Analyses
Yassin al-Haj Saleh: After Assad, Syria Must Free Itself from Sectarianism
Riccardo Cristiano 12 December 2024
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, born in 1961, is one of Syria’s foremost intellectuals and a long-standing dissident against the Assad regime. He spent sixteen years in prison for “political reasons,” including time in the maximum-security facility of Tadmur, also known as Palmyra. With the onset of the Syrian Spring, he immediately emerged as an opponent of the regime.
  • Turkey’s Elections a Defeat for Erdogan not a Victory for the Opposition
    Alessandra Tommasi 5 April 2024
    Turkey’s local elections on March 31 produced a historic result: the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, won 37.7 percent of the vote, beating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (35.5 percent) for the first time in more than two decades in power. If the CHP’s result is not surprising in Turkey’s big cities, the AKP also lost regions such as Anatolia, once considered strongholds of the majority party. It was “a turning point,” as Erdogan stressed after the results of the elections. But the CHP’s “victory” was more of an AKP’s resounding defeat, according to Cengiz Aktar, professor of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies at the University of Athens.
  • The Uncertain Glory Still Under Observation
    Giancarlo Bosetti 4 April 2024
    “While India has rapidly climbed the ladder of economic growth rates, it has fallen relatively behind on the scale of social indicators of living standards, even compared to many countries that India has overtaken in terms of economic growth.” So wrote Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and Belgian economist Jean Drèze in An Uncertain Glory. India and Its Contradictions, a key text that in 2013 analyzed and exposed the failures of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, then at 6 percent. More than a decade later, India’s “uncertain glory” is perhaps even more uncertain, despite Narendra Modi’s aspirations to make it a great power.
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    Can We Prevent an Iranian Caliphate?
    A Vatican City-Style Arrangement for Al-Aqsa
    Jonathan Laurence 3 April 2024
    The Gaza war is a reminder that the Europeans left behind an unstable status quo a century ago. Absent a Sunni consensus, Iran is making an indirect power play. Iran’s weakness is also a strength: as non-Arab, Shiite Muslims, Iran’s leaders can’t trace their ancestry to the prophet Muhammad’s qureysh tribe—as can Jordan’s and Morocco’s monarchs, and as ISIS’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claimed. Though around 85 percent of Muslims are Sunni, the demography of global Islam has long favored much larger non-Arab populations. The dynamic might be resolved with a Vatican City-style solution for Al Aqsa.
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    How the Mughals are Being Erased from Indian Textbooks
    Ashaz Mohammed 28 March 2024
    The 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, upon which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ram temple was built, is seen by Hindu nationalists as a “historical retaliation” against India’s so-called “dark ages”. Several right-wing news outlets, such as Republic TV, have celebrated the inauguration of the new temple as a “500-year wait coming to an end.” This “dark” period, which lies 500 years in India’s past, is popularly characterized by the rise of the Mughals, an empire of Muslim rulers from what is now Uzbekistan. According to Hindu nationalists, the Babri Masjid is believed to have been built by the first Mughal emperor, Babur, as a result of the destruction of the “original” Ram temple that once stood on the site. Although there is no concrete historical and archaeological evidence of the destruction of this temple, there have been attempts by archaeologists and historians leaning towards the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) to suggest otherwise.
  • After Nagorno Karabakh, an Uncertain Future for Refugees and the Region
    Ilaria Romano 27 March 2024
    Hundreds of refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh took to the streets of Yerevan a few days ago. They demanded a more comprehensive response plan from the Armenian government, as well as protections from international entities that may enable them to one day return to their homes. The protest included the reading of a declaration that cast light on the housing difficulties encountered by the former inhabitants of Artsakh. The latter have criticized the government’s “inadequate” response to the crisis.
  • What did the 2024 Double Legislative Session Reveal in China
    Seán Golden 25 March 2024
    From March 4 to 11, 2024, the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress held their annual joint double session, Lianghui (两会) in Chinese. The former is the highest legislative body in China’s governmental structure. The latter is the highest advisory body. In theory, all branches of government are subordinate to the National People’s Congress. In practice, government leaders present their work reports, and the Congress approves both the reports and the government’s accompanying proposals.
  • Silencing Dissent: Modi’s Crackdown on Overseas Critics
    Maria Tavernini 25 March 2024
    The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has canceled more than 100 Overseas Citizen of India cards in the past 10 years, according to Article 14, which has filed a Right to Information (RTI) query with the Ministry of Home Affairs. When someone’s OCI status is canceled, they have to leave the country and apply for a regular visa, but many former OCI holders have been “blacklisted” as the Narendra Modi-led government is increasingly trying to silence critics in the diaspora.
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    “Tolerated but not Accepted”: Gastarbeiters amid Germany’s Far-Right Surge
    Arghawan Farsi 22 March 2024
    “I’m drinking chai and eating köfte, while we still don’t feel at home here,” rapper Apsilon sings on the stage at one of Berlin’s largest demonstrations against the rise of right-wing parties. The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) in particular has been gaining votes, especially since the influx of migrants and refugees in 2015. The demonstration drew more than 150,000 people, as diverse as Berlin itself. Rainbow flags, socialist parties, grassroots groups, social workers, and activists all stand together in front of the Bundestag to take a stand against right-wing extremism.
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