Turkish FM Davutoglu and the global thinkers club

Tuesday, December 28, 2010 
Foreign Policy magazine has named Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu one of the "top 100 global thinkers" of 2010, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu















Davutoglu finished #7 on Foreign Policy's list, which would have made him eligible to play in the Bowl Championship Series of global thinkers if only Turkey played in a BCS-eligible conference.

A very borderlandy Christmas

Monday, December 27, 2010

I hope all Borderheads are having an enjoyable end-of-year! All is well here in the Bozone! Last week I took some pictures around town, and over the weekend there was plenty of festive Christmas skiing at Bridger Bowl! Here are some of the shots:

Livaneli's Veda and the Kemalist Dilemma

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks in the Bordlerands. The week before last, of course, MSU held its Turkey Extravaganza, hosting several days of talks, discussion, fun, food, and frolicry.

One of the highlights of Turkey Week was Stephen Kinzer's talk to open the festivities. Kinzer was challenged by a number of the Turkish students at MSU, which led to several interesting exchanges. The main critique of the Turkish students (who are here as part of joint-degree programs that MSU has with Istanbul Technical University and Selcuk University in Konya) was that Kinzer was too hard on Ataturk and too easy on Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP. I thought the critique was a fair one, but Kinzer did a good job of responding to this critique with more nuance than I think he was given credit for.