The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Armenian Amira Class (By Bedros Torossian)

Introduction The Armenians were one of the millets of the Ottoman Empire. Identifying their exact number is difficult, but according to records from the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, there were approximately 3,000,000 Armenians living within the Empire in 1872.[1]By the end of the

Turkey Trapped in the Syrian Crisis (By Samim Akgönül)

For some ten years now, Turkey’s regonal policies have been characterised by U-turns and changes of heart. Henceforth, Ankara is bogged down in the Syrian crisis, caught between Kurdish demands and the terrorist attacks of ISIS. On December 19, 2016, on the eve

Freedom Eroded: The Precarious State of Turkey (By Joe Hammoura)

Turkey’s modern republican history is fraught with periodic political, economic, cultural and intellectual crises. An heir of a once sprawling and powerful empire, the country has been a scene of competing and often diametrically opposite ideas and visions of its identity, its place

The fall of Eastern Aleppo (By Polat Can)

Eastern Aleppo has fallen today, but looking at the root causes that paved the way to that fall you will realize it was inevitable not because the Baath forces and their allies are stronger or the Islamist factions are weaker but because the

Glimpses of Ararat from the Other Side: A Turk in Armenia (By Ertugrul Yilmaz)

It began four years ago. After another April 24th, I decided to find an Armenian friend online to understand how the other side perceives the Armenian Genocide. It was just after I watched the Armenian Genocide commemoration in Yerevan. I talked about the “Armenian

Erdoğan’s “New Turkey”: End of Pragmatism? (By Oguz Alyanak and Umit Kurt)

On June 7, 2015, Turkish constituents will be visiting the ballot box to elect a new leader. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has won seven consecutive elections (three general, three local and one Presidential) in the past 13 years, is once

Dersim Alevism, a cross-bred identity (By Erwan Kerivel)

Armenian ethnologist Hranoush Kharatyan represents an interesting study on sense of identity of Alevi communities in Dersim during Ottoman and Republic Era in his articles about the search for identity in Dersim called “Identities of Dersim” and “The Alevized Armenians in Dersim“.  But

Much ado about Kurds? (By Christiane Waked)

Much ado about Kurds? When Gamal Abdel Nasser and later the Baath Party gave the Arabs a slight of hope of becoming a great Nation, the unachieved dream of becoming this important entity gave all the Arab populations more resentment towards their non-Arabs

The Kurdish issue and Ankara’s policy (By Ümit Güneş)

The Kurdish issue and Ankara’s policy The Turkish Army with the support of the airforce of the coalition led by USA on August 24th launched an operation to liberate Jarablus city in the northern Syria from militants of the terrorist group “Islamic State.”

Where does the attempted coup leave Turkey’s Kurds? (Yeghia Tashjian)

While Kurdish leaders carefully distance themselves from the attempted coup, Erdogan is now even less likely to compromise or grant political rights to the Kurdish community. While the entire world was trying to make sense of the military coup attempt in Turkey on