Tag: Turkey

INFOGRAPHIC: Who Are the Kurds?

An at-a-glance infographic to offer some clarity about the Kurds, who have introduced both stability and tension to a geopolitically delicate Middle East

(This article originally appeared at Philos Project)

It was three years ago – July 4, 2014 – that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood in the pulpit of the Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul to declare the creation of an Islamic State caliphate. What followed has been a brutal campaign of blood and destruction across Iraq and Syria.

Today, the caliphate is crumbling – at least geographically. Iraqi and coalition forces have recaptured Mosul and what is left of the Grand Mosque. In Syria, the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have all but liberated the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa.

To be sure, the victories against ISIS belong to many, but at the heart of some of the fiercest fighting has been one steadfast group: the Kurds, a diverse and dispersed people with no sovereign state but a pervasive presence in the Middle East. In Iraq, the Kurds have functioned as a semi-autonomous state since the end of the first Gulf War. In Turkey, a large Kurdish faction has been branded as terrorists. In Syria, Kurdish militias have been key players in the fight against the Islamic State.

The Kurds have introduced both stability and tension to a geopolitically delicate Middle East.

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ARTICLE: A Precarious Liberty: Religious Freedom in Erdoğan’s Turkey

From his jail cell, American pastor Andrew Brunson cries out, “Will the Turkish government face no consequences for stubbornly continuing to hold an American citizen as a political prisoner?”

Pastor Brunson’s story underscores the swift erosion of religious freedom in Turkey.

(This article originally appeared in The Philos Project)

On April 16, Pastor Andrew Brunson did not celebrate Easter with his flock. Instead, he marked six months and eight days of confinement in a Turkish prison, where he is being held on charges of “membership in an armed terrorist organization.”

Since 1993, American citizens Brunson and his wife Norine have faithfully shepherded a small but vibrant Christian congregation at the Resurrection Church in their adopted home of Izmir, a buzzing, ancient city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Originally from North Carolina, Brunson was ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and followed the call to church plant in the Muslim-majority nation, where less than 0.2 percent of the population identifies as Christian.

The Brunsons served the people of Turkey without incident for nearly 25 years, even as religious tensions mounted and an increasingly authoritarian regime squeezed religious freedoms. But everything changed on the morning of October 7, 2016, when the Brunsons were summoned to their local police station. Assuming they were about to receive their long-awaited permanent resident designations, they were surprised to find themselves detained on the grounds that they were a “threat to national security.”

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