Sunday, January 22, 2012 

Well folks, these have been some pretty busy times up at the Borderlands Lodge. The new semester started a couple of weeks ago, and the two classes I've been teaching—"The Making of Modern Turkey" and "Eurasian Borderlands"—have gotten off to a fast start. Writing, too, has kept me pretty busy.

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Tuesday, December 10, 2012 

Happy New Year! I don’t know about you folks, but I had a pretty great New Year’s break...and I think that means it's time for some New Year's N & P ...

Saturday, December 17, 2011 

Up here at the Borderlands Lodge, this week has provided a welcome respite. This semester has been a busy one, of course. As many of you know, I spent the spring semester and summer in DC, and ever since my return to the land of the mountains in ...

Thursday, October 13, 2011 

In case you missed it, the so-called "Value Voters Summit" took place this past weekend in Washington, DC. Ron Paul won the straw poll that was conducted at the end of the convention, beating out fellow GOP candidates who had likewise come to DC to speak at the VVS and attempt ...

Monday, September 12, 2011 

Amid all of the commentary that has come out over the past week or so about remembering the 9/11 attacks, I thought I'd write about 9/12.

Thursday, August 25, 2011 

Well, it looks like the moment folks have been waiting for has finally arrived: Muammar Gadaffi appears to have left Tripoli, and perhaps right now is hiding in a spider-hole somewhere. Who knows?

In a post put up yesterday, Juan Cole—someone whose views I have a ...

Friday, July 29, 2011 

Pardon me if I haven't been posting much lately—I've been too busy burying gold bars and non-perishable food items in my backyard.

Seriously, though, these are ugly times here in the imperial metropole. What's most frustrating of all, however, is how completely unnecessary this crisis is.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011 

I was driving through southern Pennsylvania, watching the sun set over West Virginia to my right, while I listened to President Obama's speech on Afghanistan over the radio.

The speech appealed to me in some ways and bothered me in others. On the one hand, ...

Friday, June 17, 2011

Wow—some pretty disturbing news: 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Fresh off new elections that saw the AKP returned to power with another majority government, Turkey's government is facing an onslaught of thousands of refugees from Syria.

Al-Jazeera reports that the Syrian Army is "splitting apart." Also alleging that Iranian snipers are being ...

Monday, June 13, 2011

I saw an interesting piece in Juan Cole's Informed Comment yesterday. Cole wrote a really sensible response to Robert Gates' recent speech, in which Gates criticized NATO allies for not emulating the United States in spending lavish sums on defense.

This ...

Sunday, June 12, 2011

No surprise here. As everyone has been predicting for weeks, it looks like the AKP will have a big majority, but not enough seats (367) to write a new constitution unilaterally (i.e., without putting it up to a referendum)...

 

Saturday, June 11, 2011

The AKP and Today's Zaman sound like spurned lovers the way they're griping over recent editorials criticizing the AKP in the Economist, ...

Friday, June 10, 2011

There was a thought-provoking and depressing piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education the other day. It was written by Tom Lutz, a professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside. The piece ...

Thursday, June 9, 2011

I saw a semi-interesting Reuters story a couple of days ago about the apparently growing wealth gap in Turkey...

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

There was a quite long piece in the New York Times a couple of days ago on American charter schools, particularly in Texas, that are associated with the Turkish religious figure Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, ...

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Former coup leader and Turkish president Kenan Evren gave testimony to a prosecutor yesterday regarding, apparently, the 1980 coup. Claiming ill health, Evren managed to have the interview take place at his house, rather than at the prosecutor's office.
...

Monday, June 6, 2011

According to this Agence France-Presse piece, Russia is to "enter the world of Islamic finance."

Actually what appears to be happening is that the Republic of Tatarstan, which is a republic within the Russian Federation, will ...

Sunday, June 5, 2011

"Don't vote for the best government in 66 years."

This is how Taraf newspaper sarcastically sums up the logic of recent editorial in the Economist ...

Sunday, May 29, 2011

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, there are far more egregious injustices stemming from our current budget than the cutting of overseas research and study. Nevertheless, given the incredible human and economic cost of the wars the United States has been drawn into over the past decade, current proposals to cut $800 million from funding devoted to supporting overseas study strikes me as a particularly bad idea.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

I originally posted the video below on the JMB Facebook page about a month ago, but I think the video is funny enough to merit a post here as well.

Enjoy.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

It's been a busy time in the imperial metropole lately.On Friday I gave a talk at Georgetown University in front of a small group of DC-based scholars, including much of the Russian history ulema of the region, presenting an article I've been working on lately entitled "Politicizing Islam: Muslim Protesters, Tsarist Officials, and the Crisis ...

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The WAPO sez: OBL unarmed when shot.

Monday, May 2, 2011

So the CIA finally managed to kill Osama bin Laden and, predictably, yahoos from across the country are celebrating as if we've won something. Indeed, the fact that thousands of Americans would celebrate the killing of an individual like bin Laden is indicative of the degree to which our country has been weakened over the past ten years.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Bay area Borderlanders were treated to a workshop this week at Stanford University entitled "Muslim Identities and Imperial Spaces: Networks, Mobility, and the Geopolitics of Empire and Nation." It was a really enjoyable workshop, and not only because it had the longest title ever.

The workshop brought together scholars working on Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and ...

Sunday, March 20, 2011

There's been a fair amount of chatter in the Turkey-related blogosphere lately about Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's reluctance to sign off on force in Libya—or even to denounce Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in strong terms. Louis Fishman, for example, called on Erdogan to return the "peace prize" (and the money associated with it) that Qaddafi awarded him last year, while a ...

Thursday, March 17, 2011


 
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Turkish singer Ibrahim Tatlises has been shot!

Here's the story:

Ibrahim Tatlises, a Turkish singer of Kurdish descent who has millions of fans in Turkey and around the Middle East, was in critical condition in an Istanbul hospital yesterday after being shot in the head by unknown assailants. ...

Monday, March 14, 2011

Awesome times here in the imperial metropole. On Saturday I tested out one of DC's Red Bikes, a public rental system of bicycles that is run by the municipality. ...

Friday, March 11, 2011

Kamil Pasha seems to be updating her go-to moniker for Turkey from "the country of no"  to "the Republic of fear." 

Doesn't someone already own the rights to that name?