Frontline Turkey: The Conflict at the Heart of the Middle East

by Ezgi Basaran

Overview

Turkey is on the front line of the war which is consuming Syria and the Middle East. Its role is complicated by the long-running conflict with the Kurds on the Syrian border - a war that has killed as many as 80,000 people over the last three decades.
In 2011 President Erdogan promised to make a deal with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), but the talks marked a descent into assassinations, suicide bombings and the killing of civilians on both sides. The Kurdish peace process finally collapsed in 2014 with the spillover of the Syrian civil war. With ISIS moving through northern Iraq, Turkey has declared war on Western allies such as the Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Unit) - the military who rescued the Yezidis and fought with US backing in Kobane.
Frontline Turkey shows how the Kurds' relationship with Turkey is at the very heart of the Middle Eastern crisis, and documents, through front-line reporting, how Erdogan's failure to bring peace is the key to understanding current events in Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784538415
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/09/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ezgi Basaran is a Turkish jourbanalist who made her name covering the Kurdish conflict - reporting 'on the ground' in the fight between ISIS, the YPG, the PKK and the Turkish state. After accepting the offer to write a daily column on Turkish foreign affairs, she became the youngest ever editor of Turkey's Radikal, the biggest centre-left news outlet in Turkey, and the first woman to hold the role. After facing government censorship when covering the breakdown of the Kurdish talks, she resigned. Radikal was shut down by the government a month later - an unprecedented event which made headlines worldwide. She is currently an academic visitor at St Antony's College Oxford. She has nearly 1 million twitter followers, and extensive 'name-recognition' in the field of Turkish politics and jourbanalism. This would be her first book in English.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Map

Glossary and Key Players

Preface

Introduction

1. Kurdish Issue: Made in Turkey
2. Kurds in New Turkey
3. Kurdish Peace and the New Deep State
4. The PKK Embraces the World
5. Syria and the Kurdish Peace
6. No Presidency, No Peace
7. What Do Kurds Want?
8. The Coup Attempt that Shook Turkey

Conclusion: The Kurdish Issue Goes Global

Notes

Further Reading

Index

Editorial Reviews

11/20/2017
Basaran, a Turkish journalist, delivers a concise, if dense, summary of the complex politics and conflicts between Turkey and its Kurdish population, recapping the personalities, parties, and principles that make up this long-running war. Basaran condenses four decades of strife and traces their intersection with the evolution of the Turkish state, now veering toward authoritarianism and Islamist tendencies under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom she labels an “unpredictable and erratic strongman.” The story of the most recent, abortive peace process is not for the novice: muddling factors include rifts in the Turkish government, disputes between Kurdish political parties, the prospect of Turkey joining the European Union, assassinations of Kurds by state security forces, and the role of Kurds fighting in the Syrian civil war. The author lays blame for the collapse of negotiations in 2015 on a complex mix of influences and laments the waste of an “invaluable opportunity: the chance to end a 40-year-old war.” Casual readers of international news will struggle with the swirl of acronyms and names, and Turkey experts may find points to debate. But for a relatively short work, Basaran’s survey covers a huge amount of material and will be of interest to readers already well versed in the subject matter. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

A new book laying bare the Turkish regime’s collaboration with ISIS and its systematic campaign against the Kurds is a frightening read – particularly so for one US-based imam.”

Robert Fisk