Turkey

The West Should Not Abandon Armenia

Unless the West creates greater incentives for Azerbaijan to negotiate in good faith, a humanitarian crisis looks about to unfold. Continue Reading »

America and Armenia

Not since Ronald Reagan has a president spoken forthrightly of the Ottoman government's ethnic cleansing campaign against Armenians from 1915–23. Why did Biden do so now? Continue Reading »

Hagia Sophia: Past and Future

Hagia Sophia should no more be a mosque than the Parthenon should be restored to the worship of Athena. Continue Reading »

The Armenian Genocide Today

Senator Lindsey Graham’s vote to block the Armenian Genocide resolution will only embolden Turkey and threaten the region’s Christians even more. Continue Reading »

City of Conquest and Crossroads

Istanbul is a history of the people who lived in and around the city walls. Madden’s narrative is driven by conquests and construction. It is punctuated by earthquakes, fires, and plagues, and shot through with religious fervor and political intrigue. Continue Reading »

Bystanders to Genocide

“Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?”
—Adolf Hitler, August 22, 1939

In Turkey, the Clash of Civilizations Continues

We can tell ourselves that the conflict is temporary and superficial, that other civilizations are moving inexorably toward our understanding. But the clash is profound and perduring. Continue Reading »

When Worlds Collide

Snow by Orhan Pamuk Knopf. 426 pp. $26. Two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk published an essay in the New York Review of Books (titled “The Anger of the Damned”) in which Pamuk, who is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize, tried . . . . Continue Reading »