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When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) ascended to power in 2002, Ankara’s foreign policy in the Middle East was extremely different from what it is today. From the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 until the beginning of this century, the ideology and stances of Mustafa...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants everyone to understand that the bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday provide a justification for the war on terror initiated by George W. Bush, which has become a permanent and dominant feature of US foreign policy. His tone sounded almost thankful for the...
In this edition of the Interview, Fair Observer talks to Gilbert Achcar, professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The Middle East and North Africa continues to reverberate from the 2011 Arab Spring protests that rocked the region...
Anti-Muslim hate crime, which spikes following terror attacks, is inextricably intertwined with racism. This article has been difficult to write because I was hoping that, in 2019, I would not need to start talking about international terrorism and how it can impact the streets of Britain....
The extent to which the Islamic State has re-established itself in a country where it was supposedly defeated is testament to its resilience and to the appeal of its extremist ideology. The narrative is an appealing one. The Islamic State (IS or ISIS) was cornered and down to defending a single...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Dr. Anna Hayes, senior lecturer of political science at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia. Uighurs are a Turkic people native to Central and East Asia and one of the 55 ethnic minorities officially recognized by the...
Throughout its development, Prevent has faced severe criticism but has remained protected by the armor of national security. On January 22, Britain’s security minister, Ben Wallace, announced there was to be an independent review of the government’s Prevent strategy. The review was launched...
A case of an IS bride’s newborn child raises questions of citizenship, personhood and agency. You probably haven’t heard of Marshae Jones. Last December, she was arrested after a shooting at a convenience store in Pleasant Grove, a small town in Alabama. Jones, who was pregnant at the time,...
To date, the notion of gateway organizations has in the most part been used to help explain processes of radicalization in relation to Islamic extremism. Since September 11, 2001, the radical right has been on the rise in terms of popularity and reach across Western states. The 9/11 attacks, the...
US involvement in Syria — hesitant, misguided, quixotic — has been benighted from the beginning. Donald Trump wants to pull US troops out of Syria as quickly as possible. Well, it’s Friday, so that’s what the president wants now. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe he’ll insist that Syria pay...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to the Middle East summed up America’s limited policy vision for the region. Nearly a year after his predecessor embarked on a similar mission, on January 15 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded a tour of the Middle East that included...
