Popular posts from this blog
Turkey signals sweeping regional ambitions
By James M. Dorsey A nationalist Turkish television station with close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dug up a 12-year-old map that projects Turkey’s sphere of influence in 2050 as stretching from South-eastern Europe on the northern coast of the Mediterranean and Libya on its southern shore across North Africa, the Gulf and the Levant into the Caucasus and Central Asia. Buoyed by last year’s Azerbaijani defeat of Armenia, TGRT, a subsidiary of Ihlas Holding, a media and construction conglomerate that has won major government tenders, used the map to advance a policy that has long constituted the agenda of some of Mr. Erdogan’s closest advisors. The broadcasting of the map, first published in a book authored by George Freidman , the founder of Stratfor, an influential American corporate intelligence group, followed calls by pan-Turkic daily Turkiye , Ihlas’ daily newspaper that has the fourth-largest circulation in Turkey, to leverage the Azerbaijani victory to cre
Turkish shadow boxing reflects growing rivalry with Iran
By James M. Dorsey Turkey is leveraging its successful backing of Azerbaijan’s recent war against Armenia to counter Iran in the Caucasus and gradually challenge Russia in Central Asia, the heart of what Moscow considers its backyard. The Turkish moves have elicited different responses from Russia and Iran, two countries Turkey views as both partners and rivals. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been careful not to jeopardize his newly found status as a Russian recognized-player in the southern Caucasus. By contrast, Mr. Erdogan seems determined to provoke Iran with statements and postings by-his state-run broadcaster that potentially call into question the territorial integrity of the Islamic republic. In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is fueling Iran’s deepest fears . Iran, not without reason, has long believed that the United States and Saudi Arabia are bent on instigating ethnic unrest in a bid to force Tehran to alter policies, if not topple the Iranian regime. “Tur
Muslim scholar: Human rights policy needs to focus on religious scholars, not just activists
By James M. Dorsey A prominent Muslim scholar has warned that the West’s failure to include the incarceration in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world of pro-democracy religious scholars risks perpetuating autocratic rule. “The world manufactures the condition that it condemns. We don’t rise up to condemn the persecution of Muslim democrats when it occurs, and we don’t go out of our way to protect Muslim democrats. In fact, there is a deeply embedded hypocrisy when it comes to the Muslim world,” said Khaled Abou el Fadel, a Kuwait-born University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Islamic law professor and human rights activist. Mr. Abou el Fadel was speaking at a virtual conference , organized by the Washington-based Arab Center for Law and Research to focus attention on Sheikh Salman al Oudeh, a popular but controversial religious scholar, who is one of several religious figures incarcerated since 2017 on terrorism-related charges. Saudi prosecutors have demanded the d
Comments
Post a Comment