Turkey

Thursday

Alexandra Coghlan

Celebrations of song and humanity

‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian nation.’ Ask any musician for a one-sentence summary of Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and they will probably tell you that he is Hungary’s national composer — a musical modernist who passionately championed his nation’s folk music tradition. David Cooper’s new biography seeks both to enrich and complicate that statement, questioning the definition of musical ‘nationalism’ in a country of such pronounced ethnic heterogeneity, at a time when borders were being drawn and redrawn, peoples created and destroyed, across Europe. The portrait that emerges is of no mindless patriot, celebrating his nation

Tuesday

Michaelnazirali

The Christian communities helping to heal Iraq’s wounds

Iraq remains a dangerous and difficult place for everyone there but especially for its religious and ethnic minorities.  Assassinations, kidnappings for ransom, expulsions from villages and towns of whole communities and illegal occupation of properties remain common throughout the country. The Ecumenical delegation of bishops, which went to Iraq recently, as guests of the Chaldean Catholic Church, heard horrendous stories of people being frog-marched out of their houses, villages and towns, their property confiscated by ‘Islamic State’ or simply taken over by erstwhile neighbours.  Women and children are missing and many of the younger men were simply murdered. The refugees are at pains to point out that the story of

Monday

Ed West

Qatar doesn’t deserve to host the 2022 World Cup but Turkey does

The campaign against Qatar’s plans to host the World Cup is racist and Islamophobic, according to the former prime minister of the oil-rich absolute monarchy where Indian workers are treated like serfs and leaving Islam is punishable by death. Maybe worker health and safety is just a Eurocentric construct and there are no objective truths about how many people die on building sites? Momentum is building against Qatar, with pressure on the corporate sponsors to pull out, and for UEFA to lead a European boycott. The case against Russia is also pretty strong, too, but at least Russia can physically hold the tournament in summer. One of the main political problems

Thursday

Peter Jones

The northern powerhouses of ancient Turkey

Government claims that it will ‘free’ northern cities to turn themselves into ‘powerhouses’. Since most of them are held by Labour, this is obviously nonsense. The tedious tribal backbiting and recriminations will continue as usual. There is a better way. When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 bc, the Greek generals he had left in charge of his vast empire all began scrapping to become the next Alexander. Eventually they gave up, leaving three main power blocs: Greece, Egypt and Asia. It is the relationship between Antiochus III, the ‘great’ king of Asia (242–187 bc), and the fractious, freedom-loving Greeks living in western Turkey, that provides a model for how things might be

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 April 2015

Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into the election campaign. The SNP manifesto promised to increase spending and to find a way to stop the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said she wanted to make Labour in government ‘bolder and better’. Lord Forsyth, a former Conservative Scottish secretary, said that the building up of the SNP, to take seats in Scotland, was a ‘dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country’. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the Tories should not be ‘talking up’ the SNP. Even the Democratic Unionists

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 April 2015

Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news in our economy into a good life for you and your family’. The Tories promised: to eliminate the deficit by the end of the parliament; to provide 30 hours of free child care a week for working parents of three- and four-year-olds; to grant a right for housing association tenants to buy their properties; to increase the inheritance tax threshold for married couples from £650,000 to £1 million (paid for by nobbling tax allowances on pension contributions for those earning £150,000); to raise the threshold of the 40p rate to £50,000 by

Justin Marozzi

Too little, too late | 16 April 2015

For most of us, the centenary of the Great War means recalling the misery and sacrifices of the Western Front: Ypres, the Marne, Arras, Verdun, Passchendaele, the Somme. Few of us give as much thought to the Eastern Front and, apart from regular studies of the ever-popular, self-mythologising Lawrence of Arabia, fewer still dwell on the first world war in the Middle East. This was the theatre that hosted the Arab Revolt, famously dismissed by Lawrence as ‘a sideshow of a sideshow’. The Great War centenary brings renewed attention to another neglected tragedy of the conflict. Starting in 1915, the Turks embarked on a process that culminated in the systematic

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Shrapnel at the Arcola works for the slayers, not the slain

Quite a hit factory these days, the Hampstead Theatre. The latest candidate for West End glory is Hugh Whitemore’s bio-drama about Stevie Smith. Not an obvious choice. The script, from the 1970s, recreates the atmosphere of Stevie’s life with effortless accuracy. Her vocabulary, her taste in clothes, her habits of thought and expression appear by magic as if drawn from the evidence of intimate friends. Yet Whitemore never met his subject. Zoë Wanamaker plays her as an adorable suburban eccentric, whose razor-sharp intellect peeps out from behind a façade of emerald pinafores and sherry decanters. Stevie (Florence Margaret Smith) was born in Hull in 1902 and lived nearly all her

Thursday

Peter Hitchens

It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3″ title=”Peter Hitchens and Ben Judah debate Putin’s empire building” startat=33] Listen [/audioplayer]Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding? There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of

Thursday

Alex Krasodomski

Monitoring social media is easier said than done

The three British girls who packed their bags and took a flight to Turkey have apparently crossed the border into Syria. Their intention seems to be to join the Islamic State and it looks like they may have succeeded. It emerged over the weekend that there had been contact between one of the girls and Aqsa Mahmood, a Scottish woman who travelled to Syria herself. Initially communicating through Twitter, it appears Mahmood played a role in their journey to Turkey and now into the heart of the conflict in Syria. Criticism turned on the security services: according to Aamer Anwar, the lawyer for the family of Aqsa Mahmood, they are not even doing the

Mary Barber

A cruise around Cleopatra’s wedding present

Legend has it that Mark Antony considered Turkey’s Turquoise Coast so beautiful that, in about 32 bc, he gave it to Cleopatra as a wedding present. The country’s southernmost shore stretches for nearly a thousand miles and combined incredible scenery, clear azure waters and a warm Mediterranean climate. Its strategic location means it has been occupied by various empires over the course of its history, including the Lycians and Ottomans. Two thousand years on, it is still breathtaking. The Taurus mountains provide a dramatic backdrop to the ancient ruins and beautiful beaches. With no road access to many of these hidden gems, the best way to explore them is by

Thursday

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively’s notebook: Coal holes and pub opera

I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place beneath the pavement — the former coal cellar — pertaining to an early 19th-century London house. The vault opens onto the area — mine is the last generation to know that that is what you call the open sunken space between the basement and the pavement — and has been given the latest damp-proof treatment, plus shelving and smart lighting, so that I can use it for storage. Others use their vault more creatively: a couple next door had theirs excavated several feet and made into a troglodyte bedroom. No,

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Russia and Constantinople

From The Spectator, 14 November 1914: The Spectator for the last twenty years has urged that the Russians are the appropriate successors of the Turks at Constantinople. Russia is by far the greatest of the Black Sea Powers, and she ought to be given the key to her own back door— the possession of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles being conditioned, of course, by the guarantee of free access to the Black Sea for the shipping of other Powers, on the lines that govern the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. We do not doubt for a moment that Russia will be perfectly willing to make such an agreement. That

Thursday

Gary Kent

Kurds can pull off miracles, but they need help against Isis

The Kurds can pull off minor miracles when they need to. They require active support, however, now they are at the centre of the global struggle against the self-styled Islamic caliphate, Isis. Recent history shows the Kurdish potential. Eight years ago in Iraqi Kurdistan, there was much talk about oil and gas reserves. Some thought it was all hot air; their oil sector is now huge and has driven another once impossible dream – rapprochement with Turkey, which needs vast energy supplies to fuel its growing economy. Energy could even fuel Kurdish independence. However, a longer history hangs over the Kurds. Nearly a century ago, Kurdish hopes of a single

Monday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: News of the week

From The Spectator, 7 November 1914: THE most important event of the week has been the declaration of war on Turkey by Britain. In the words of the London Gazette of Thursday: “Owing to hostile acts committed by Turkish forces under German officers, a state of war exists between Great Britain and Turkey as from to-day. Foreign Office, November 5th, 1914.” The Gazette also contains an Order in Council annexing the island of Cyprus. The Order points out that the outbreak of hostilities annuls the Convention, Annexe, and Agreement made between us and the Turks in 1878. In addition, the British Fleet during the past week has been busily bombarding

Thursday

Mark Varga

The US won’t beat Isis alone; Qatar and other Gulf allies must help in Iraq

Revelations keep pouring in about the uneasy relationship between Western aid givers and ISIS operators: from bribes given by humanitarian convoys to secure access in war-torn Syria, to food and medical equipment appropriated by Islamists and used to provide basic services to the population under its control. Moreover, USAID personnel working in the area have to be vetted by ISIS: “There is always at least one ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us” one aid worker told the Daily Beast earlier this month. This is just the start. As the Islamic State makes inroads into Iraqi and Syrian territory, it’s becoming increasingly clear that American promises to

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: The Crescent and the Cross

From The Spectator, 31 October 1914: THE most important event of the past week is the entrance of Turkey into the war, announced in the newspapers of Friday. For some time the Committee of Union and Progress, the gang of desperate and intriguing adventurers who control the Porte, have been doing their best by various unfriendly acts to provoke Russia and Britain into a declaration of war. Having failed in this, and probably also being warned that a peace party of considerable dimensions was growing up in Constantinople, they decided to force war by active hostilities, and on Thursday sent their ships to bombard peaceful Russian towns on the Black

Monday

Soner Cagaptay

Fear, loathing and an Ottoman shrine in the cold war between Isis and Turkey

Turkey and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) are engaged in a cold war. Although they despise each other, they will avoid direct engagement, for fear of the massive damage that could result. A little known Turkish exclave that lies inside Syria, known as the Tomb of Suleyman Shah and currently under siege by Isis, is a case in point. The Tomb of Suleyman Shah – a 2.47-acre sovereign Turkish district that houses the shrine of an Ottoman patriarch – holds immense emotional value for the Turks. It is the burial place of the grandfather of Osman Bey, who founded the Ottoman Empire, and is guarded by 80

Gary Kent

Never mind the Baghdad politics, Iraqi Kurds need help to fight Islamic State

The threat from Daish, the Arabic acronym for the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has gone from a side issue to a central imperative, judging by discussions with Kurdish leaders on my four fact-finding trips to the Kurdistan region in the last year. Last November, I was told how Daish operatives were assiduously measuring building sites in Mosul in an extortion racket. In February, I learned of their external funding and their continuing growth. In June, they captured Mosul with a small force that immediately acquired thousands of adherents, and established a 650-mile border with the Iraqi Kurds. The major shock, though, was how quickly the Iraqi Army

Monday

Melanie McDonagh

Turkey in Europe? Now there’s a migrant backlash waiting to happen

Well, I don’t know how José Manuel Barroso came across in the broadcast accounts of his address to Chatham House today but in person the man was geniality itself and rather impressive with it. He shares the mildly irritating tendency of EU bigwigs to attribute to the European Union developments that would have happened without it – recalling that within memory, Europe had moved from totalitarian regimes in half of its states to a democratic and peaceful unity. But in general, he gave the impression of trying to be as straight as he could with his answers. In laying stress on Britain’s freedom to stay outside the eurozone and the Schengen