Showdown in Taksim Square

Reuters

Turkish police have moved into Taksim Square with tear gas and water cannons, while Prime Minister Erdoğan is expressing a willingness to meet with environmental protesters but insisting that barricades come down and "other" protesters disperse. Following several days of tough talk, the government has finally moved in.

The clashes are still continuing. I'll post more thoughts on this once the situation clarifies a bit.

Morsi's Brinksmanship on Ethiopia: A Dangerous Game?

Egypt's President Morsi, in an address to a rally of Islamist groups yesterday, called for Egyptians to unite against an external threat, in this case the controversial Ethiopian dam.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Morsi is using the dam project as an attempt to rally the opposition behind him prior to big anti-Morsi demonstrations scheduled for June 30 and marking one year in power. From Ahram Online:

The president also said that "all options" were on the table to respond to the current situation and insisted that Egypt would not accept infringements on its water security.

"We have said several times that Egyptians with their revolution carry a message of peace...We do not want war, but we do not accept threats to our security."

Morsi also asked opposing political forces to stand united at a time when Egypt faces hard challenges and to put aside all political rivalries. He went on to call for "national reconciliation," adding that he was certain that political figures would respond positively to his appeals.

"The country demands that we stand united," he said, issuing his call for reconciliation only weeks before planned mass demonstrations on 30 June to demand snap presidential elections.

Morsi did say Egypt is committed to dialogue with Ethiopia and praised dialogue over other approaches, but the implied threat was clearly there.

While the outreach to his domestic opponents may be welcome, the apparent escalation of an international dispute in order to rally unity at home can be risky, and is already drawing criticism. International grandstanding and brinksmanship in an escalating situation can spin out of control easily; that should be obvious in the week of the 46th anniversary of the 1967 war, when Egypt paid a huge price for just such brinksmanship. True, Ethiopia and Egypt share no common border, and threats may be seen as empty, but domestic posturing in international disputes can put diplomatic solutions at risk.

Nostalgia to Start the Week: the Old Cairo Canal

I usually put old pictures up as the weekend approaches, but as I've been tied up with other things today here's one for the start of the week for a change.

Port Said Street in Cairo today winds through central Cairo from southwest to northeast. Its older name was Khalig (Canal) Street, and it represents an ancient canal (Khalig Misr or al-Khalig al-Misri) that carried water through Cairo for centuries. Originally used in pharaonic times, it later connected with Trajan's canal,which ran from the Nile to the Red Sea. In Islamic times, as the Red Sea canal silted up, it provided water to Cairo; in time, it was opened only during the flood, and a dam at the Mouth of the Canal (Fom al-Khalig) was cut by the ruler of Egypt at flood time in August. By the mid-19th century it was increasingly disused and a number of lakes connecting with it became increasingly swampy; though Khedive Isma‘il presided over a new Sweetwater Canal to the new Suez Canal, it did not resuscitate the Cairo Canal. Finally in 1897-1898 the British filled in the Canal and built a broad boulevard, the first to run from south to north the middle  of Cairo. By 1900 what had once been a navigable waterway had a tramline. Long called Khalig Street, it is the present Port Said Street.

This photo shows the canal in 1884 (though I've also seen it attributed to 1887), a little over a decade before it was finally filled in.

More Later, But for Now, "The Might of the Pen(guin)"

I'm going to be tied up most of the day, but until I can get back to blogging, take a look at Lisel Hintz at Foreign Policy about "The Might of the Pen(guin) in Turkey's Protests." More later.

This is a Bit Scary, and I Don't Even Read Turkish

There has been much criticism of the caution or timidity of much of the Turkish media during the recent demonstrations, including the now-notorious broadcast of a documentary on penguins, leaving the field to social media and even a courageous game show host. But this captures the print media's yes-man approach graphically. I don't read Turkish and you don't need to either, since it's clear that, except for minor grammatical differences, every headline is almost identical. (Something to do with democracy demanding sacrifice, quoting Erdoğan.) (To be fair, not all the papers are here, and Hürriyet is notably absent.) Still, what are the odds?

A hat tip to Dan Brumberg for the link.

MERIP's New Issue Devoted to Middle Eastern Chrstians

MERIP's latest issue of Middle East Report is devoted to the status of Middle Eastern Christians. Some articles are accessible online; there are abstracts of others.

A June 7 Military History Footnote: Why Did the Generals Enter the Old City From the East?

In my post two days ago for the 46th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, I used a photo that has become iconic from June 7, 1967 (left) showing senior Israeli Commanders entering the Old City of Jerusalem. (Left to right: Jerusalem area commander Gen. Uzi Narkiss, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and then-IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin.) They are entering through the gate known as the Lion's Gate or St. Stephen's Gate. It is the only open gate on the eastern side of the Old City.

Those familiar with the Old City of Jerusalem but unfamiliar with the course of the 1967 war may wonder, if until June 1967 Jerusalem was divided between an Israeli-controlled new city to the west and the Jordanian-controlled east, why did the Israeli generals enter from the east?

The particular course of the Battle for Jerusalem explains the reason.

Armchair General

After a major early morning battle at Ammunition Hill to the north (map), Israeli paratroop units advanced from there and through two other axes across the 1949 ceasefire lines in the Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz neighborhoods, modern Arab neighborhoods north of the Old City. After securing the Augusta Victoria Hospital hill north of the Mount of Olives, the Israeli paratroops found themselves to the east of the walls of the Old City.

Another iconic and often reproduced photo from June 7 shows the 55th IDF Paratroop (Reserve) Brigade on the Mount of Olives with the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock in the background. The 55th's commander, then-Colonel Mordechai ("Motta") Gur, is the black-haired man without a helmet seen in profile in front of the Dome of the Rock.

Shortly after the photo was taken, Gur's troops entered the Old City through the Lion's Gate. When soon thereafter he broadcast the famous words "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands!" he became known throughout Israel; by the mid-1970s Gur would be the IDF Chief of Staff.

Alwaleed bin Talal Furious, Sues Because He Wasn't Higher Up Forbes' Richest List

Somebody (F. Scott Fitzgerald maybe?) said there's no such thing as being too rich, but apparently if you're really rich,  just how rich can be a matter of pride. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has a big media and Internet empire and a few small bed and breakfasts like the Georges V in Paris and the Savoy in London among his holdings, plus some stakes in little start-ups like Apple, NewsCorp, and Citigroup, is mad as hell at Forbes magazine and isn't going to take it anymore. In their annual list of the world's richest people, they said he was worth $20 billion. (More from Forbes on him here.) That kept him out of the coveted 10 Richest People list; in fact, he's a mere number 26.

The horror. After the report came out he announced he was cutting all ties to Forbes. Now he's gone a step further: he's suing Forbes in a British court for libel..

The prince, who, it should be noted, has made most of his billions from shrewd investments and entrepreneurship, not from oil or inheritance, (though being a Saudi prince no doubt opened doors), has been protesting that he's worth at least $30 billion and says Forbes  under-counted him by $9.6 billion. To be fair, he is not your stereotypical Saudi royal but a very shrewd businessman, a self-made man almost, who started with nothing but the title "Saudi Prince" and a few million dollars. And he is ticked off. Royally, one might say.

I am reminded of the remark by the late Senator Everett Dirksen, in the early 1960s I think, about the US Federal budget: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

I will leave the legal issues to the British courts. I do want to say something to both sides. If Forbes ever chooses to list me among the world's richest people, I will not sue them for gross exaggeration, but try to parlay it into some advantage (free lunches?). And to Prince Alwaleed: I fully believe that you are as rich as you say and not the struggling $20 billion pauper that Forbes claimed. You may even be richer than that, and I would certainly put you in the top 10. I know you were an Internet pioneer; do you need any bloggers? Anyway, you've been wronged. Should you need to contact me about further blogposts about you, my email appears elsewhere on this page and my bank account number can be provided for wire transfer purposes if desired.

Two Graphic Comments on Turkey: No Comment Needed

And Ankara Birds:

Three Years Today Since the Death of Khaled Said

Khaled Said (Khalid Sa‘id, Khaled Saeed) was an ordinary 28 year-old resident of Alexandria, Egypt until his death, three years ago today, on June 6, 2010. Within days, he was transformed into a symbol, an everyman beaten to death by police. A few months later he became the face of a revolution. The Facebook Page "We are all Khaled Said." and its much more widely read Arabic equivalent, كلنا خالد سعيد were among the major organizational tools of the January 25 revolution.

As best I can determine, my first discussion of the incident was on June 14. Because this previously anonymous young man became an icon for millions who had never met him, and his mother has been a heroine for many of the revolutionaries, it's a useful balance to also recall Amro Ali's piece for Jadaliyya, "Saeeds of Revolution: De-Mythologizing Khaled Saeed."

During the revolution, there were even jokes:
Not to mention tributes: unofficial (?) "Street of the Martyr Khaled Said" plaque on his old street in Alexandria:

A Rerun: Rehabilitating Levi Eshkol's Reputation

Following my post yesterday on the 46th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 war, I think it might be useful to repeat this post from June 15, 2010, three years ago. It was called "Levi Eshkol in the Six-Day War," and having published on my June 5 post the all-too-familiar picture of Uzi Narkis, Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin entering the Old City of Jerusalem, it might be worth repeating my earlier reminder of the forgotten man in Israel's victory: the Prime Minister. The post was inspired in part by a Haaretz article cited below and in part by Tom Segev's book 1967: The War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, which helped rehabilitate Eshkol's reputation and included interviews with his widow.

Herewith the original post in full:

Levi Eshkol

Following up on my recent posts on the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, here's a useful piece by an IDF vet in Ha'aretz on rehabilitating the reputation of Levi Eshkol in connection with the preparedness of the IDF for the war.

If you saw any presentations on the anniversary of the war, I'll wager you saw pictures of Moshe Dayan, with his rakish eyepatch, striding in combat gear through St. Stephen's Gate (Lion's Gate) into the Old City. Most likely you saw pictures of Yitzhak Rabin here and there too, but Levi Eshkol?

If you're old enough or have read the more detailed studies of the war from the Israeli side (Michael Oren for the political/military, Tom Segev for the social context), you'll certainly be aware that Eshkol was Prime Minister during the war. But he certainly doesn't play a major role in most people's mental imagery of the narrative of the war. Since by now my regular readers will be aware that I need to let the latent history professor loose on the blog now and then, this is one of those times.

The writer in Ha'aretz, Eliyahu Sacharov, wants to rectify that, and he's not alone. Many people thought Eshkol received poor treatment from his countrymen at the time, and since. Segev's book 1967 (2005 in Hebrew, 2007 in English) pays attention to Eshkol, and Segev credits long conversations with Miriam Eshkol, the Prime Minister's widow, among his sources.

Eshkol was Israel's third Prime Minister, but like Moshe Sharett before him, he rose to power in the shadow of David Ben-Gurion, and that was a very large shadow indeed. When Ben-Gurion split with Mapai (the core of Labor) and formed Rafi in 1965, Eshkol led the new Labor Alignment to victory over Rafi in 1965 elections. Eshkol became Prime Minister; Ben-Gurion his critic from the wings.

As was frequently the case at the time, Eshkol held the Defense portfolio as well as that of Prime Minister. Over several years he presided over the development and professionalization of the IDF, helping to create the instrument that would win the Six-Day War.

As tensions with the Arab world built up in early 1967, Eshkol worked hard to secure Israel's position internationally within the context of the post-Suez settlement, also building a relationship with US President Lyndon Johnson. Although Ben-Gurion criticized Eshkol for weakness and indecisiveness, today his efforts are seen as having strengthened Israel's hand internationally.

Under pressure to create a Government of National Unity, with Rafi and many others calling for the naming of Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister, Eshkol fought to keep the portfolio. (Dayan, a Rafi ally of Ben-Gurion, had won fame as Chief of Operations in the 1956 Sinai Campaign.) When King Hussein of Jordan flew to Cairo to sign an alliance with Nasser and put Jordanian troops under an Egyptian general, Eshkol ran out of political capital. Eshkol was confronted with a loss of support within his own Cabinet, within the Army, and in public opinion. On the afternoon of June 1, he named Moshe Dayan Defense Minister.

Note: On the afternoon of June 1. Four and a half days later, at a little after 7:00 am on June 5, Israeli aircraft took off for their first wave of strikes against Arab air forces. (Assuming Arab air forces would patrol at dawn expecting an attack, then land to refuel and breakfast, Israel sought to strike in that window.)

Major military operations are not planned in four and a half days; pilots are not trained in four and a half days. Yet in the wake of the victory, Dayan won the accolades and his eleventh-hour appointment was seen as the salvation of the state, though he had been a politician in opposition during the planning stages of the war.

Eshkol had no choice but to name Dayan, and certainly Dayan performed ably, though Chief of Staff Rabin and the IDF Command had their war plan mostly in place already. Dayan took the honors, and Eshkol's role was largely neglected.

Eshkol remained in office, dying of a heart attack in February 1969, less than two years after the war, and thus never wrote a memoir to defend his position, as everyone else did. Eshkol was not forgotten — a national park and the suburb of Ramat Eshkol, the first built over the Green Line, are named for him; he has appeared on both paper notes and coins. But until fairly recently, only his partisans have sought to give him due credit for the war. That does seem to be changing.

Chris Eccel's Sembase Project

Dr. Arthur Chris Eccel's Sembase Project is a highly ambitious database effort undertaken over some decades now by one of my oldest friends. I haven't mentioned it before because it's unfinished and the material available online is still limited, but the Ancient World Online  website linked to it a few weeks ago, so even if it isn't quite ready for prime time, I thought I would link too. This is about an old friend, so I'm hardly an unbiased observer here.

Chris' Ph.D. is in sociology, and he's a former Professor at AUB, but his education is much more eclectic than that. He has quite a command of ancient and modern Middle Eastern languages. He gives his c.v. here; you'll note that he completed doctoral coursework for a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at Harvard, specializing in Arabic and Hebrew ("Taught myself Geez and Aramaic during this period," he notes), before going on to a doctorate in sociology at Chicago. (The year in law school at UCLA doesn't count, but the undergraduate majors in Greek and Arabic and minors in Latin and Hebrew and at least two MAs probably do.) Back in the days before the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was available online, and before it was complete, you could find a set on his shelves. And it would be dog-eared.

After his time at AUB Chris (fluent in several varieties of Arabic) served as Public Affairs Officer at several US embassies in the Arab world (Iraq, Saudi Arabia [Jidda consulate], Bahrain, Yemen, and Algeria among them). His last posting was Damascus.

To say that Chris is an interesting conversationalist is an understatement. People meeting him for the first time tend to either consider him utterly mad or a total genius. Like some madmen and all geniuses, he's a bit of both.

Now retired and living in Hawaii, he continues to pursue a hugely ambitious project he's dabbled with for decades: a database of all the roots for all the Semitic languages, for comparative purposes.

Chris explains the origins of his project:

In Cairo in the seventies and eighties, students, professors and researchers met in each other's apartments without notice, scouted out Egyptian bars prized for the fact that no tourists would ever be found there (including an interesting bouza dive), and broke the crust together at various restaurants, often the old Cafe Riche (the Filfila being then only a few tables in an alleyway). Sipping Stella beer, our conversation ranged from politics to our research, to the gossip of the academic expat community. It was then that I began calling to my friends' attention various Arabic roots that seemed related. The Stella encouraged some creativity in drawing these "relationships." At some point a friend asked if I was recording my observations. I was not. Another objected that with no controls, one can make anything into anything. This stimulus, and a bit more Stella, prompted the ultimate fantasy: what if there were a tool that would quickly search all essential lexical sources of all Semitic languages and display all information that might be relevant to evaluating a proposed relationship?

[Full disclosure: I was usually one of those friends at the table, including the "interesting bouza dive," which was behind the fire station in Midan ‘Ataba.] Also, that may not be everyone's definition of an "ultimate fantasy." He continues:

On a trip to Kharga Oasis, I took with me pages of typing paper cut into fourths and began recording "xliterals" (triliterals, biliterals, etc.) by assigning them to semantic categories. It occurred to me that although not all roots in a category would be related (far from it), the roots that are related should fall within the same semantic category. By recording only roots, and using sufficiently broad categories, I hoped to arrive at groups that would be amenable to human inspection, to facilitate the identification of root pairs or groups that might be related. Eventually, I went through several Arabic dictionaries, and arrived at about 34,000 records. Then I began doing the same for Hebrew. 

 So where is he now? As he notes:

Although the basic structure of the database is in place, it will need some editing. Since its inception, the 340 major semantic categories have been reduced to only around 135, and the subcategories are approaching 2,000. Even the fields for sorting are not final; I will modify the sort orders (alphabetical and phonological) when I have more languages in the table, to profit from what I have learned. At present, it has all of Biblical Hebrew and Geez. It has an aleph-through-ya' data set from several principal Arabic dictionaries, but Arabic will be comprehensively revisited when all other target languages are done. At that time, a protocol will be followed to glean from currently spoken dialects, with an emphasis on those in areas where a Semitic language was spoken at the time of the rise of Islam (the Arab conquests). The modern Semitic languages of Ethiopia will be done only as found useful. Note that the entries summarized below do not just represent the number of roots and words. Any given root or word can be entered into more than one semantic category, depending on its semantic extension.

For the detailed current status, see here. I'm pretty well-informed on languages (or so I tell myself), and while I was familiar with Harari and Mehri (well, I've at least heard of them), I had to look up Gurage. It's an Ethiopian language.

It is, to say the least, an ambitious project. I wish we could tap into his database online, but hopefully that day will come.

Turkish Game Show Host Turns Show into Protest

There have been many complaints and not a few jokes about the Turkish mainstream media's relative silence about the demonstrations (CNN Türk famously ran a documentary about penguins at the height of the protests). Well, a Turkish game show host found a way around the silence. crafting questions whose answers were references to the protests. See Robert Mackey's post, "Civil Disobedience on a Turkish game show", and then read Zeynep Tufekci's detailed blogpost listing all the answers. It wasn't subtle:

31-The thing that is referred to in Article 28th of the Turkish Constitution as “Free and Cannot be Censored”: PRESS
32-The communication medium defined by Nezihe Meriç as “A dragon with a thousand heads”: MEDIA
33-An action that means the same thing as approval: SILENCE
34-Limiting the freedom of press, communication, film or books by government: CENSORSHIP
35-The person who is supposed to learn about an event and write about in various outlets: JOURNALIST
36-The microblog and social network site that has been described as a “curse”: TWITTER
37-The person Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said should “write his/her thoughts freely”: JOURNALIST
38-Person who tries to kiss up to power: BROWN NOSER
39-The state of being able to resist power or injustice but being quiet: COWARDICE
40-The branch that is held on to by people after being abandoned by mainstream media: SOCIAL MEDIA

No, not subtle at all:

64-The person who is trying to actualize his/her ideas, thoughts: ÇAPULCU (LOOTER which is what the Prime Minister called the protesters)
65-A town in Hatay that is famous for its baths: REYHANLI (where a bombing was followed by press censorship)
66-A person that concentrates all political power: DICTATOR
67-A person who serves for money: SERVANT
68-A ruling system in which executive power can act independent of judiciary: PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM (internal Turkish political transition discussion)
69-To voluntarily give up a position: RESIGN
70-The act that makes a person bigger by asking to be forgiven for wrong actions: APOLOGIZE

June the Fifth, 1967, Plus 46 Years

Uzi Narkis, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin enter Jerusalem's Old City through Lion's Gate/Saint Stephen's Gate, June 7, 1967

It is another June 5, 46 years since June 5, 1967, when the Middle East as we know it today began to emerge.

I've blogged annually on June 5 since 2009 and on many other occasions have addressed the 1967 war. Rather than repeat myself, I'll link. Of course you'll find a lot under my 1967 War tag, and under my Nasser tagged posts as well, and then there was my post on the death of Zakaria Mohieddin.

Specific earlier posts in earlier Junes may be of interest:

June 5, 2009: June 5, 42 Years On: Some of the 'What Ifs?'" 

June 5, 2010: June 5, After 43 Years

June 9, 2010: The USS Liberty Incident: Still Starting Fights After All These Years

June 10, 2010: And on the Sixth Day ... 

June 15, 2010: Levi Eshkol in the Six-Day War 

June 6, 2011: June 5, 44 Years and a Day Later

June 5, 2012: The Fifth of June: the "Naksa" Plus 45 Years

The Egyptian NGO Draft Law and Court Verdict

The combination of Egyptian President Morsi's recent submission of a new draft law on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), combined with yesterday's court verdict convicting 43 NGO employees, including 16 Americans (only one of whom is currently in Egypt and likely to serve a term) for illegal activities with NGOs, has drawn world attention to the increasing pressures being brought against NGOs both foreign and domestic in Egypt.

This is not a new issue, but the proposed NGO draft law suggests that the draconian crackdown that led to the convictions yesterday could in fact become routine. Human rights organizations have weighed in against the decision (Human Rights Watch here; Amnesty International here), as has US Secretary of State John Kerry. Also see, at MEI's Arab Transitions Project, Sarah Carr here, Tamara Coffman Wittes of Brookings at Foreign Policy's Middle East channel here; and Zeinobia's blog here.

Note too, for readers in the DC area, that MEI will be hosting Sarah Margon of Human Rights Watch and Nancy Okail of Freedom House for a panel on the Draft NGO Law on Friday at MEI. Registration is via the link. 

But the court itself is defending its actions, and the government as a whole is taking a traditional "blame foreign meddling" approach.

Of course both the NGO decision and the proposed draft law are outrageous, given the long history of NGOs that have worked hard in providing Egypt with expertise and aid. Suppressing them merely stifles free expression and strangles civil society.

Under Husni Mubarak, foreign NGOs were usually exempt from pressure for the most part, though not from criticism, but Egyptian NGOs were harassed. (You could ask Saad Eddin Ibrahim.) After the revolution, foreign NGOs continued as usual though technically, in the absence of new laws, they were in violation. They became targets for the xenophobic and anti-Western elements in Egyptian society, and also for those of a conspiratorial bent for whom foreign agents are everywhere, plotting against Egypt. There has always been a xenophobic strain in Egyptian nationalism, sometimes fully justified by the imperious and imperial behavior of foreign powers in Egyptian history. We're only about 10 days away from the anniversary of the 1906 Denshawai Incident, a turning point in crystallizing opposition to the British occupation. (More on that soon.) This ultranationalist strain is easily manipulated and has a long history in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, but has been fed by previous leaders as well, particularly by Nasser in the 1950s and Mubarak in his later decades. The more human rights groups and NGOs criticize the policy, the more at least some Egyptians grow even more defensive. This fact does not, however, justify the Draft NGO Law or the convictions.

For the Annals of "Oops! Was This Microphone Live?": Egyptian Threats to Ethiopia Go Out Live on TV

Is this thing working?

I haven't posted yet about the growing dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia (and Sudan as well) over Ethiopia's plan for a big new Blue Nile dam. Egyptian President Morsi was fairly accepting initially but orher Egyptians are unhappy and fear the Ethiopian project threatens Egypt's water supply. So President Morsi called a meeting of Egyptian political and religious leaders to talk about it.

And talk they did:

The meeting, which was broadcast live on Egyptian television, was full of what some Cairo-based African diplomats described as a condescending Egyptian reflection on Africa. Some suggestions heard from participants included sabotaging the dam, interfering in internal political disputes in Ethiopia, or bribing local tribes, with the aim of prohibiting any potential reduction in Egypt’s annual share of the Nile waters.

You did notice the "which was broadcast live on Egyptian television" part, right?  Well, apparently some of the participants are now saying  they weren't told that their helpful, diplomatic suggestions about sabotage and subversion of Ethiopia were being broadcast. And apparently, that was indeed the case:

While Morsi did not respond to any of the controversial statements made at the meeting, his aide for political affairs, Pakinam El-Sharqawy, has since apologised for failing to inform attendees that the 'national dialog' meeting was being broadcast live.

"It was initially planned that the national meeting would be recorded and aired the following day as is usually the case, but due to the importance of the topic it was decided at the last minute to air the meeting live," she said via Facebook late on Monday. "I forgot to inform attendees of the changes."

Oops. Welcome to democracy, folks, where live microphones have been known to cause trouble. I don't think they've ever started a war yet, but this is in the running.

They Used to Call it "French North Africa" because its Rulers were in France. Of Course Today ... Oh, Wait

NOTE: A version of this article was posted this morning but was subsequently inadvertently deleted. I have reconstituted it as best I could.

As this article (in French) notes, three North African leaders (the Presidents of Algeria and Mauritania and the King of Morocco) have been in France for several weeks.

Algerian President Bouteflika, as we knew, has been in Paris since late April, when he suffered a "minor stroke," from which he is rumored to be in a coma officially said to be "improving day to day" despite no photos having been made public.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz has been in Paris as well on a "private visit" since attending a meeting in Brussels on May 15. There is speculation about his health as well; you may recall that last October he was wounded when his own Army shot up the Presidential motorcade in a "tragic accident" which was discovered after the President had "accidentally" been shot five times. He received lengthy treatment in France for that as well.

And King Muhammad VI of Morocco is also on a private visit to Paris since May 10. While there have  been recent rumors about the King's health as well (though he's not yet 50), he may be avoiding the political issues at home produced by the Istiqlal Party's intention to withdraw from the ruling coalition.

Of course, they may all just love Paris in the springtime. But who's watching the store at home?

Thoughts on the Turkish Protests and Erdoğan

For those of us who follow Turkey occasionally but not always daily, the Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul were barely on the radar until Friday, when the ferocity of the government's crackdown led to protests throughout the country. We've now seen some of the worst violence in some years, and a polarization more reminiscent of Turkey 25 or 30 years ago than in more recent decades.

It's tempting to see the protests as one more manifestation of "Arab spring," this time in a non-Arab context. Social media is being used to organize and report the troubles. and the official media has tended to downplay events; my link this morning dealt with that aspect of events, and also indulged in the temptation to link "Taksim" with "Tahrir."

But there are many differences as well as some obvious parallels. In Tunisia and Egypt (and Libya and Syria), unelected autocratic governments ruled; a wide range of social and economic classes opposed them. The AKP government in Turkey was elected, and enjoys a comfortable majority, as Erdoğan keeps insisting. Erdoğan supported the Arab uprisings, and sees no similarities to what is going on in Turkey. Turkey is much more polarized, more evenly divided, than the Arab cases were, except perhaps Syria.

But just because the AKP was elected does not mean it has not been behaving autocratically. Rather like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (and quite unlike al-Nahda so far in Tunisia), it seems to feel that its electoral margin made it unquestionable. High-handed (and heavy-handed) behavior is being met with resistance. Steven A. Cook and Michael Koplow's piece, "How Democratic is Turkey?" is a reminder that the AKP's formula for "Islamic democracy," much feted in the West (as in Erdoğan's recent, rather triumphant visit to Washington), is still being tested. Lately it has been pushing for rapid change: constitutional revisions, greater restrictions on alcohol, rapid development in a neoliberal economic system. It has more and more directly challenged the secular tradition of Kemalism, and with that, the urban middle classes and elites.

It has blundered on occasion. The third bridge across the Bosphorus, (another of the major development projects, along with a third airport some say isn't needed), dedicated on the 650th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, was named the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, after the Ottoman ruler known in the West as Selim I "the Grim" (Ottoman Sultan 1512-1520). Much of his reign was spent fighting the rising power of Safavid Iran, and in fighting the Shi‘ite movements known to the Ottomans as the Qizilbash ("red heads" after their distinctive headgear; Kızılbaş in modern Turkish); he ordered widespread killings of the Qizilbash after the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. As a result, Turkey's Alevi Shi‘ite minority, who identify historically with some of the Qizilbash, have protested the naming of the bridge, and Alevis, along with Kurds and other minorities, have joined in the protests.

Yavuz Sultan Selim

Of course to Sunni Islamists the Alevis are seen as heretics or worse, and thus (like some of the other "neo-Ottoman" gestures, the move sharpens sectarian divisions. The head of the consortium building the bridge, apparently trying to avoid the fuss, has said they intend to continue to just refer to it as the "third bridge."

Taksim and Gezi Park (at center) (Google Maps)

The point is not that people are quarreling over something that happened in 1514, or about a park in Taksim for that matter, but that they are struggling over far more profound issues of Turkey's historical identity.

Location in Istanbul

Another issue that is still offstage but that anyone familiar with modern Turkish history cannot ignore is where the Army is in all this. Once seen as the guarantor of Turkish secularism, the Army often has moved against Islamist governments. Conventional wisdom is that Erdoğan has tamed the Army, dismissing key generals and arresting others for an alleged coup plot. But over the weekend there were reports of individual; units refusing to allow police to enter Army zones, individual soldiers confronting policemen or supporting the protestors, or even providing gas masks to the demonstrators to defend against police teargas. This is still anecdotal but may bear watching.

Certainly many of Erdoğan's former admirers in the West may be rethinking their opinion, as the AKP seems to take a more and more authoritarian approach to its critics.

Rami Hamdallah: The New Palestinian PM

Rami Hamdallah is the new Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, replacing Salam Fayyad. Hamdallah has been serving as President of An Najah University in Nablus, and is a professor of applied linguistics. The PA is struggling with an economic crisis and his appointment has been criticized by Hamas, which claims it violates the agreement on trying to find a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Haaretz called him "a good man on a suicide mission" today.

Choosing a respected academic not overly identified with the politics of Fatah is probably wise; whether he will face the same obstacles Fayyad encountered remains to be seen, and Fayyad at least had the advantage of being a favorite of the West and of Israel (which, in the end, turned out to be a disadvantage as well).

Social Media's Role from Tahrir to Taksim

Certainly the most dramatic developments in the region over the weekend involved the deepening and spreading protests in Turkey. I will have some extended comments of my own some time later today, but until that's ready I wanted to refer you to a thoughtful piece elsewhere.

Prime Minister Erdoğan, who during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions praised the role of social media in resisting unpopular governments, has made clear that he thinks his electoral majority should exempt him from social media attacks; over the weekend he attacked Twitter.

At Zeynep Tufekci's Technosociology blog, devoted to social media among other issues, the Turkish-American Tufekci discusses at some length this question: "Is there a Social-Media Fueled Protest Style? An Analysis From #jan25 to #geziparki": that is, in Twitter hashtag terms, from Cairo's Tahrir to Istanbul's Taksim. The situations are not identical (Turkey is more evenly divided and the issues are quite different); but her analysis of the role of social media is worth your time. More on this from me later today.

"Istanbul Gas Festival"

Weekend Nostalgia: When Talaat Harb Street and Square were Suleiman Pasha

The old Suleiman Pasha Statue, pre-1954

Perhaps the Cairo Midan best known to Westerners, after Tahrir Square, is Talaat Harb, which like Tahrir is not a "square" but a circle; the street of the same name, which runs from Tahrir through Midan Talaat Harb, is also named Talaat Harb. The circle contains the famous Groppi's tea room and other landmarks, and the Cafe Riche is just off it; it's well-known as well as a secondary gathering place for protests in the past two years, often the starting point for marches to Tahrir. The street is one of the major downtown shopping venues.

When I first went to Cairo 40 years ago, no one called it Talaat Harb, though that was its name, and his statue stood in the center of the circle. Many Egyptians of the older generation still call it by its older name: Suleiman Pasha.  Readers of Alaa al-Aswany's novel The Yacoubian Building (and viewers of the movie made from the book), which is set in a building on the street, will note that the characters almost invariably call the street and Midan Suleiman Pasha.

Suleiman Pasha (Col. Sève)

The name was changed in 1954, and the statue was changed.  The old name, Suleiman Pasha, honored a European, a French officer in Muhammad ‘Ali's Army. Colonel Joseph Anthelme Sève served as a commander in the Egyptian Army and married an Egyptian; he was known as Suleiman Pasha al-Fransawi ("the Frenchman"). One of his descendants was Queen Nazli, wife of King Fuad I and mother of King Farouq. In the Nasser era he was doubly anathema: a foreigner and an ancestor of the ousted King. The statue and the name had to go.

The Midan with the Talaat Harb Statue

It was renamed in honor of Talaat Harb (Tal‘at Harb), economist and founder of the Bank of Egypt. The statue was changed as well, though the old name continued to be used by Egyptians for decades.

So what happened to the statue of Suleiman Pasha? Apparently (or so I've heard: the angles of the photos make it hard to be sure), it's the same statue now on display outside the Military Museum at the Cairo Citadel, shown below.

Istanbul Park Clashes: Symbolic but Important

UPDATE: A court has now ordered the suspension of the development project in the park, which could either defuse or escalate tensions depending on the government's response.

UPDATE II: An English-language live blog from the protests here.

Clashes between police and demonstrators in an Istanbul park mark the latest conflict between the ruling AKP's party's ambitious plans for Turkish expansion and those who oppose those policies. The demonstrators are trying to preserve Gezi Park in Taksim from government development plans. The demonstrators are fighting to preserve the green space where the government wants to reconstruct a former Ottoman-era barracks complex as a potential tourist draw. Dispersing the protesters, police announced arrests and some injuries.

The history of the site and pictures of the planned development can be found here. (Hat tip to Managing Editor Jacob Passel for this and other links.)

The AKP, capitalizing on Turkey's recent prosperity, has been engaged in a broad range of development schemes, from building projects such as a new airport and a third bridge at Istanbul, dedicated on the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople and named for the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim. Critics of the AKP see the projects as a sign of creeping Islamization and the "Neo-Ottoman" policies of Prime Minister Erdogan. This article addresses some of the controversies. There is also a critique of the new construction projects here. And a photo gallery of the police raid here.

The development projects, along with such social issues as the recent restrictions on alcohol,
reflect the growing culture clashes between traditional and Islamic elements tapped by the AKP and the secular urban elites which have dominated Turkey in the past. The head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the secularist opposition, visited the demonstrators at the park earlier in the week.

Taksim is also a traditional area for public protest, and the protesters see development of the park as  a government effort to reduce protest space.

Taboo Words About the Man "Improving Every Day": " L’après-Bouteflika"

It's been over a week since we were last assured that Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, rumored to be in a coma, was in fact "improving every day." So it's presumably still true, right? Right? You wouldn't want French-based Algeria-watching websites to start talking about " L’après-Bouteflika," would you?

That's what I thought.  A simple hospital photo in which the man looks conscious might stop all this ugly speculation, hmm? And help the 2014 campaign. I'm not sure even Algeria could manage to rig the election of a comatose man, so let's reassure the folks a bit? Hmm?

.

Hizbullah and Palestinian Backlash: Paying the Price for Syrian Intervention

Hizbullah used to justify its continuing armament by insisting it was resisting Israel. Now, it's reportedly told Hamas, which claims to be doing the same thing, to get out of Lebanon immediately.

And in a Palestinian refugee camp at Ain  al-Hilweh in Lebanon, Palestinians burned humanitarian aid sent by Hizbullah, protesting the latter's role in Syria.

Of course, Lebanon has been feeling the impact of the Syrian civil war for some time. With Hizbullah's open engagement on the side of the Syrian regime, we're likely to see more blowback in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Qifa Nabki considers the risks and calculations Hizbullah is taking.

The Syrian Muddle

Clearly, the muddle over what to do about Syria is, if anything, getting more muddled. The battle of Qusayr is being claimed by Bashar al-Asad as a victory, one won on Syrian territory with the aid of combatants from Hizbullah in Lebanon. As the West still argues over greater involvement on the side of the rebels, Hizbullah has plunged in head first. MEI Adjunct Scholar Charles Dunne asks the hard question, "What Happens if Al-Assad Prevails?"

The US-Russian brokered agreement to hold talks in Geneva ("Geneva 2," they're calling it) isn't spurring much optimism.  Bilal Saab isn't terribly optimistic about "Supporting the Syrian Rebels in Geneva." And elsewhere, Aaron David Miller, who's been to quite a few, warns of "The Perils of Peace Conferences."

Walter "Pat" Lang brings a career intelligence analyst's opinion to the debate:

"You  have to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold'em..."
The US policy towards Syria is a total muddle, conceived in ignorance of the human facts on the  ground and motivated by "dogooderism" that thinks all the world is a graduate school seminar in which professors and students can re-design the fate of humanity to taste.

Tell us what you really think, Pat.

While I respect the deeply held opinions on both sides of the intervention question, I think we nneed to realistically assess what is happening on the ground. First, the battle for Qusayr is, if not won, at least tilting towards the Syrian regime, and Hizbullah's open and unapologetic involvement is a major challenge to the rebels.

Secondly, what about the S-300s? If the US and Russia are really trying to broker peace, the decision to sell sophisticated surface-to-air missiles to Syria underscores Russia's continuing commitment to the Syrian regime. While Israel's recent air strikes inside Syria may be the overt justification for the S-300 sale, one of the main elements in the potential intervention package advocated by supporters of the rebels, a no-fly zone, could be undermined once the missiles are in place. Calling it a game-changer is not an exaggeration.

I do think the situation is shifting at the moment, and not in favor of the rebels. While intervention has some eloquent advocates, who insist the model is not Iraq but Libya, where a no-fly zone worked. But Syria is not Libya and the geopolitics are totally different. I sense little real domestic will in the US and Europe to support military intervention. The tragedy of Syria seems to be deepening, but it is far from clear that any of the proposed approaches is going to end the killing. I wish I could be more optimistic.

Morsi and Al-Azhar

I have already referred you to the Middle East Institute's Arab Transitions Project and its current focus on Egypt, but I particularly wanted to call to your attention this piece by Ahmed Morsy on "The Grand Sheikh and the President," which I found a useful assessment of the assertiveness of al-Azhar in the age of Muslim Brotherhood government.

It's Official: Femen's First Topless Protest in Tunis Itself Has Finally Made Nudity Boring

Oh, okay, I admit that like so much of the Western media, I've paid lots of attention to Aliaa ElMahdy's "nude blogger" case in Egypt and the more recent Amina Tyler flap in Tunisia. but hey, Tunisia's new constitution is about to be debated, and all you can find on the Internet is the fact that Femen, the Ukrainian topless protest group, staged their first protest in the Arab world today in front of a courthouse in Tunis. This has passed the point of silliness. Previous protests had been in front of Tunisian embassies in Europe. But to get topless activists in the Arab world, Femen imported them from Europe.

Up to now, actual female nudity in public in Tunisia has been limited to the tourist beaches, but this whole story has long since run out its 15 minutes of fame. Over a month ago I posted on what I called "The Last Word (I Hope) on Femen's 'Topless Jihad,'" but no such luck.

I suppose Femen, a Ukrainian femnist group, may have some points to make in Europe, but their whole approach to the Arab world has been askew from day one. They were shouting "Free Amina" when Amina was free, though perhaps under family constraints. They alienated, rather than reinforced, most women's activists in Tunisia. Many Muslim women saw their denunciation of Islam as directed not just at male domination but at believers like themselves. The neocolonial theme was frequently raised by Femen's Arab feminist critics.

Now, Amina is actually under arrest, though not for appearing topless on the Internet: she was arrested during the recent confrontations in the religious city of Kairouan between government forces and the Ansar al-Shari‘a Salafist movement. While many suspect she planned to disrobe, she never got that far: she is charged with carrying a dangerous object (reportedly pepper spray) and may also be charged with cemetery desecration for writing the word "Femen" on a cemetery wall.

Those may seem like relative misdemeanors, but they are legal violations and have nothing to do with nudity.She appears in court tomorrow. That provoked today's demonstration at the court. As usual, they wrote slogans on their bare torsos, in this case "Breast Feed Revolution," though Tunisia's revolution is healthier than most from the Arab Spring. What does "Breast Feed Revolution" even mean? They also chanted "Free Amina!" and "Fuck your morals!," a slogan Amina had written on her body.

Today's demonstration got plenty of attention, AFP here; The Guardian  here, Tunisia Live here.

The three women arrested for protesting topless today were one German and two French Femen activists. No locals. As I think I've pointed out before, they are hardly the first French and German women to appear topless in Tunisia; it's just that the others do it at tourist resorts and the authorities say nothing. Oh, and France was the colonial power: a little imperial condescension perhaps?

All they've done at this point is make the subject somewhat tedious, which takes some doing. For the curious there is a slideshow at Huffington Post (from which the obscured, PG photo above comes) and a YouTube video here; needless to say, Not Safe for Work, but not exactly interesting, either. Femen has finally succeeded, I fear, in making nudity boring. (YouTube usually bars toplessness but didn't here; maybe they were also too bored to care.)

Femen has made nudity boring enough that YouTube lets it on. They've made bare boobs boring. The constant repetition of 'fuck your morals," which they shout there, has also made "fuck" boring.

560 Years Ago Today, a City Fell ...

Constantine XI

To the Byzantines it was often simply "the city," a capital that had endured for 11 centuries since its foundation by Constantine the Great. Western Europe mght hold that the Roman Empire had fallen  centuries before, but Emperors still reigned at Constantine's  New Rome on the Bosporus. It had resisted sieges by Arabs, by Tamerlane, and its walls were landmarks, running from the Golden Horn to the Bosporus, protecting the city from the landward side. It had endured a period of Latin rule under the Fourth Crusade, and for centuries had watched as its Anatolian hinterland first, and later its European hinterland as well, came under Ottoman rule. The Emperor Constantine XI Paleologus, seeking aid from the West and seeking to rally his people against the big siege guns of the Ottomans, still reigned in Constantinople until a date that echoes in the history of all the Orthodox Christian countries, and of Turkey: May 29, 1453, 560 years ago today. (Leaving out some pesky calendar changes.)

Mehmet II (Fatih Sultan Mehmet)

In many European countries, 1453 was once considered the end of the Middle Ages; certainly the Fall of Constantinople, followed in 1492 by Columbus' discoveries and soon after that by the Protestant Reformation, all served to draw a line under the centuries preceding. And the fall certainly underscored the lesson that siege cannon would mean an end to the static fortification of walled cities. Another invention, the printing press, came to the West at the same time, fueling change.

Constantine XI died on that fateful Tuesday 560 years ago, to be venerated by many Orthodox as a saint, and as the "Marble Emperor" to become a figure in Greek folklore who will come again when Constantinople is Greek again, and Orthodoxy returns to Hagia Sophia.

His adversary, Sultan Mehmet II, was only 21 when the city fell, but is still remembered as Mehmet Fatih, Mehmet the Conqueror. Though the city of Istanbul is no longer Turkey's capital, it is still the country's metropolis and historic heart, and even its Turkish name is said to preserve the medieval Greek phrase εἰς τὴν Πόλιν, "to the city," remembering the days when it was the city par excellence.

A trailer from the recent hit Turkish film Fetih 1453, a dramatization of the fall (from the Turkish point of view, of course):

Back to the Future? The French Mandate's Confessional Partition of Syria

On several occasions we've looked at "vanished states"of the 20th century Middle East, among them some in Syria: including the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, and the briefly independent Republic of Hatay. As the Syrian tragedy continues to unfold, we are hearing talk of a disintegration into ethnic/confessional enclaves, including a possible ‘Alawite enclave in the northwest.

As a much older Middle Easterner once put it, there is nothing new under the sun. When the French mandate was first created after World War I, they partitioned the hell out of Syria:

Initially, in 1922, there were actually five separate states in what would be the French Mandate: a Syrian Federation consisting of two states, Aleppo (including after 1923 the Sanjaq of Alexandretta, the later Hatay, which had briefly been autonomous) and Damascus; a separate ‘Alawite ("Alaouite" in French) state in the northwest, initially (1922-24) part of the federation but thereafter autonomous, a Druze state in the Hawran (Jabal al-Druze State), and Greater Lebanon (Gran Liban), combining the Maronite and Druze Mount Lebanon, the Sunni north around Tripoli, and the Shi‘ite south and Baqa‘a, creating the mix that would become the republic of Lebanon.

Flag, State of Syria

Each of these "states" had its own flag, with the French tricolor in canton. The "State of Syria" was formed in 1924 out of the federation of the states of Damascus and Aleppo. The Alaouite State did not join.

Flag, State of Damascus

This "State of Syria" was created in 1924, but the next year a full-scale revolt broke out, led by the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash in the Druze state, but becoming Syria-wide. The French crushed it with aerial bombardments and sieges of cities, including Damascus.

Flag, State of Aleppo

The Syrian revolt would ultimately lead, in 1930, to the French renaming the State of Syria as the Republic of Syria, though still under French mandate.

Flag, Alaouite State

As for the Alaouite state, it had been less affected by the uprising, though in 1930 it was renamed the District of Latakia. Finally in 1936 it was merged into the "Republic" of Syria. Lebanon always remained a separate entity. Efforts toward independence were sidetracked by World War II and Vichy control, but after Britain expelled Vichy Lebanon and Syria declared their independence and had secured it by 1946.

Flag, Jebel Druze State

In short, Syria has been partitioned before, under colonial divide-and-rule strategies, but nationalism ultimately overcame internal division in the name of fighting a common enemy. Whether that will happen again is of course another question entirely.

Flag, Gran Liban

Saudi King Raises SANG to Cabinet Rank

Saudi King ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, who before his ascent to throne was the longtime head of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), has elevated the National Guard to Ministerial Rank, and has elevated its commander, the King's son Prince Mut‘ib bin ‘Abdullah, to be the first National Guard Minister.

This move appears to disprove a wild report in Iran's totally unreliable Press TV which claimed the King had been clinically dead for several days. Though most people know better than to rely on Iranian propaganda channels for Saudi news, this reportedly was repeated for a time on Britain's Daily Mail website.

Back in the real world, the promotion of the National Guard to a separate ministry serves to solidify kthe control of the King's immediate family over the Guard, retaining its independence from the Ministry of Defense.