Whither Turkey? The Old, the New and the Not-So-New in 2018 (By Joe Hammoura)

Like a typical adolescent, bent on asserting his phallic worth through projecting raw force right and left – thereby creating a constant scene – Turkey would remain interesting as a site of constant political and economic drama or tragedy, depending on who you

Turkey’s “Mercenaries”: Vengeance from a Woman’s Body in Afrin (By Joe Hammoura)

‘Every war is different. Every war is the same.’ – Anthony Swofford Since the beginning of the Olive Branch Operation in Syria’s northwestern Afrin region on January 20th, the Turkish army has launched massive air and ground force strikes on targets across the

Post-Referendum Turkey: Prognostics (By Joe Hammoura)

The denouement of the Turkish referendum melodrama, which has seen the ruling party’s proposal to change the country’s political system from parliamentary to presidential approved by a marginal percentage, marks the death of the Kemalist republic founded in 1923 and the birth of

Turkey’s Lost Treasure: Story of a Soldier and Lebanese Turkmen Community (By Joe Hammoura)

It wasn’t until 1989 when a Lebanese soldier was overheard speaking Turkish words by his commander that Turkey found out about the existence of a Turkmen community in Lebanon. The soldier coming from the small village of Qawashra in Northern Lebanon and identified

Turkish Foreign Policy Under the AKP Rule: The Limited Role of Turkey in Lebanon (By Joe Hammoura)

ABSTRACT During the last decade, Turkish foreign policy exhibited a heightened interest in the Middle East thereby inaugurating a sharp departure from a long foreign policy tradition which relegated the region to the backwater. The conspicuous examples of this shift are Turkey’s keen