attitudes that may or may not always go together in reality: secular, progressive, middle class, “European” etc etc. I did a bit of asking around with other friends who lived abroad and they were very confused with the question. “Of course we’re white” said a friend living in Netherlands (who frequently complains of the racism people from Turkey face in Europe?!). Others from Istanbul, Chicago and Ankara agreed. And then I asked my American friends who assured me I was not white. “Sweetheart. Believe me, you wouldn’t be considered white in the US.” I realized then and there that this was not a unique experience. Epidermalization is a thing that happens not only to brown people but also to “black” people who come to North America from a variety of back grounds. A professor doing research with black McGill students had once explained to us that “black” students from outside North America often felt surprised to discover they were black. What is interesting in my and my Turkish friends’s cases, is how late this realization occurs. This I suspect is partly due to privilege (for the most part I experience my difference as an ambiguity that amuses me and confuses others “is he Lebanese? Or maybe Spanish? Or maybe from Brazil?”). But in a few cases the Turkish people I asked were offended by the question. How dare I question their presumed whiteness? This of course is due to the operation of hateful racial logics, to which affluent Turks can come to hold onto. Here’s an instructive example. A leading figure of the main opposition party in Turkey recently sent out a tweet quoting the World Economic Forum. The tweet ranked different countries according to “rule of law,” showing first the top ten countries and then how Turkey ranked 111th behind Uganda and Burkina Faso. “Shame” the politician added, “they’ve turned this great nation into a tent-state.” The racial logics that operate within this tweet are not worth unpacking one by one. The phrase “tent” state here is used to strike up a colonial imagery of backwardness and underdevelopment while at the same time contributing to a sense of historical gravity and monumentalism through which Turkish nationalism in most of its hues imagines Turkey. The desire for Turkey to rank higher and be “included” among the “civilized” nation states. The gap between “Turkey’s” rankings and the lived reality of human rights for people inside Turkey’s borders. The unquestioning trust in the epistemologies that underlie the ranking of different countries. This disdain for nonwhite people, lived at the level of everyday desire, both inside and outside Turkey is a particular form of whiteness that does not always follow its North American counterparts. I remember very distinctly the distrust I was taught to hold against Romani people every time a taxi driver would tell me “don’t believe them when they beg for money. these people are even richer than you and I. They don’t want to work so they beg from money from you and I and then hoard it somewhere else.” This hatred of course is an ideological in its purest form, Romani people are both secretly too rich (they hoard their money) and they are poor lazy bums (they don’t want to work). Cue Zizek jokes. — I’ve began to think more and more that the proliferation of racial logics throughout the world cannot be contained within the European colonial or settler colonial projects. There’s a way in which Turkish racism towards Kurds, Chinese racism towards Uyghurs, French racism toward Romani, Japanese racism towards Koreans etc etc can not be contained within the critique of European racism alone. Yet these all operate together especially as they come to shape/be shaped by more abstract social relations such as the state or capital. Capital enrols and mobilizes such frictions across borders, to its own advantage (look out for my book review of Operations of Capital.) Sure, there are more rooted readings of racialization in North America that try to have a universal purchase. The black radical tradition is particularly rich in this regard. Even then, the conversations I find myself in, especially the theoretical ones, are thoroughly grounded in European social history. This is simply inadequate. Especially when capitalism and the contemporary nation state have long since demonstrated their sustainability outside of North America and Europe. If the term “race” has any global intellectual purchase today, this lies in demonstrating precisely how structures such as the nation state and capitalism persist and are resisted, in ways that have little to do with European social history. In short my hypothesis is that racialized logics operate somewhere at the level of an abstract machine and are related to the contemporary nation states and capital more generally rather than whiteness more specifically. All of which is to say, Balibar is right about race being the supplement to the nation state. —— Last month I found myself in a post colonial reading group discussing Kathryn Yusoff’s A Billion Black anthropocene. For all its focus on race and environmental justice the book had nothing to say outside of European social history. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem, had the entire literature around the term Anthropocene not been so thoroughly focused on North America. In vain I tried to explain myself. Then I found Ken Wark reviewing the book and felt vindicated to see they agreed: “Yusoff does not decenter Eurocentric logics as much as she thinks she does. Blackness ends up still being in a relation of difference to a Eurocentric geopolitics. To talk in the language of racialized categories themselves for a moment: The Asian population of the planet is bigger than that of Black and white combined. And yet Asia is hardly even mentioned, as if it had no agency or presence in the Anthropocene.” The problem of writing history, it’s relation to colonialism and capitalism has long been a theme in Marxist thought, particularly around the term “so-called primitive accumulation.” I feel like it’s hightime these lessons were applied to the stories we tell about the Anthropocene.

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tripistanbul · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on

Rule of Constantine

Foreign communities in Istanbul

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mideastsoccer · 6 years ago

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Sudan puts Saudi-UAE religious and cheque book diplomacy to the test

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts and Tumblr

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ chequebook diplomacy driven-soft power strategy is being put to the test in Sudan where a stand-off between protesters and the country’s ruling military council is at a decisive point.

With protesters refusing to tear down barricades in front of the military headquarters in the capital Khartoum and surrender the street, breaking off talks with the military council and demanding immediate instalment of a civilian government, the stand-off has become a battle of wills.

Like in Algeria, Sudanese protesters have learnt from the 2011 popular Arab revolts that initially securing their success in forcing a long-standing leader to step down depends on their ability to sustain mobilization and street pressure.

Both Sudan and Algeria have, in the wake of the toppling of presidents Omar al-Bashir and Abdulaziz Bouteflika, promised elections and arrested and/or detained officials and/or businessmen on corruption charges in a so far unsuccessful bid to pacify demonstrators and persuade them to end their protests.

With elections scheduled for July in Algeria while Sudan’s military is talking about one or more years of pe-election transition, Algerian protesters may have a leg up on their Sudanese brethren.

Nonetheless, protesters have also learnt that pledges of support by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt potentially are a Trojan horse. The UAE and Saudi Arabia led the regional effort to roll back the achievements of the 2011 revolts that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia.

Egypt joined the counterrevolution after general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president in a UAE-Saudi-supported coup in 2013.

As a result, protesters have also learnt that they are up against formidable opponents, who include not just the militaries and associated businessmen and politicians who have a vested interest in the ancien regime, but also their regional backers.

Saudi, UAE and Egyptian backing for renegade Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar in the battle for Tripoli, the seat of the United Nations-recognized government, serves as an immediate reminder of the obstacles and risks the protesters face.

It has prompted at least some Sudanese to demand that the ruling military council reject US$3 billion in aid offered in recent days by the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

So far Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt have paid lip service to the Sudanese and Algerian protesters while trying to bolster military efforts to be seen to be meeting their demands yet maintaining ultimate grip on their countries’ politics.

The removal of Mr, Al-Bashir in Sudan was of particular importance to the counterrevolutionary states because of the fact that he came to power with the support of Islamist forces, the Gulf states and Egypt’s bete noir.

Sudan moreover is geopolitically important because of its strategic location in the Horn of Africa, a battleground for rival camps in the Middle East, Mr. Al-Bashir’s playing of both sides of the Middle East divide against the middle, and the granting to Turkey of access to Suakin Island that faces the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah.

Initial indications are that protesters’ fears that Saudi and UAE cheque book diplomacy comes with strings attached are not unfounded. Anti-Saudi and UAE sentiment has also been fuelled by the two states�� acquisition of Sudanese agricultural land in recent years and opposition to the war in Yemen.

The head of Sudan’s military council, Lt. General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, developed close ties to the Gulf states in his former role as commander of Sudanese forces that are part of the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen.

Mr. Burhan, in apparent recognition of the 22-month old UAE-Saudi led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar, refused to meet with Qatari foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani days after receiving a Saudi-UAE delegation. Sudan has since said it was working out arrangements for a Qatari visit.

Similarly, UAE and Saudi cheque book diplomacy has also bolstered Mauritanian support for their fight against Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood.

This week’s visit by Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan to Iran during which the two countries agreed to form a joint quick reaction force to combat militant activity on their shared border, increase Iranian electricity sales to Pakistan and build a railway linking Islamabad, Tehran and Istanbul, puts the effectiveness of Gulf cheque book diplomacy to the test.

Pakistan appeared to be tilting toward Saudi Arabia in its dispute with Iran after the kingdom and the UAE pulled the cash-strapped South Asian nation back from the brink with $US 10 billion in financial aid and pledges of another $10 billion in investment.

Saudi Arabia’s greater emphasis on cheque book diplomacy coincides with a substantial cutback in global funding of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservativism to the tune of an estimated US$100 billion over the last four decades.

The cutback means that funding has been focused on regions that are of geopolitical importance to the kingdom such as the troubled Pakistani province of Balochistan that borders Iran and Yemen.

The cutback, however, does not mean that the fallout of the Saudi funding is no longer felt around the globe.

Some analysts believe that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman gives Saudi-backed ultra-conservative preachers a freer hand in Southeast Asia as opposed to Europe where he tries to project himself as an Islamic moderate. If so, its an approach that has produced at best mixed results.

Two Saudi-educated religious scholars, Bachtiar Nasir and Zaitun Rasmin, played a key role in ultra-conservative mass protests in 2016, the largest in Indonesian history, that brought down Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, aka Ahok, an ethnic Chinese Christian and ally of Indonesian president Joko Widodo.

Both students in the 1990s at the Islamic University of Medina, a key Saudi vehicle for the promotion of ultra-conservatism, Messrs. Nasir and Rasmin have since their return to Indonesia propagated a puritanical strand of Islam and built a substantial following among the middle class.

However, in contrast to the kingdom, that more recently has been pushing in countries like Algeria, Libya and Kazakhstan a quietist, loyalist interpretation of Islam, Messrs. Nasir and Rasmin have advocated political activism similar to the kingdom’s Sahwa or Islamic Awakening movement that called for peaceful political reform.

The movement, believed to have been partly inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, lost ground with the banning of the Brothers in the kingdom and the arrest of many of its leaders after the rise of Prince Mohammed.

Messrs. Nasir and Rasmin have aligned themselves with the far-right Sunni Muslim Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI), whose leader, Muhammad Rizieq Shihab, a charismatic preacher and one-time vigilante of Yemeni descent, fled in 2017 to Saudi Arabia, where he has been allowed to reside to escape sexual harassment charges.

The alliance provides Messrs. Nasir and Rasmin a mass base that they can mobilize. The two men, moreover, huge followings on social media. Mr. Nasir has 1.1 million followers on Instagram, 526,000 on Facebook, and 217,000 on Twitter.

Mr. Rizieq was briefly detained and questioned in November by Saudi police after he flew a black flag inscribed with the Muslim principle of tawhid or the oneness of God at the back of his Mecca residence. The flag resembled ones used by jihadists, including the Islamic State.

“Are you a criminal for installing the flag on your house? I don’t think so... I think Rizieq is not a threat to my country. If he had violated any laws, he would have undergone a legal process. Rizieq doesn’t have problems,” commented Usamah Muhammad Al-Syuaiby, the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia.

Despite the seeming differences with Saudi policy, Mr. Rasmin appeared to be doing the kingdom’s bidding when he travelled to Malaysia in advance of the 2018 elections to support those segments of the Sunni ultra-conservative community that wanted to ensure that scandal-tainted prime minister Najib Razak would be re-elected.

Saudi Arabia had sought to help Mr. Razak, who stood accused of defrauding Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund of billions of dollars, by publicly supporting some of his questionable assertions. The Saudi strategy failed with Mahathir Mohamed’s defeat of Mr. Razak and the souring of Saudi-Malaysian relations.

Ultra-conservatives toeing the Saudi line argued that a defeat of Mr. Razak would lead to chaos. They denounced those who voted against him as khawarij, literally ‘those who walk away’ but frequently defined as ‘the dogs of hellfire.’

In an interview with Utusan, the newspaper of Mr. Razak’s party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Mr. Rasmin backed the ultra-conservative argument that “it is prohibited to elect or let a non-Muslim be elected,“ a reference to the fact that Mr. Mahathir’s alliance included non-Muslims and liberals.

Taken together, developments in Sudan, Algeria, Pakistan and Southeast Asia, suggest that the effectiveness of Saudi and UAE religious and cheque book diplomacy hangs in the balance. The developments raise the question whether short-terms successes can be maintained long-term.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

#sudan #saudi arabia #saudi #uae #iran #algeria #islam #libya #unitedarabemirates #pakistan #malaysia #indonesia

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10 Best Places to Visit in Turkey - Travel Video

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