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Showing posts with the label kurds

The Undesirable and the ‘Civilised’ Nation State

Dunkirk’s camps
" Ever since  the Gezi Uprising in 2013, Turkey has witnessed a whirlwind of events: popular upsurges, a coup attempt, pivotal elections, changes in the political system, war within the country, war in Syria, bombing attacks. The country has been under an official state of emergency since a failed coup in July 2016, and the country’s economic model hit the fan in 2013. Erdoğan and his ruling clique have responded to these various crises in the same way: by holding ever tighter onto power and using increasingly oppressive and brutal means to consolidate their standing — a process of outright  fascization , if a very fragile one. The upcoming snap elections are just latest attempt by Erdoğan to stabilize his dominance, this time by quasi-democratic means." The Turkish elections
The early days of imperial decline I doubt it. I have commented on this article. I think it does not cover some other crucial areas of the war and the players involved: the nature of the Russian regime, Iran and Israel as regional players, the defeat of Western imperialsim in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ideological reasons of that section of the Western and Arab left that supports Al-Assad either actively or passively...
AS:  I take your point, and clearly Europe to did see, as you call it, a great ‘sorting-out’, but of course that term as you’re using it describes a set of  different processes – or, I should say, historical events and catastrophes – ranging from the Final Solution, the extermination of European jewry to the ethnic cleansing that took place at the very end of and in the aftermath of the Second World War. But what all these events share is that they’re are not a sorting-out of primordial identities so much as they are political events, driven by war, state interests, racial ideology, etc. And so to bring the conversation back to the Middle East, I think there is, unfortunately, a danger in the West’s conversation about sectarian warfare, to treat these identities as if they were primordial and as if this conflict that we’ve been seeing in Iraq and Syria is somehow natural, this sorting-out is a natural process, when in fact Syrian and Iraqi Sunni and Shia Muslims and Christians lived
—  Turkey has long prioritized  fighting Kurdish forces  over deposing Assad. —  ISIS gained a foothold in the city in 2013, but was kicked out in early 2014 thanks to massive popular mobilizations and armed opposition groups linked principally to the FSA. Jabhat al-Nusra next faced this democratic opposition to its reactionary and authoritarian practices. —  Residents also established popular organizations and put together democratic, social, educational, and cultural activities. Local radio stations and newspapers sprang up. Many campaigns opposing both the regime and Islamic fundamentalist forces emerged. —  Other liberated Syrian areas look a lot like eastern Aleppo. As a result, they have been the Assad regime’s and its allies’ primary targets. Aleppo suffered under a stream of fire since the summer of 2013; Russian air forces joined the assault in October 2015. —  Between March 2011 and June 2016, 382 medical facilities were attacked, killing more than 700 medical workers. A