Category Turkey

The Treaty of Kars: some background

A sequel to the post on the Treaty of Kars centenary (1921-2021). In much of the XIX century, Britain and France propped up the weak Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against Russian expansion. With the rise of the Entente Cordiale,…

The Treaty of Kars, 1921-2021

The first centenary of the Kars Treaty between three Soviet Republics and Turkey is coming up in October. Its predecessor, the Treaty of Moscow between Russia and Turkey, turned 100 in March 2021. It’s probably worth repeating that 2015 marked…

Neither Islamic nor Arab

This could be a very good article if it weren’t so angry and consequently sloppy and misleading. Consider this quote by a Diana Darke, introduced as “Middle East specialist”: “Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly…

Poor strategy

It is often said that, lately, the Kremlin has been successfully punching above Russia’s economic weight in the global arena. Surprisingly, Russia has positioned itself as a reliable partner, an actor that would never betray its allies or clients. Not…

Whose president?

Not much of a soccer fan, sometimes I miss out on stories like this. Better late than never: Ilkay Gundogan [İlkay Gündoğan] of Manchester City and Mesut Ozil [Özil], a player for Arsenal London, triggered an uproar in Germany when…

Latin or Arabic?

The Russian word шапка “hat” is ultimately derived from Latin cappa “head-covering” according to Vasmer. The likely route is via Old French and Middle High German. Čapka (Czech) and czapka (Polish) begin with a “tch” sound because in Old French, “ch”…

The global guillotine

NBC reported this last Friday: The National Security Council has presented President Donald Trump with options to respond to North Korea’s nuclear program — including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un… The second option, “decapitation,” is…

Lâstik and lastik

In The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success, Geoffrey Lewis mentions a certain late-Ottoman author and civil servant: …Kemalpaşazade Sait, alias Lâstik (‘Galoshes’) Sait, who held several senior posts in government service but was best known as a writer of…

The real coup II, or, Everything is secret

Zia Weise reports on politico.eu about the ongoing purges in Istanbul: It is easy to laugh this off as baseless paranoia, but stories abound of men calling the police on their government-criticizing wives, of village headmen keeping lists of suspicious residents,…

Robert Amsterdam’s new client

​I learned of Robert Amsterdam when he was representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos as their international lawyer. Amsterdam’s relentless criticism of Russia’s legal system, which he witnessed in action at the first Yukos trial in 2003-4, was spot on but…