Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
Turkey doesn’t need Europe? Cool. Ok. Tamam. Haydi, ciao. No problem here. Totally up front: only thought Turkey in the EU was a good idea as long as I thought that it was better to keep the wolf in the fold where you can keep an eye on it.
But this is an animal out of control. Nothing we can do from the outside. We’ll just have to wait for Turks themselvesto get fired up enough by the damage he’s doing their country domestically and internationally to take some sort of action themselves — like the “unity” my White Turk friend dreams of: “Memo to: a certain generation of “progressive” Turks“.
…released as Head-On in English and Gegen Die Wand in German (“Against the Wall”, which is the direct from-Turkish translation), makes me cry every time I see it.
Why, with all the super, violent emotion that German-Turk Fatih Akin‘s brilliant film packs, is it this one that moves me?
Partly because it’s a time-out from the film’s relentless intensity and melancholy — though the sound-track of this particular scene only underlines a very Turkish sense of melancholy.
Partly because it’s so familiar: how many times did I watch my mother — and now myself — doing exactly what Sibel Kekilli is doing?
Partly it’s because food is and always has been something that Turks and Greeks are able to bond around, and I’m desperately looking for ways to feel positive about Turkey and Turks right now.
But mostly it’s the depiction of the nirvana-like state that shopping and cooking for someone you love puts you in. By the time the rakı gets cloudy in their glasses I’m usually bawling.
Not reposting this picture to make some sort of historic-cultural point. But just because its eye for the architectural angle and ensemble is sharp and because it’s beautiful.
“The Kurds: ‘I have a dream,’ as they say, for Kurds: that they will recognize the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan with a capital at Erbil is already a de facto independent stateand not complicate things in the neighborhood by please resisting the urge to declare de jure independence.
Kurdish-inhabited regions of the Middle East and Caucasus, according to tribal break-down.
“This centrally located political entity can serve as the hub of a wheel of still-to-be-worked-for, autonomous, Kurdish regions encircling it, and by not insisting on independence and union, they will be able to put more resources and energy into developing what they have and not fighting to defend it forever. I don’t know; maybe the future of the world will involve the devolving of nation-states into affiliated groups of semi-autonomous units with perhaps overlapping or varying degrees of jurisdiction – Holy Roman Empire style – and the Kurds may be the first to experience this as a people and benefit from it: that is, to see diaspora (if that word really applies to a non-migrating group), or political ‘multiplicity,’ as a finger in every pie and not as separation, and be able to reap the advantages of that.”
And my what-to-do suggestions:
“The Kurds: Give the Kurds EVERYTHING they need. They’re creating a society, both in Iraqi Kurdistan and in the internal socio-political life of Turkish Kurds that is nothing short of revolutionary in its civic-mindedness, democratic tendencies and secular steadfastness. Yes, nothing’s perfect there either but it’s by far the best we have. And the loose confederation of Kurdish regions that I spoke of earlier may have perhaps an even more strategically valuable position to offer the rest of the world than Turkey does. Beg Turkish Kurds to swear to abide by ceasefire terms despite all provocations by the Turkish state; insist that Iraqi Kurdistan not declare independence. And then give them everything they need, even if it means billions in aid. Because, along with the Russians, they’re the ones who’ll probably have to do even more of the ground fighting when the airstrikes campaign reaches its inevitable limits – and starts harming civilians, which it unfortunately already has — even though they now insist that they’re not spilling any more of their own blood for anything outside of Kurdish-inhabited regions.”
Where I was definitely wrong, or just changes on the ground proved me wrong, in “Syria, Russia, ISIS…“ is:
“Neither Iraq nor the Iraqi army are functioning entities, so we can temporarily remove them from our discussion.”
ISIS horrors, and the speed with which their conquests occurred, seem to have forced Iraqis to get their act together, especially militarily (and especially with American help?)
So now I find myself thinking al Abadi has a point in his Times op-ed: “Iraq Will Remain United“. Also find myself thinking that if I’m so violently against Catalan separatism I can’t pick and choose my nationalist fissures…except for that Iraqi Kurds have suffered so horribly in the past, under Iraqi rule.
And what will Turkey’s next move be? Is Erdoğan so fearful of Turkish Kurds’ separatist aspirations (which do not represent nearly as high a percentage as the PKK wants us to believe — which is why Turkish heavy-handedness in the southeast is so counter-productive and infuriating), that he’ll have to hold his nose and deal with Shia Iraq differently. Because the ONE thing the Iraqi takeover of Kirkuk proves, it’s that power in that country definitely rests in southern, Shia hands…with all the implications that has for Iranian power in the region…
When I first came across this idea of that Spain was granting Sephardic Jews Spanish citizenship I was mildly condescending, thinking that it was the most pointless kind of Western guilt for the past and that maybe Europe had better things to think about.
Turkey’s economic boom in the first decade of the 21st century has slowed, and its currency has lost 20 percent of its value against the dollar in the past year alone.
As tuition prices in Turkey’s increasingly competitive universities have skyrocketed in recent years, the quality of education lags behind schools in western Europe, the United States and Canada.
Like many middle-class Turks, Turkish Jews have contributed of the country’s brain drain.
“There’s no doubt anti-Semitism is a motivating factor,” said Louis Fishman, an assistant professor at Brooklyn College who has split his time in the last decade between New York, Istanbul and Tel Aviv. “But there are other groups [in the Jewish community] that are leaving because they’re part of the middle class, they can go to school in the US and get a job abroad.”
T., a 30-something resident of Istanbul who, like other Turkish Jews, preferred to speak anonymously for fear of backlash, works in a multinational company, which he said offers many Turks a means of emigrating with financial security.
“Almost all my friends think about what to do next,” said T., especially after the 2010 and 2014 anti-Israel uproar in Turkey. “Even though we are staying here, everyone is thinking of their next move.” He said that in the past five years he’s noticed a marked rise in Jewish emigration from Turkey.
Another indicator of the anxiety pervading the community is the number of Turkish Jews who have jumped at the opportunity to acquire Spanish citizenship. The vast majority of Turkey’s Jews are descendants of Spanish exiles who were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire.
Earlier this year the Spanish government announced its intention of extending citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in 1492. Shortly thereafter 5,000 Turkish Jews — roughly a third of the community — applied for dual citizenship, potentially opening the doors to life in Europe, according to a recent Financial Times report. [my emphasis]
I don’t know why this idea — that Spanish citizenship would open the doors to life or work anywhere in the European Union — completely skipped my mind; it’s the reason that I got my Greek citizenship (along with a little bit of a more personal tug, granted…) Maybe it’s because all discussion of the issue was focused on the Israelis that would be granted citizenship and I totally forgot about the only real Jewish community in the Muslim world (aside from Iran) that still exists.
Below is my first post on “Spanish right of return” and below that a 1964 article from The New York Times article on the Greek expulsions.
Members of Turkey’s Jewish community pray at Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul on October 11, 2004, during a ceremony to mark the official reopening of the synagogue (AP/Murad Sezer)
And I can’t help but think it’s EU-ish political correctness taken to the point of silliness. Don’t you folks have a few other things to think about right now?
“Why make a fuss about Spain’s ostensible effort to atone for bad behaviour, even if it’s about 524 years too late?” asks this Al Jazeera article about the Spanish offer, as it also examines some of the other complexities, ironies and…hypocrisies…behind the whole notion:
“To be sure, atonement in itself is far from fuss-worthy. Goodness knows this world could use more apologies, reparations, and truth-telling – and in fact, 1492 is not a bad place to start.
“That year happens to be rather synonymous with the decimation of indigenous populations in the Americas in the aftermath of a certain nautical expedition, authorised by the very same Ferdinand and Isabella who expelled the Jews from Spain.
“This is not to say, then, that the repercussions of centuries-old injustice aren’t alive and well; it’s merely to point out the ironies of an international panorama in which Mossad officials are granted additional homelands in Spain while Palestinians languish in refugee camps for nearly seven decades.”
And just another thought: it could hypothetically mean a minor flood of Sephardic Jews from Argentina, say, or other Latin American countries, looking for better economic possibilities. But in Spain? At this particular moment? I think the days of heavy Latin American emigration to Spain have been put on hold for a while.
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Aug. 8 —Harassment and deportation of Greek nationals in Istanbul in retaliation for Turkish setbacks on Cyprus was declared today “an open policy” of the Government.
Unless a solution to the strife between Greek and Turkish Cypriotes is found soon, the Greeks here fear that their community, once numerous and prosperous, will be dispersed before winter.
“The pressure on the Istanbul Greeks will be gradual,” said a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Ankara.
Tactic Held Ineffective
Sources close to Premier Ismet Inonu said the Government believed “pressure on Greek nationals” was the only way left to Turkey to force Athens and the Greek‐dominated Cypriote Government to accept a satisfactory compromise.
Istanbul’s Greeks have many Turkish friends who believe the new tactic will prove as ineffective as it is harsh. The consensus among the Greeks themselves is that Turkey is using Cyprus as “an excuse to do what they have long wanted to do—get us out.”
This week 58 more Greeks were added to nearly 1,000 who had been deported on short notice since March.
New lists are expected within a few days, and the 9,000 remaining Greek nationals are sure their days here are numbered. Turkey has canceled, effective Sept. 15, a 1930 agreement under which Greeks have been privileged to live here.
There is fear now in the hearts of 60,000 Turks of Greek descent, They, too, complain of harassment, “tax persecution” and ostracism, although Premier Inonu has declared repeatedly that these minority nationals will not be discriminated against.
In the business districts of Istanbul, many Greek‐owned shops may be seen under padlock. They were closed on Government order or because the owners were summarily ordered from the country. Wives and other dependents are in many cases left destitute.
Many Born in Turkey
Every morning large numbers of Greeks crowd into the arcaded foyer of the Greek Consulate to ask help and advice. Some accept an emergency dole provided by the consulate; others are well dressed. Some are old and frail.
Most of those deported so far were born in Turkey, according to the consulate, and many had never been to Greece. They have no particular place in Greece to go, and they say they have no idea what to do when they get there.
Greeks scan the Istanbul newspapers for published lists, fearing they will find their names. When they do, they go to the police to be fingerprinted, photographed and asked to sign deportation statements. They are given a week to leave the country, and police escorts see that they make the deadline.
Asset Sales Difficult
Families of deportees protest that it is impossible to sell businesses or personal property in so short a time. “Few want to buy from us, and no one wants to pay a fair price,” one victim said. A deportee may take with him only his clothing, 200 Turkish lira (about $22) and his transportation ticket.
At first the Government denied that these deportations had anything to do with the dispute over Cyprus. AU the deportees were charged with “activities harmful to the Turkish state.”
The Greeks have found wry humor in this claim. According to a source close to the consulate, the deportation lists have included the names of six persons long dead.
There have been 121 deportees more than 70 years old and 20 over the age of 80.
Many charges have been raised against the Greek aliens: smuggling money out of the country, for example, or evading taxes and military duty. The Turkish authorities say the Greeks have invested their wealth abroad and that this has damaged the Turkish economy.
Wealth Put at $200 Million
Turkish estimates of Greek wealth here have gone as high as $500 million. But recently this figure has been reduced to $200 million. Greeks say the Turks “reduced their inflated estimates when they realized that someday they might have to settle for properties taken from us.”
They blame Turkey for not having offered better investment opportunities.
In addition to abrogating the 1930 agreement on residence, trade and shipping privileges, Ankara has suspended a 1955 agreement granting unrestricted travel facilities to nationals of both countries. A number of Greeks caught outside Turkey when this suspension took effect are reported to be unable to return.
More seriously, Ankara recently decided to enforce strictly a long‐overlooked law barring Greek nationals from 30 professions and occupations. They cannot, for example, be doctors, nurses, architects, shoemakers, tailors, plumbers, cabaret singers, ironsmiths, cooks or tourist guides.
One of today’s Reuters’ titles: “Turkey urges U.S. to review visa suspension as lira, stocks tumble“ is a very deeply unintentional funny. Is he dyslexic? Am I? I’ve read it correctly, yes? The UNITED STATES is suspending visas to TURKS? The TURKISH lira and TURKISH stocks are tumbling? Right?
There’s been a ton of repetitive commentary again recently — including from me — about how Kurdish, let’s say, “pro-activeness,” in Iraq and Syria, what Kurds think is their right since they played such a key role in kicking ISIS ass, is a menace to Turkey because Turks are still traumatized by the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres that called for the remaining Ottoman Empire (Anatolia essentially) to be partitioned between the winners of WWI (and the hangers-on and cheerleaders like us), with the Straits and Constantinople internationalized (meaning British), so that Turks would have been left with a rump central Turkey and, I think, a minimal outlet to the Black Sea along the coastal stretch around Sinope.
All of that was changed by Atatürk’s declaration of a Turkish Republic at Sebasteia and the subsequent disastrous defeat of the invading Greek army. The Turkish War of Independence (please, Greeks, gimme a break and let me call it that for now) was an impressive accomplishment, and if it ended badly for the Greeks who lived there, as we remember every autumn when we recite the Megilla of Smyrna, that’s our fault and especially the fault of Venizelos who, being Cretan, found pallikaristiko demagoguery and dangerous, careerist magandalık irresistible. So impressive was Kemal’s accomplishment, in fact, that all the parties involved in Sèvres then got together at Lausanne in 1923 and decided Turkey should get whatever it wants. Suddenly, the clouds of three centuries of depressing imperial contraction, and massacre and expulsion of Muslims from the Caucasus, the northern Black Sea, the Balkans and Crete were lifted (ditch the Arabs south and call it a country seemed to be the Turkish consensus for whatever was left) and the Turkish Republic went on its merry way. Sèvres and Sèvrophobia was gone.
What Turkey suffers from now, and has for most of the twentieth century since the events we’re talking about, is a Lausanne-inspired sense of entitlement that is simply breathtaking in its cluelessness. It’s the kind that leaves you staring at some Turks, silenced and dumbfounded, and unable to tell whether what they just said to you is elegantly, sweepingly aristocratic or just passively asinine. Lausanne was first; add Kemal’s personality cult (I’m not sure that history ever threw together two bigger narcissists than him and Venizelos; they should’ve been lovers), then, what was always a silenced Ottomanness came out of the closet, allied as it always has been with the seminal triumphalist narrative of Islam itself…and you get Erdoğan!
Now he wants the U.S. to review its Turkey policies? Who is this man? Scolding the whole fucking world like we’re a bunch of children. Let him scold his children — meaning Turks — first, and then maybe we can take it from there. If I were a German diplomat in Turkey and had been summoned to His Sublime Presence for the nth time in one year to be chastised for something mocking someone in Germany had said about Him, and told “to do” something about it, I would have found it hard to control my laughter. As an outsider, I find it delightful enough that of all peoples on the planet, Turks and Germansgot involved in a multi-episode drama on the nature of irony and parody. But to have him demand shit from all sides…
No, you’re not a “mouse that roared” arkadaşım, ok? Yes, “all of Luxembourg is like one town in Turkey” (wow…ne büyük bir onur). Turkey’s a big, scary, powerful country with a big, scary, powerful military, and lots of “soft” cultural and economic power in its region too. But you’re in a schoolyard with some much bigger cats. Soon all of them — the United States, Russia, the European Union, Israel and even some who already openly can’t stand your guts — like Iran — are gonna come to the conclusion that you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Even Germany is no longer so guilt-ridden as to be polite to you. And I don’t say any of this as a Greek, because I don’t think that when they all get to that exasperated point and temporarily turn to Greece, that Greeks are going to be anything other than the chick you were drunk enough to take home for a one-nighter — Kurds are going to be the rebound girlfriend, though I can’t say right now for how long — but things have been moving rapidly in a direction where the big boys are not going to want to play with you anymore, and they’re going to let you know in a way that won’t be pretty.
Though, as with all bullies, as soon as Erdoğan’s tough-guy bluff-policy on anything is called, he backs down.
“I hate, more than anybody, to look like I’m catering to Erdoğan’s peeves, but an Iraqi Kurdish referendum on independence just at this time is a provocation for him that may turn out to be disastrous. Erdoğan is already massing troops on Turkey’s southern borders, and though I doubt he’ll have the balls to invade what’s pretty much an American satellite, Iraqi Kurdistan, I don’t put it beyond him to send troops into the Idlib region in Syria — maybe even hold a “referendum” and annex it like the Turkish Republic did to the neighboring region of Antiocheia in the 1930s.”
Well, the man’s deranged mind functions like clockwork. Reuters announced a few hours ago that Turkish army operations in Idlib have already begun:
ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that a major military operation was underway in the Syria’s northwest province of Idlib, which Free Syrian Army rebel groups earlier said they were preparing to enter with Turkish backing.
“There is a serious operation in Syria’s Idlib today, and this will continue,” Erdogan told members of his AK Party in a speech.
Much of Idlib is currently controlled by an jihadist-led alliance of fighters. “We will never allow a terror corridor along our borders in Syria,” Erdogan said. “We will continue to take other initiatives after the Idlib operation.”
The reason this is so dangerous a move is that it’s so blindingly easy for Erdoğan to justify it. In case you’ve ever wondered why the Greco-Syrian city of Antioch, Αντιόχεια, one of the three great urban centers of Greco-Roman Christianity, is today in Turkey and not Syria, it’s because in 1939, the Turkish Republic strong-armed the French Mandate of Syria (I don’t know how) into holding a plebiscite in the Sanjak of Alexandretta (see map below) in order to determine its future incorporation into the Turkish state. And as with all such votes — like Putin’s elections, Puigdemont’s referendum — the response was overwhelmingly approving. We’re supposed to believe that 90% of the population of this region, the hinterland of Antiocheia (Antakya), where a majority of the population were, and still are, Arab Alawites/Alevis(see second to last map at bottom) who already had a little-sister, special relationship with France like Maronites did in Lebanon, followed by Turco-Kurdish Alevis and a sizeable Arab Christian community (most of which has now long moved to İstanbul), had — even after almost twenty years of watching the vicious war the Turkish Republic had been waging against Kurds, the crazed massacres of Alevis in Turkey, and the Republic’s systematic campaign to either expel or forcibly assimilate its Christian population — voted in their delighted majority to become part of Turkey.
An independent Iraqi Kurdish state, with neighboring Syrian areas already under YPG, would only need Idlib (only 100 kilometres from Turkish Antiocheia) to connect it to the strongly Assadite, Alawite region ofLaodicaea (Latakya) and give a something-like-a-Kurdish state access to the Mediterranean; it would certainly end Erdoğan’s dream of a Sunni-run Syria. I don’t even know what to think or what predictions to make. Hopefully Russia will say no. Hopefully the U.S. and the EU will too and go for serious sanctions, by which I mean not bullshit sanctions, but the cutting off of military aid completely. Erdoğan deserves a serious back-hander — not just German pissiness — from some-one, for eff’s sake, and I can’t think of a better one than to have the Turkish army, deprived of its fancy American toys, “eat its face”, as we say in Greek, against Kurdish peshmerga in northern Syria.
Hatay, where the name comes from — Hittites, I think – Hittites who came from the Sun, I think — and how there’s been a Turkic presence in the region for forty centuries (were there even homo sapiens forty centuries ago? …hmmm…maybe that’s the point) are all contained in the sacred texts of Turkish nationalism. Like I’ve said many times before, nationalism is always funny (if it weren’t at the cost of so much blood) but Turkish nationalism is hysterical, Star Trek as a SNL skit. Check it out if you’re bored at work some afternoon: Sun Language Theory.
More maps:
The Sanjak of Alexandretta — Antioch — “Hatay” province — little red corner of Syrian Mediterranean, that Turkey bullied out of French hands in 1939.
Distribution of Alawites/Alevis in Turkey (Antiocheia), Syria and Lebanon, indicating, clearly, regions of ALAWITE MAJORITY.
And Idlib governate below.
See “Alawite”, “Alevis” and then “Kurds” tags from other Jadde posts for more on this.
A cool Twitter account with photos of Diyarbakır, the capital of Turkish Kurdistan. Slight weakness for the super wide angle, the last refuge of those with no compositional ideas, but interesting nonetheless. Plus, who knows when we’ll once again be able to travel there freely.
Bad translation. “Pодные”…”rodnye” means intimate, familiar, related; by extension born-beloved, dear one, cared for, same root in Russian as parents, birth, homeland, Christmas…wouldn’t be surprised if it has the same Indo-European roots as “root”.
Vitaly Mansky‘s documentary is being screened this coming weekend and the next at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. (See schedule. It’s two train stops into Queens, guys. Then you can have a nice dinner for half of what you pay in Manhttan at a good friend and koumbaro‘s place: Mar’s.)
“In this follow-up to his award-winning documentary Under the Sun, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky examines Ukrainian society amidst the 2014 national election, a period rife with political chaos and growing uncertainty over national identity and integration. As both a Russian citizen and native Ukrainian, Mansky deftly underscores personal and political complexities as he visits with relatives living in Lvov, Odessa, the Crimean peninsula, and the Donbass region, and in the process discovers a wide and disorienting spectrum of outlooks and affiliations, including his own sense of ongoing exile and unease. Close Relations is at once an intimate family portrait and a graceful journalistic endeavor, a movie of the intense present that illuminates a place caught between a troubled past and an anxious future.”
Watch the trailer below.
Lots of moving, “disorienting” footage. Also, lots of humor, which reminds us that so much of a certain ironic, sardonic take on the world — a viewpoint “from a certain angle”, as E.M. Forster said of Cavafy — that we in the United States think is particularly Jewish, is really just a trait common to all eastern Europe, even Greece, or perhaps just a trait common to the powerless everywhere:
“Crimea was a pity, but the Donbass…they can have it.” *
But I think the most important moment in terms of geopolitics comes at 1:15:
“So Ukraine decided to join NATO. Isn’t that its own business?”
“Nyyyyyet!”
…comes the reply without a moment’s hesitation.
“Nyet” with its palatized “n” and final “t” is one of humanity’s great no-words. Like “yok” in Turkish, it literally means “there isn’t” or “Il n’y a pas”. But while “yok” has a kind of know-nothing passivity about it, “nyet” is an active “Halt! No way you’re going further down this road. There’s no access.” **
That moment in Mansky’s doc is why, despite widespread support for a Putin I find repulsive, I can’t get as angry at Russians as I get at Trump Americans and Türk-doğans; because Russians aren’t stupid. They’re not as smart as they used to be in the old days, при коммунизме, when everybody knew not to believe any-thing. They now believe all kinds of nonsense. And they went and got religion on me too, which is one of my life’s greatest watch-what-you-wish-fors. But they’re still pretty intelligent about the world.
I can’t get inside Putin’s head, like Ben Judah convincingly does in what’s still the best book on the Путинщина, the “Putin-ness” or the “Putin thang.” Judah’s thesis is that Putin is really just a nebech apparatchik who others put in his place and who now — having trampled over so many people on his way up — is terrified of stepping down and that the macho persona he so tiringly projects masks mega insecurity. It almost makes you feel sorry for him.
But this relative of Mansky’s and her coldly realpolitik “nyet” tell you why he has so many Russians’ support. Because it means: nyet, you can’t tell me that the U.S. and NATO suddenly developed a major crush on Estonia and Georgia; nyet, you can’t suddenly tell me you’re interested in Ukraine too, because this was already starting to feel like a corporate raid on all the old girlfriends who dumped me, but Ukraine, especially, is like hitting on my sister; nyet, you can’t moan and groan about how we’re violating a basic credo of the European Union by changing borders, when neither Russia or Ukraine are part of the European Union and you wouldn’t even have considered Ukraine — with its resources, access to the Black Sea and huge Russian population — a candidate if it weren’t a way to totally encircle Russia; and, nyet, you can’t tell us that you’re not still treating us with a Cold War mentality that you inherited from an Anglo tradition of Great Game power struggle that doesn’t apply anymore and is now completely counter-productive.
At least talk some truth and maybe we can get somewhere. And then I’ll reconsider breaking up with Putin.
In the meantime, we can try to think of everyone as “close relations.”
************************************************************************************* * The Donbass, the river Don basin is part of southeast Russia and the Russian-speaking parts of eastern Ukraine where the current conflict is centered. From “The first two of my cents on Ukraine and Russia“:
“Also, thence, a crucial point: that Ukraine wasn’t so much conquered, but settled by Russia…
“The independent “frontiersmen” mentality of the Russians of these areas, a sort of Russian Texas — among its ethnic Cossack peoples especially — should not be underestimated and should not be disregarded as a possible element in the current conflict. (See: And Quiet Flows the Don at Amazon and at Wiki.)”
“Новая Россия,” (Novaya Rossiya), New Russia, is not a Putinism. It’s a name for these lands that goes back to Catherine the Great and the first serious subduing of Cossack rebelliousness and settling of Russians in the region in the 18th century. It was part of the Russian empire’s most fertile grain-producing regions and then the scene of crazy industrialization under the Bolsheviks; maybe it was once a sort of “Russian Texas” but now it’s more like a sort of Russian Rust-Belt. Hence, the “they can have it” comment. The Soviet Army, decapitated by Stalin’s purges of its most talented and experienced, and ill-prepared and ill-equipped, only made the Nazi sweep through Ukraine grind to a halt once the Germans had made it this far east and after hundreds of thousands of Russian men had already been sent to a meaningless death and the Nazis had swept the old lands of the Pale clean of Jews through massive massacring and mass executions which were an integral part of the military strategy of the eastern front; many military historians believe that if the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union hadn’t been slowed by German troops stopping every other community to round up and shoot its Jews (a method/process that killed more Jews than the gas chambers did), they might have been successful in beating the coming of winter and more successful in their campaign long-term. The region then became the scene of brutal attrition warfare, culminating in the siege of Stalingrad (now reverted back to its original name, Волгоград / Volgograd on map below). This left the region seriously trashed and so huge numbers of Russian workers were settled there post-WWII, Russianizing the Ukrainian far east even further and setting the stage for today’s conflict.
Map of the Don Basin. The grey line shows the border between Russia (РОССИЯ) and Ukraine (УКРАИНА) and the broken grey lines in Ukrainian east indicate the Lugansk (Луганск) and Donetsk (Донетск)
** “У меня денег нет” (“U menya deneg nyet”) in Russian is the same structure as the Turkish “Benim param yok” — “I don’t have any money.” Though Russian has a verb for “to have” like other Slavic languages, these structures both mean, literally: “By me there’s no money” or “My money isn’t there/isn’t by me.” Wondering whether it’s a construction Russian acquired through contact with Tatar. There is apparently a phenomenon where languages effect each other and transmit certain properties between them, though there’s no large bilingual population to bring them together and though they’re not genetically related, at least not closely. The absence of an infinitive, for example, in modern Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian/Vlach, though each are from different Indo-European families and more closely related languages have an infinitive, is one good example. Also, Yiddish “by mir” (as in “By mir bist du shayn”) which is like the Russian по-моему (“according to me”) — for me, in my opinion. Though German uses “bei mir” also to mean same thing.
At the end of 2015 I wrote this piece: “Syria, Russia, ISIS and what to do about everything“ where I expressed my hopes that Iraqi Kurds not declare de jure independence, since that would destabilize the region even further:
“The Kurds: ‘I have a dream,’ as they say, for Kurds: that they will recognize the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan with a capital at Erbil is already a de facto independent stateand not complicate things in the neighborhood by please resisting the urge to declare de jure independence.
Kurdish-inhabited regions of the Middle East and Caucasus, according to tribal break-down.
“This centrally located political entity can serve as the hub of a wheel of still-to-be-worked-for, autonomous, Kurdish regions encircling it, and by not insisting on independence and union, they will be able to put more resources and energy into developing what they have and not fighting to defend it forever. I don’t know; maybe the future of the world will involve the devolving of nation-states into affiliated groups of semi-autonomous units with perhaps overlapping or varying degrees of jurisdiction – Holy Roman Empire style – and the Kurds may be the first to experience this as a people and benefit from it: that is, to see diaspora (if that word really applies to a non-migrating group), or political ‘multiplicity,’ as a finger in every pie and not as separation, and be able to reap the advantages of that.”
And my what-to-do suggestions:
“The Kurds: Give the Kurds EVERYTHING they need. They’re creating a society, both in Iraqi Kurdistan and in the internal socio-political life of Turkish Kurds that is nothing short of revolutionary in its civic-mindedness, democratic tendencies and secular steadfastness. Yes, nothing’s perfect there either but it’s by far the best we have. And the loose confederation of Kurdish regions that I spoke of earlier may have perhaps an even more strategically valuable position to offer the rest of the world than Turkey does. Beg Turkish Kurds to swear to abide by ceasefire terms despite all provocations by the Turkish state; insist that Iraqi Kurdistan not declare independence. And then give them everything they need, even if it means billions in aid. Because, along with the Russians, they’re the ones who’ll probably have to do even more of the ground fighting when the airstrikes campaign reaches its inevitable limits – and starts harming civilians, which it unfortunately already has — even though they now insist that they’re not spilling any more of their own blood for anything outside of Kurdish-inhabited regions.”
Well, it looks like “Hope” as Poles say, “is the mother of stupidity” and nobody cares about my wish-list.
The above was written before the relationship between Turkish Kurds and the Turkish government went to hell again and descended into crazy violence, before supposed anti-Erdoğan coup, massive purges, HDP’s Demirtaş’ imprisonment, and all the other fun stuff that’s happened in Turkey since. I hate, more than anybody, to look like I’m catering to Erdoğan’s peeves, but an Iraqi Kurdish referendum on independence just at this time is a provocation for him that may turn out to be disastrous. Erdoğan is already massing troops on Turkey’s southern borders, and though I doubt he’ll have the balls to invade what’s pretty much an American satellite, Iraqi Kurdistan, I don’t put it beyond him to send troops into the Idlib region in Syria — maybe even hold a “referendum” and annex it like the Turkish Republic did to the neighboring region of Antiocheia in the 1930s. A friend in C-town thinks that the third and newest Bosporus bridge is named after Sultan Selim 1st (“the Grim”) not just to stick it to Alevis (he was the ruler who committed widespread massacres of them during his reign, 1512 – 1520) but to emphasize Selim’s wresting of Mesopotamia from the hated Safavid Shia of Iran and the Levant from the Mamluks of Egypt and underline Erdoğan Turkey’s role in the region. His Neo-Ottomanism may yet find its perfect expression in post-ISIS Iraq/Syria.
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.
İştipol 
Members of Turkey’s Jewish community pray at Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul on October 11, 2004, during a ceremony to mark the official reopening of the synagogue (AP/Murad Sezer)
The Sanjak of Alexandretta — Antioch — “Hatay” province — little red corner of Syrian Mediterranean, that Turkey bullied out of French hands in 1939.
Distribution of Alawites/Alevis in Turkey (Antiocheia), Syria and Lebanon, indicating, clearly, regions of ALAWITE MAJORITY.
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 