Vicious Infrastructure

Security dams, military fortresses, and mosques in the “new” Turkey

The Turkish State is building a series of reservoirs alongside the Turkish-Iraqi border, not to produce electricity or to irrigate farms, but to prevent “terrorists” infiltrating from Iraq. At the same time, the state is installing military fortresses, called kalekol in Turkish, within Kurdish towns as a way to assert its powerful ...
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Vicious Infrastructure

Pre-Coup, Coup and the Media Intellectuals in Turkey

There are many unknowns about the July 15th coup d’état attempt in Turkey. Putschists, instead of taking down the leadership or shutting down communication, ineffectually closed off some roads, attacked government buildings including the Parliament, and killed many innocent civilians without clear operational objectives. The level of confusion and disorder ...

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Pre-Coup, Coup and the Media Intellectuals in Turkey

Islamists and the Perpetuity of Catastrophe

Islamist governments in the Middle East have provided the perfect breeding ground for religious extremism. In the mean time, intoxicated by the prospect of a holy war, European Muslim youth are pouring into Syria in order to participate in the spectacle of terror. This new breed of fanaticism is mobile, ...

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Islamists and the Perpetuity of Catastrophe

Gezi, Occupy Solidarity, and Beyond

On October 4th and 5th, activists, scholars, politicians and artists came together for the Talk Turkey: Rethinking Life Since Gezi conference at the New School For Social Research to discuss some of the social, political and economic questions that the Gezi Uprising in Turkey underlined. Each panel was organized around ...
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