A reference in a recent post on ethnic politics in eastern Anatolia to “the two Kurdish dialects of zaza and kurmanci” prompted the following letter from a reader, which we produce verbatim: Zaza(Sassaniden)’s are not Kurds and not Turks We… Read moreNext: Free Zazaistan?
One man was killed and five officers were injured during clashes between Kurdish protesters and police in southeastern Turkish city of Batman Aug. 29. The violence flared after some 1,000 Kurds marched to demand the release of the bodies of… Read moreKurds clash with Turkish police, one dead
A Reuters report Aug. 18 depicts the situation in the Sinai Peninsula escalating to a small counter-insurgency war between Egyptian security forces and Bedouin Islamic militants. A landmine damaged an Egyptian police vehicle in northern Sinai Aug. 27, injuring a… Read moreEgyptian security forces hunt Bedouin militants in Sinai
The Economist writes in its Aug. 18-25 issue that last week, in a landmark speech in Diyarbakir, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first Turkish leader ever to admit that Turkey had mishandled the Kurdish rebellion in the country’s… Read morePKK ceasefire in Turkey; new attacks in Iran
In a London Times opinion piece Aug. 11, “Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era,” author Salman Rushdie begins by applauding Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, for admitting that… Read moreSalman Rushdie calls for “Islamic Reformation”
Turkey's Kurdish separatist guerillas, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), officially ended a five-year truce in June, and eastern Turkey has since seen a series of bombings and skirmishes. Most recently, five Turkish soldiers died after a bomb blast ripped through… Read moreTurkish intolerance fuels PKK resurgence
Jane Fonda, AKA Hanoi Jane, AKA Beirut Jane is back in the news. She has chosen a rather uncontroversial moment to oppose the Iraq war, doing a bus tour with Iraq veterans’ families. According to the BBC, The star was… Read moreBeirut Jane distorts her history
An extremely insightful commentary on al-Qaeda and the new terror wave from Al-Jazeera. Soumayya Ghannoushi cuts through the propaganda that the attacks are unrelated to Iraq or any other legitimate grievances—without loaning the slightest degree of legitimacy to either criminal… Read moreAl-Qaeda: real grievances, wrong answers
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) runs a July 13 piece from the Florida Times-Union, “Muslim Leaders Condemning Terror to Deaf?” in which columnist Mark Woods speaks to CAIR’s new chairman Parvez Ahmed and finds that such Muslim condemnations are… Read moreIslam and terror: two Muslim views
Jeez, will people please stop blowing other people up already? This is really getting old. Minibus Explosion in Turkey Leaves 5 Dead ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A bomb tore apart a minibus in a popular Aegean beach resort town Saturday,… Read moreTerror in Turkey
This analysis from Lebanon’s Daily Star, July 12, online at Kurdish Media, makes clear the dilemma of the Syrian Kurds. The fact that they are disenfranchised by the Damascus regime makes them a convenient football for White House hawks. And… Read moreSyria’s Kurds: pawns or actors?
Just as Bush is trumpeting claims that Syria is planning to re-intervene in Lebanon, comes a disturbing June 8 story from the New York Sun, claiming that the familiar “regime change” formula is about to be applied to Damascus: At… Read moreSyria target of “regime change” offensive
