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Monthly Archives: November 2015

Sentimental Self-Interest: Turkey’s Foreign Policy During the Bosnia Conflict

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Christian Davies in History

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Bosnia, Middle East, Turkey

Turkey’s policy can be described as one of ‘sentimental self-interest’ because the ‘sentimental’ identification of elements of Turkish society with the Bosnian Muslims did not contradict the ‘self-interested’ raison d’État­ calculations of the Kemalist ‘guardian state’

The post-Cold War period was a time of great political and strategic uncertainty for Turkey. Since the introduction of democratic elections in the 1940s there had been considerable ideological competion over domestic issues, primarily the role of religion in Turkish society, but in the 1980s, with the rise of a moneyed class of socially conservative Anatolian business-owners, combined with wider popular disenchantment with the corruption and statism of the Kemalist elite and secular ruling parties, the ‘Islamist’[1] movement gained the financial and electoral clout to challenge the ‘Kemalist’[2] state. (White, 2008, p369-70)

A dramatically changing strategic environment exacerbated this challenge to the Kemalist worldview. Whereas ‘during the days of Cold War friction and the perception of an imminent military threat it was possible to hold a broad consensus behind the idea of NATO membership and close military relations with the United States’, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent liberation of Turkey from the straitjacket of the Cold War bipolar order meant that ‘the old consensus on foreign policy was breaking down just at a time when an ideological competition over the strategic direction of the country should take was both emerging and becoming more intense’ (Robins, 2003, p155).

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Independence Day: Poland’s Internal Partitions

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Christian Davies in History, Politics

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Poland

The hooligans paused respectfully for the hourly trumpet call from the towers of St Mary’s Basilica marking the defence of the city from Mongol invasion in 1241, as if it somehow proved their point.

Kraków’s Main Square was crowded as I entered from the northwest at about eight o’clock in the evening.  It is 11th November – Independence Day.  On this day in 1918, Józef Piłsudski proclaimed an independent Polish state after over a century of partition by the Prussian, Russian and Austrian empires.  In 1794, Kraków witnessed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s last symbolic act of defiance, when Tadeusz Kościuszko stood before the people in the Main Square and assumed command of the Polish forces, swearing to regain the nation’s independence. The Kościuszko Uprising was put down by Russian and Prussian forces before the final partition of 1795.

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Is Joshua Wong Being Naïve?

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by Christian Davies in Politics

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Asia, China, Hong Kong

The simplicity of Wong’s message gives Hong Kong’s activists the best chance on focusing on their tactics without eternal debates about the goal

In my post about Britain’s relations with China during the Chinese state visit last month, I mentioned the case of Joshua Wong, the teenage protestor from Hong Kong and founder of the territory’s ‘Scholarism’ movement – a protest movement of Hong Kong school students against Chinese plans to introduce a compulsory “Moral and National Education Programme”, teaching that the Chinese Communist Party is “progressive, selfless and united”, into the Hong Kong school programme.  The students succeeded in having the implementation of the programme postponed, though not scrapped.

Open Democracy’s En Liang Khong has published a very interesting interview with Wong, who is on an international speaking tour ahead of learning whether he will sentenced for five years in jail for his protesting activities.  The interview is accompanied by an analysis of the divisions within the Hong Kong protest movement, including contributions by a number of Wong’s critics.

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Recent Posts

  • Polish PM Angers Human Rights Campaigners with Plans to Shake Up NGOs
  • New Polish Military Force Worries Political Opposition
  • Poland Exhumes President Lech Kaczyński’s Remains
  • Polish Women Vow to Step Up Pressure Over Abortion Restrictions
  • Poland’s Abortion Ban Proposal Near Collapse After Mass Protests

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Kenton on The Ghosts of Smolensk

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