My opponent lives in Istanbul, Turkey. He made some bad moves and that's a good thing because it's fun to win.
This is the game. I had the White pieces. The links are for the beginning of the game and the end of the game.
https://lichess.org/pKiB0wVZ/white#0
https://lichess.org/pKiB0wVZ/white#99
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If you don't know how to play chess it's about time to fix your problem. It's easy to learn. Just click this link to get you started: https://lichess.org/practice
The best place in the world to play chess is at https://lichess.org. There are zero ads and it's completely free. It's a fantastic website and it keeps getting better.
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Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Monday, May 10, 2021
I just won a chess game against someone in Batman, Turkey. I thought that was a joke but there really is a Batman Turkey. Google is my friend.
Why is it called Batman Turkey?
Batman in Turkish means “Sunken” and the village (now a city) is famous for floods, hence the name. From Wikipedia: There are almost no forests in and around the city. The Iluh River, a tributary of the Batman River, flows through the city.
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The chess game was interesting. I had the Black pieces.
https://lichess.org/TNpTwRP2/black#0
Batman in Turkish means “Sunken” and the village (now a city) is famous for floods, hence the name. From Wikipedia: There are almost no forests in and around the city. The Iluh River, a tributary of the Batman River, flows through the city.
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The chess game was interesting. I had the Black pieces.
https://lichess.org/TNpTwRP2/black#0
Sunday, May 9, 2021
Everything you always wanted to know about Mersin, Turkey.
Mersin, City in Turkey
Mersin is a port city in southern Turkey on the Mediterranean coast. It’s a gateway to Tarsus, a nearby Christian pilgrimage destination where St. Paul’s Well commemorates the saint’s birthplace. Nearby is Cleopatra’s Gate, one of the remaining ruins of the old Roman defensive walls. In the city, the Mersin Museum exhibits archaeological artifacts and sculptures from nearby burial mounds and excavations.
― Google
I defeated a very strong opponent who lives in Merson, Turkey. This is the game. I had the White pieces.
https://lichess.org/YKL1vsHx/white#0
Mersin is a port city in southern Turkey on the Mediterranean coast. It’s a gateway to Tarsus, a nearby Christian pilgrimage destination where St. Paul’s Well commemorates the saint’s birthplace. Nearby is Cleopatra’s Gate, one of the remaining ruins of the old Roman defensive walls. In the city, the Mersin Museum exhibits archaeological artifacts and sculptures from nearby burial mounds and excavations.
I defeated a very strong opponent who lives in Merson, Turkey. This is the game. I had the White pieces.
https://lichess.org/YKL1vsHx/white#0
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Biden, well done!
New York Times
BREAKING NEWS |
President Biden said the U.S. views the killing of 1.5 million Armenians over 100 years ago as a genocide, raising tensions with Turkey, a NATO ally. |
Saturday, April 24, 2021 12:11 PM EST |
The declaration by Mr. Biden, on the 106th anniversary of a brutal campaign by the former Ottoman Empire that killed 1.5 million people, reflected his administration’s commitment to human rights, a pillar of its foreign policy. It is also a break from Mr. Biden’s predecessors, who were reluctant to anger a country of strategic importance and were wary of driving its leadership toward American adversaries like Russia or Iran. |
Armenia
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Friday, October 30, 2020
The universe is trying to kill Turkey and Greece. Nobody cares.
The Washington Post
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Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Google Translate is my friend. I just played a chess game against very strong chess player who speaks Turkish. I was able to get a draw but I don't think I could ever defeat him.
Today I learned in Germany people can learn how to play chess in kindergarten.
ben Endertezcan. yaşım 48. satrancı almanyada yuvada öğrendim bir daha kopamadım. d4 ile açılmayı severim. atak oyun favorimdir. en beğendiğim büyükusta em.lasker dir.
I am Endertezcan. I am 48 years old. I learned chess in kindergarten in Germany. I like to open with d4. Attack games are my favorite. My favorite grandmaster is Emanuel Lasker.
My opponent lives in Ankara, Turkey these days.
The game was not very interesting but here it is. I had the Black pieces.
https://lichess.org/6nyvey7a/black#0
ben Endertezcan. yaşım 48. satrancı almanyada yuvada öğrendim bir daha kopamadım. d4 ile açılmayı severim. atak oyun favorimdir. en beğendiğim büyükusta em.lasker dir.
I am Endertezcan. I am 48 years old. I learned chess in kindergarten in Germany. I like to open with d4. Attack games are my favorite. My favorite grandmaster is Emanuel Lasker.
My opponent lives in Ankara, Turkey these days.
The game was not very interesting but here it is. I had the Black pieces.
https://lichess.org/6nyvey7a/black#0
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
The Special Relationship is never going to end, no matter who the President is.
The Atlantic
Story by Tom McTague and Peter Nicholas
How to Stay One Step Ahead of Donald Trump
Saudi leaders have figured out what makes the president tick like few others have.
The joke, a throwaway quip, somehow captured the man and the moment—the end of one era, and the beginning of another. It was January 2017, and then–British Prime Minister Theresa May was in the White House, the first foreign leader to visit the new president of the United States, Donald Trump. For May, the trip had gone well: Pleasantries had been exchanged, faux pas avoided, commitments to NATO and the special relationship gleaned. Then came the press conference.
“Mr. President,” the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, called on by May, began, “you’ve said before that torture works; you’ve praised Russia; you’ve said you want to ban some Muslims from coming to America; you’ve suggested there should be punishment for abortion. For many people in Britain, those sound like alarming beliefs. What do you say to our viewers at home who are worried about some of your views and are worried about you becoming the leader of the free world?” A momentary silence followed. Smiling, Trump turned to his guest: “This was your choice of a question?” The room burst into laughter. Then came the punch line: “There goes that relationship.”
Trump’s remark may have been lighthearted, but it was also revealing: Here was a man who did not behave like a normal politician. He was unpredictable, uncontrollable, wild, and sometimes, yes, even funny. And yet he had an unmistakable streak of malice. Given the chance to ad-lib, Trump had joked that all it took was a tough question and the special relationship was off. It was funny because it pierced the tension in the room, but also because there was a ring of truth to it.
Every world leader since has faced the same problem: How do you handle a man like Trump? Britain, with its special relationship and deep connections to the U.S., seemed particularly well suited to the game at hand, given the new president’s support for Brexit and his familial connection to Scotland through his mother. Yet the story of his presidency has been one of British diplomatic failure, not success. Years of directionless prevaricating in London were compounded by a turgid, inflexible, and unimaginative diplomatic effort in Washington. The result: Britain has achieved little of substance—whether on trade, Iran, the climate, or Russia.
Since May’s visit, Britain’s influence in Washington has slumped. But a few countries have made significant diplomatic gains over the course of the Trump presidency—Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and North Korea among them—by working with the president, his family, and friends in ways the European powers have not.
Read: Trump Has Launched a Three-Pronged Attack on the Election
To understand who played the Great Trump Game well and what lessons can be drawn from their success, we spoke with more than a dozen current and former diplomats and officials in the U.S. and abroad, some who are still serving, others retired. Many of those we interviewed have worked directly with Trump and his administration, and the majority asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly. We also spoke with foreign-policy analysts, politicians, and political aides on both sides of the Atlantic to understand the long-term implications of Trump’s time in office. While the picture that emerges is a patchwork quilt of seemingly random American diplomatic achievements and failures, at least one clear pattern can be discerned: Hard men—they were all men—and dictators with deals to strike did well; Europeans who rely on history, democratic traditions, values, and strategic alliances did badly.
To get ahead in Trump’s Washington, the lesson for other countries’ leaders and diplomats is clear: You need to have something to sell and the connections to sell it.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had a direct line to the president and used it—Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem was a major victory. Saudi Arabia has similarly close ties to the Trump family through the president’s son-in-law and do-it-all adviser Jared Kushner and reaped the rewards, despite being caught decapitating and dismembering a Washington Post journalist. India has been “masterful” in its diplomatic strategy, according to one admiring diplomat, culminating in Narendra Modi’s trip to Texas last year and Trump’s state visit to Delhi in February. Turkey emerged with significant geopolitical gains in Syria, while North Korea has won previously undreamed-of status without giving away anything in return.
Of America’s obvious adversaries, Russia remains the conundrum through its inexplicable hold over Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed to win favor without the fawning demanded of other states. And the only real strategic rival to U.S. hegemony—China—has suffered relentless criticism from the Republican Party, and at times become a lightning rod for the president’s animosity, but has continued to rise nonetheless.
The problem for old American allies such as Britain, France, Germany, and even Australia, according to those who have worked closely with Trump, is that the president sees international relations as a series of business deals in which there are winners and losers. In his world, strategy, alliances, and values mean little.
One former White House official told The Atlantic that Trump’s weakness is that his only yardstick is money. “Part of the reason for that is he’s absolutely, totally unaware of history,” this former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to candidly relate private deliberations. “He doesn’t know, for example, why the Korean War happened, why there was an armistice.” Privately, the former official continued, Trump would question what had happened in the two world wars and why the U.S. military maintained permanent bases in Europe.
Read: Inside the Collapse of Trump’s Korea Policy
“He doesn’t have a strategic vision at all. If it’s anything, it’s to have other countries pay—plus 50 percent.” According to the former official, Trump sees in autocratic leaders such as Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and China’s Xi Jinping—as Trump would put it—“killer business guys like me.”
In the trump storm, the structures of American power, such as the professional foreign-policy apparatus, have been blown away. In their place, personality, politics, family, and money have come to the fore. “What Trump basically did was emasculate the rest of the diplomatic corps and all the elements of the U.S. government, so that everybody has to talk to Trump if they really want to know what’s going to happen,” Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and former national-security official under President George W. Bush, told us in an interview. Some countries have thrived in this environment; many others have had to make do with surviving.
Among those that managed to succeed, a pattern largely holds: You need an autocratic leader, a close connection to the Trump family, or a deal the president can hail as a victory. Ideally, you have all three. Perhaps the best example of this is Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis are doing business with us the way people do business with the Saudis,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and an official in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, told us. “They’re saying, ‘Okay, the United States has become like us. It’s being run by a family. So we will deal with the family.’”
Trump was an early fan of Saudi Arabia. He made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president and his hosts pampered him, projecting a five-story image of him onto the hotel where he stayed and presenting him with a gold medallion that is the country’s highest civilian honor. Not even the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was enough to deter a president focused on future deals. By then, Kushner was already close to the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And in a statement largely absolving the Saudis of the Khashoggi killing, Trump explicitly referenced the $450 billion the kingdom had “agreed to spend and invest” in the U.S., including a sum on military equipment. Autocracy. Familial ties. Business deals.
For Israel, too, an early bet on Trump has paid off. “Once it became clear that the Palestinian issue was going to be run out of the White House and the secretary of state would have nothing to do with it, [Netanyahu], who already had a relationship with Jared, essentially works the White House,” said Haass, author of The World: A Brief Introduction, published this year. “It’s the deinstitutionalization of foreign policy. That’s what we’re seeing here.”
Israel is by no measure an autocracy, yet it meets the other two criteria—family ties and dealmaking: Netanyahu is an old friend of the Kushner family, who once slept in Kushner’s bedroom during a visit to New Jersey (leaving Jared to sleep in the basement). The Israeli leader also succeeded in persuading Trump to move the American embassy, and indulged Trump’s futile effort to strike “the deal of the century”—a Middle East peace plan. After its release in January, the proposal was immediately rejected by Palestinian leaders who saw it as too favorable to Israel, and since then it has mostly been ignored.
Uri Friedman: What Democrats Aren’t Admitting About Trump’s Record
Cha told us that world leaders who had done well for their country in the Trump era had discovered that some combination of these attributes was ripe for potential rewards, and many had arrived at the same strategy: Dress up your own national agenda as Trump’s and give the president all the credit for what you wanted in the first place. The Japanese, South Koreans, and North Koreans have been particularly adept at this game, Cha said. (The notable exception to this trend is Mexico, which has consistently found itself under attack from the White House, but did not pay for a wall it didn’t want, and whose president had a largely controversy-free visit to Washington in July.)
A second former senior White House official said the importance of personal connections to the president was perhaps the key difference between prior administrations and Trump’s. “The Emiratis, the Saudis, and particularly the Israelis were very adept at cultivating those relationships,” this former official said. “The joke is that the U.S. ambassador to Israel doesn’t have a role, because the prime minister can go directly to Washington for everything.”
In Washington, the extent to which Trump’s family inserted itself into foreign policy was a source of frustration to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others. Tillerson once entered a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the proprietor came over to tell him that his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray, was also dining there. When Tillerson walked over to say hello, he found Kushner sitting at the same table. “I could see the color go out of” Videgaray’s face, Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “As it turned out later,” Tillerson continued, “the foreign secretary was operating on the assumption that everything he was talking to Mr. Kushner about had been run through the State Department and that I was fully on board with it. And he was rather shocked to find out that when he started telling me all these things that were news to me, I told him, ‘This is the first time I’m hearing of it.’” The first former White House official, meanwhile, recalled a meeting in Buenos Aires in 2018, during which Trump told Xi that Kushner would be involved in trade negotiations between the two countries. “I tell you,” this ex-official said, “they (the Chinese) brightened up, because they knew they could work him.”
Over the course of this presidency, many foreign capitals appear to have realized how dependent they were on the whims of Trump’s temper or their ability to work family networks, and thus have sought strategies to hedge their bets with other centers of American power and influence, principally Congress. U.S. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, told us in an interview that he had been getting lots of attention and requests for meetings in the Trump era. “It’s been a remarkable three years, and the list is long of ambassadors trying to get in to see me and have conversations to try to move the needle,” Coons said. “They’re looking for stability and reassurance in these relationships that have gone on for decades and are foundational to our security and prosperity.”
Precisely that kind of decades-long foundational relationship is what European allies had long depended on, and the reliance on those strategic ties appears to have been their undoing during this administration. None of Europe’s biggest countries had expected a Trump victory. The second ex–White House official said that, more than most, Britain, France, and Germany had sought to intensify their efforts with Congress because of the limited headway they were making with Trump, particularly in preserving the Iranian nuclear deal and avoiding the imposition of tariffs. Congress was the only avenue left because making progress with the Trump administration was so difficult, Cha told us.
Read: Congress has lost its power over Trump
The problem for traditional U.S. allies—Britain, France, and Germany, but also Japan and Australia—is that, unlike the quick hit of a diplomatic breakthrough with Trump, building support in Congress is slow.
For european powers, the trials and tribulations of the Trump era offer a salutary lesson in international relations: National interest remains king.
While Trump has been explicit in this transactional view, showing little interest in notions of shared values or enduring alliances forged after the Second World War, in many respects his outlook is just a more extreme (and, so far, glaringly unsuccessful) version of that pursued by all U.S. presidents.
Even at the height of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt coldly pursued American national interest in the struggle against Nazi Germany. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, quickly sidelined Britain after the war to deal directly with Moscow, reflecting the new reality of the world. Soon after, Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of D-Day, left Britain in the lurch in Suez in 1956, before John F. Kennedy canceled a missile program seen as vital to Britain’s national security, leading to vitriolic British headlines about the president’s Irish heritage. Those would find an unlikely echo almost six decades later when Boris Johnson, then not yet prime minister, accused Barack Obama of harboring an ancestral dislike for Britain because of his Kenyan father. Today, in British diplomatic circles, the changing demographic makeup of the U.S. is cited as a challenge, as the old elite ties that once bound Washington and London have been replaced by a more diverse America’s new connections to Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere.
For Britain, though, such concerns are little more than a fig leaf to cover underlying tensions. As early as 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whose father was English, ordered officials to stop talking about a “special relationship” with Britain, arguing the term gave the false impression that it trumped other alliances. This is not, then, the first time that Britain’s influence in Washington—indeed, like any other state—has rested on its own short-term strength and usefulness. Ties at the highest level improved when Tony Blair stood alongside Bush during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, whereas in the two decades since, Britain’s willingness to engage on the world stage (and thus its usefulness) has deteriorated.
Trump’s bellicosity may have spooked European states, including Britain, whose security is dependent on American goodwill and support, but according to those we spoke with, the past three years have only emphasized the structural problem Europe’s premier powers already faced. Ultimately, these countries cannot expect to continue wielding special influence in Washington if they do not offer special benefits to the U.S. in return. And on this score, Europe’s worth to Washington has been deteriorating as the principal strategic threat to American interests moves away from Europe’s borders to the South China Sea. No talk about history, kinship, shared values, or the rules-based international order can hide this reality.
David Frum: Trump has lost the plot
One British official said a number of core diplomatic challenges for London would continue beyond 2020, whatever happened in the presidential election. Unless the country addresses its shrinking military capacity and its perceived unreliability as a foreign-policy and security partner, Britain’s influence will continue to suffer. The official said Britain needs to be more assertive about what it brings to the table, and to acknowledge that it remains overwhelmingly in Britain’s national interest for the U.S. to remain the preeminent global power—not China. But to begin with, this official said, London needs to be honest about the damage its military cuts have caused.
The U.K.’s failures in the Trump era are symptomatic of a deeper malaise in its foreign policy, according to conversations with multiple influential British officials close to Johnson. In this view, Britain has struggled under Trump because its embassy has forgotten how to fight to be heard, and how to build a broad base of support in Congress and American society, while others such as India, Greece, Ireland, and Israel put great stock in their networks on the Hill and pulled ahead. The British embassy, we were told by two separate high-ranking and influential figures, has been too passive in its efforts for too long.
Now overtaken, Britain faces the nightmare scenario of becoming associated with Trump, having desperately sought to win him over, in the eyes of a Democratic Party that may soon hold the keys to both the White House and Congress. As a result, Britain may soon find itself with an entirely new set of challenges, and the same set of core strategic weaknesses as before.
European capitals, according to the first former White House official who spoke with us, have concluded that Trump is a “complete aberration.” The former official continued: “They’re saying, ‘This is a one-off. There’s not another man on the planet like this guy.’ Consequently, when he leaves office, the Americans will rebuild these relationships.”
That may well be the case if Trump were to lose his bid for reelection in November, but what if he prevails? “He’s done damage,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who was ousted last year and went on to release a tell-all book, told us. “After one term, the damage can be repaired fairly easily. What bothers me is the risk of a second term, where I think the damage may not be so easily repaired. And that could cause lasting harm, which is one reason I’m not going to vote for him in November.”
Still, whether in 2020 or 2024, Trump will leave office at some point, and American foreign-policy making will continue. The Washington game is much longer than the presidency of one man. “Personal relationships are important,” Antony Blinken, a senior foreign-policy adviser to the Biden campaign and a former foreign-policy official in the Obama administration, said, “but if they’re the sum and substance of your foreign policy, you’re going to have a problem.”
For the past three years, leaders, ambassadors, and kings have competed in the Great Trump Game for influence and favor. Deals have been made, egos burned, reputations burnished, careers trashed. Yet the underlying reality is that Trump did not change the nature of the game itself. In his pantomime mendacity, he managed to reveal what had been shrouded in politeness before: British weakness, European incoherence, and Chinese power. The president might have created new ways of winning and losing, but in the end he did not build a new world—he exposed the nature of the one that already existed.
TOM MCTAGUE is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic, and co-author of Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election
PETER NICHOLAS is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers the White House.
Story by Tom McTague and Peter Nicholas
How to Stay One Step Ahead of Donald Trump
Saudi leaders have figured out what makes the president tick like few others have.
The joke, a throwaway quip, somehow captured the man and the moment—the end of one era, and the beginning of another. It was January 2017, and then–British Prime Minister Theresa May was in the White House, the first foreign leader to visit the new president of the United States, Donald Trump. For May, the trip had gone well: Pleasantries had been exchanged, faux pas avoided, commitments to NATO and the special relationship gleaned. Then came the press conference.
“Mr. President,” the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, called on by May, began, “you’ve said before that torture works; you’ve praised Russia; you’ve said you want to ban some Muslims from coming to America; you’ve suggested there should be punishment for abortion. For many people in Britain, those sound like alarming beliefs. What do you say to our viewers at home who are worried about some of your views and are worried about you becoming the leader of the free world?” A momentary silence followed. Smiling, Trump turned to his guest: “This was your choice of a question?” The room burst into laughter. Then came the punch line: “There goes that relationship.”
Trump’s remark may have been lighthearted, but it was also revealing: Here was a man who did not behave like a normal politician. He was unpredictable, uncontrollable, wild, and sometimes, yes, even funny. And yet he had an unmistakable streak of malice. Given the chance to ad-lib, Trump had joked that all it took was a tough question and the special relationship was off. It was funny because it pierced the tension in the room, but also because there was a ring of truth to it.
Every world leader since has faced the same problem: How do you handle a man like Trump? Britain, with its special relationship and deep connections to the U.S., seemed particularly well suited to the game at hand, given the new president’s support for Brexit and his familial connection to Scotland through his mother. Yet the story of his presidency has been one of British diplomatic failure, not success. Years of directionless prevaricating in London were compounded by a turgid, inflexible, and unimaginative diplomatic effort in Washington. The result: Britain has achieved little of substance—whether on trade, Iran, the climate, or Russia.
Since May’s visit, Britain’s influence in Washington has slumped. But a few countries have made significant diplomatic gains over the course of the Trump presidency—Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and North Korea among them—by working with the president, his family, and friends in ways the European powers have not.
Read: Trump Has Launched a Three-Pronged Attack on the Election
To understand who played the Great Trump Game well and what lessons can be drawn from their success, we spoke with more than a dozen current and former diplomats and officials in the U.S. and abroad, some who are still serving, others retired. Many of those we interviewed have worked directly with Trump and his administration, and the majority asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly. We also spoke with foreign-policy analysts, politicians, and political aides on both sides of the Atlantic to understand the long-term implications of Trump’s time in office. While the picture that emerges is a patchwork quilt of seemingly random American diplomatic achievements and failures, at least one clear pattern can be discerned: Hard men—they were all men—and dictators with deals to strike did well; Europeans who rely on history, democratic traditions, values, and strategic alliances did badly.
To get ahead in Trump’s Washington, the lesson for other countries’ leaders and diplomats is clear: You need to have something to sell and the connections to sell it.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had a direct line to the president and used it—Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem was a major victory. Saudi Arabia has similarly close ties to the Trump family through the president’s son-in-law and do-it-all adviser Jared Kushner and reaped the rewards, despite being caught decapitating and dismembering a Washington Post journalist. India has been “masterful” in its diplomatic strategy, according to one admiring diplomat, culminating in Narendra Modi’s trip to Texas last year and Trump’s state visit to Delhi in February. Turkey emerged with significant geopolitical gains in Syria, while North Korea has won previously undreamed-of status without giving away anything in return.
Of America’s obvious adversaries, Russia remains the conundrum through its inexplicable hold over Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed to win favor without the fawning demanded of other states. And the only real strategic rival to U.S. hegemony—China—has suffered relentless criticism from the Republican Party, and at times become a lightning rod for the president’s animosity, but has continued to rise nonetheless.
The problem for old American allies such as Britain, France, Germany, and even Australia, according to those who have worked closely with Trump, is that the president sees international relations as a series of business deals in which there are winners and losers. In his world, strategy, alliances, and values mean little.
One former White House official told The Atlantic that Trump’s weakness is that his only yardstick is money. “Part of the reason for that is he’s absolutely, totally unaware of history,” this former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to candidly relate private deliberations. “He doesn’t know, for example, why the Korean War happened, why there was an armistice.” Privately, the former official continued, Trump would question what had happened in the two world wars and why the U.S. military maintained permanent bases in Europe.
Read: Inside the Collapse of Trump’s Korea Policy
“He doesn’t have a strategic vision at all. If it’s anything, it’s to have other countries pay—plus 50 percent.” According to the former official, Trump sees in autocratic leaders such as Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and China’s Xi Jinping—as Trump would put it—“killer business guys like me.”
In the trump storm, the structures of American power, such as the professional foreign-policy apparatus, have been blown away. In their place, personality, politics, family, and money have come to the fore. “What Trump basically did was emasculate the rest of the diplomatic corps and all the elements of the U.S. government, so that everybody has to talk to Trump if they really want to know what’s going to happen,” Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and former national-security official under President George W. Bush, told us in an interview. Some countries have thrived in this environment; many others have had to make do with surviving.
Among those that managed to succeed, a pattern largely holds: You need an autocratic leader, a close connection to the Trump family, or a deal the president can hail as a victory. Ideally, you have all three. Perhaps the best example of this is Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis are doing business with us the way people do business with the Saudis,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and an official in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, told us. “They’re saying, ‘Okay, the United States has become like us. It’s being run by a family. So we will deal with the family.’”
Trump was an early fan of Saudi Arabia. He made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president and his hosts pampered him, projecting a five-story image of him onto the hotel where he stayed and presenting him with a gold medallion that is the country’s highest civilian honor. Not even the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was enough to deter a president focused on future deals. By then, Kushner was already close to the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And in a statement largely absolving the Saudis of the Khashoggi killing, Trump explicitly referenced the $450 billion the kingdom had “agreed to spend and invest” in the U.S., including a sum on military equipment. Autocracy. Familial ties. Business deals.
For Israel, too, an early bet on Trump has paid off. “Once it became clear that the Palestinian issue was going to be run out of the White House and the secretary of state would have nothing to do with it, [Netanyahu], who already had a relationship with Jared, essentially works the White House,” said Haass, author of The World: A Brief Introduction, published this year. “It’s the deinstitutionalization of foreign policy. That’s what we’re seeing here.”
Israel is by no measure an autocracy, yet it meets the other two criteria—family ties and dealmaking: Netanyahu is an old friend of the Kushner family, who once slept in Kushner’s bedroom during a visit to New Jersey (leaving Jared to sleep in the basement). The Israeli leader also succeeded in persuading Trump to move the American embassy, and indulged Trump’s futile effort to strike “the deal of the century”—a Middle East peace plan. After its release in January, the proposal was immediately rejected by Palestinian leaders who saw it as too favorable to Israel, and since then it has mostly been ignored.
Uri Friedman: What Democrats Aren’t Admitting About Trump’s Record
Cha told us that world leaders who had done well for their country in the Trump era had discovered that some combination of these attributes was ripe for potential rewards, and many had arrived at the same strategy: Dress up your own national agenda as Trump’s and give the president all the credit for what you wanted in the first place. The Japanese, South Koreans, and North Koreans have been particularly adept at this game, Cha said. (The notable exception to this trend is Mexico, which has consistently found itself under attack from the White House, but did not pay for a wall it didn’t want, and whose president had a largely controversy-free visit to Washington in July.)
A second former senior White House official said the importance of personal connections to the president was perhaps the key difference between prior administrations and Trump’s. “The Emiratis, the Saudis, and particularly the Israelis were very adept at cultivating those relationships,” this former official said. “The joke is that the U.S. ambassador to Israel doesn’t have a role, because the prime minister can go directly to Washington for everything.”
In Washington, the extent to which Trump’s family inserted itself into foreign policy was a source of frustration to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others. Tillerson once entered a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the proprietor came over to tell him that his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray, was also dining there. When Tillerson walked over to say hello, he found Kushner sitting at the same table. “I could see the color go out of” Videgaray’s face, Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “As it turned out later,” Tillerson continued, “the foreign secretary was operating on the assumption that everything he was talking to Mr. Kushner about had been run through the State Department and that I was fully on board with it. And he was rather shocked to find out that when he started telling me all these things that were news to me, I told him, ‘This is the first time I’m hearing of it.’” The first former White House official, meanwhile, recalled a meeting in Buenos Aires in 2018, during which Trump told Xi that Kushner would be involved in trade negotiations between the two countries. “I tell you,” this ex-official said, “they (the Chinese) brightened up, because they knew they could work him.”
Over the course of this presidency, many foreign capitals appear to have realized how dependent they were on the whims of Trump’s temper or their ability to work family networks, and thus have sought strategies to hedge their bets with other centers of American power and influence, principally Congress. U.S. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, told us in an interview that he had been getting lots of attention and requests for meetings in the Trump era. “It’s been a remarkable three years, and the list is long of ambassadors trying to get in to see me and have conversations to try to move the needle,” Coons said. “They’re looking for stability and reassurance in these relationships that have gone on for decades and are foundational to our security and prosperity.”
Precisely that kind of decades-long foundational relationship is what European allies had long depended on, and the reliance on those strategic ties appears to have been their undoing during this administration. None of Europe’s biggest countries had expected a Trump victory. The second ex–White House official said that, more than most, Britain, France, and Germany had sought to intensify their efforts with Congress because of the limited headway they were making with Trump, particularly in preserving the Iranian nuclear deal and avoiding the imposition of tariffs. Congress was the only avenue left because making progress with the Trump administration was so difficult, Cha told us.
Read: Congress has lost its power over Trump
The problem for traditional U.S. allies—Britain, France, and Germany, but also Japan and Australia—is that, unlike the quick hit of a diplomatic breakthrough with Trump, building support in Congress is slow.
For european powers, the trials and tribulations of the Trump era offer a salutary lesson in international relations: National interest remains king.
While Trump has been explicit in this transactional view, showing little interest in notions of shared values or enduring alliances forged after the Second World War, in many respects his outlook is just a more extreme (and, so far, glaringly unsuccessful) version of that pursued by all U.S. presidents.
Even at the height of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt coldly pursued American national interest in the struggle against Nazi Germany. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, quickly sidelined Britain after the war to deal directly with Moscow, reflecting the new reality of the world. Soon after, Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of D-Day, left Britain in the lurch in Suez in 1956, before John F. Kennedy canceled a missile program seen as vital to Britain’s national security, leading to vitriolic British headlines about the president’s Irish heritage. Those would find an unlikely echo almost six decades later when Boris Johnson, then not yet prime minister, accused Barack Obama of harboring an ancestral dislike for Britain because of his Kenyan father. Today, in British diplomatic circles, the changing demographic makeup of the U.S. is cited as a challenge, as the old elite ties that once bound Washington and London have been replaced by a more diverse America’s new connections to Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere.
For Britain, though, such concerns are little more than a fig leaf to cover underlying tensions. As early as 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whose father was English, ordered officials to stop talking about a “special relationship” with Britain, arguing the term gave the false impression that it trumped other alliances. This is not, then, the first time that Britain’s influence in Washington—indeed, like any other state—has rested on its own short-term strength and usefulness. Ties at the highest level improved when Tony Blair stood alongside Bush during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, whereas in the two decades since, Britain’s willingness to engage on the world stage (and thus its usefulness) has deteriorated.
Trump’s bellicosity may have spooked European states, including Britain, whose security is dependent on American goodwill and support, but according to those we spoke with, the past three years have only emphasized the structural problem Europe’s premier powers already faced. Ultimately, these countries cannot expect to continue wielding special influence in Washington if they do not offer special benefits to the U.S. in return. And on this score, Europe’s worth to Washington has been deteriorating as the principal strategic threat to American interests moves away from Europe’s borders to the South China Sea. No talk about history, kinship, shared values, or the rules-based international order can hide this reality.
David Frum: Trump has lost the plot
One British official said a number of core diplomatic challenges for London would continue beyond 2020, whatever happened in the presidential election. Unless the country addresses its shrinking military capacity and its perceived unreliability as a foreign-policy and security partner, Britain’s influence will continue to suffer. The official said Britain needs to be more assertive about what it brings to the table, and to acknowledge that it remains overwhelmingly in Britain’s national interest for the U.S. to remain the preeminent global power—not China. But to begin with, this official said, London needs to be honest about the damage its military cuts have caused.
The U.K.’s failures in the Trump era are symptomatic of a deeper malaise in its foreign policy, according to conversations with multiple influential British officials close to Johnson. In this view, Britain has struggled under Trump because its embassy has forgotten how to fight to be heard, and how to build a broad base of support in Congress and American society, while others such as India, Greece, Ireland, and Israel put great stock in their networks on the Hill and pulled ahead. The British embassy, we were told by two separate high-ranking and influential figures, has been too passive in its efforts for too long.
Now overtaken, Britain faces the nightmare scenario of becoming associated with Trump, having desperately sought to win him over, in the eyes of a Democratic Party that may soon hold the keys to both the White House and Congress. As a result, Britain may soon find itself with an entirely new set of challenges, and the same set of core strategic weaknesses as before.
European capitals, according to the first former White House official who spoke with us, have concluded that Trump is a “complete aberration.” The former official continued: “They’re saying, ‘This is a one-off. There’s not another man on the planet like this guy.’ Consequently, when he leaves office, the Americans will rebuild these relationships.”
That may well be the case if Trump were to lose his bid for reelection in November, but what if he prevails? “He’s done damage,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who was ousted last year and went on to release a tell-all book, told us. “After one term, the damage can be repaired fairly easily. What bothers me is the risk of a second term, where I think the damage may not be so easily repaired. And that could cause lasting harm, which is one reason I’m not going to vote for him in November.”
Still, whether in 2020 or 2024, Trump will leave office at some point, and American foreign-policy making will continue. The Washington game is much longer than the presidency of one man. “Personal relationships are important,” Antony Blinken, a senior foreign-policy adviser to the Biden campaign and a former foreign-policy official in the Obama administration, said, “but if they’re the sum and substance of your foreign policy, you’re going to have a problem.”
For the past three years, leaders, ambassadors, and kings have competed in the Great Trump Game for influence and favor. Deals have been made, egos burned, reputations burnished, careers trashed. Yet the underlying reality is that Trump did not change the nature of the game itself. In his pantomime mendacity, he managed to reveal what had been shrouded in politeness before: British weakness, European incoherence, and Chinese power. The president might have created new ways of winning and losing, but in the end he did not build a new world—he exposed the nature of the one that already existed.
TOM MCTAGUE is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic, and co-author of Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election
PETER NICHOLAS is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers the White House.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Today is November 28, 2019, the 4th Thursday of the month. In the United States today is called "Thanksgiving Day". Every American is required to eat a Turkey. Turkeys call it "Genocide Day".
This is not a religious holiday but usually there is some god bullshit in it. That's the way it is in Idiot America.
Wikipedia - Thanksgiving In the United States
Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity.[7][8][9]
Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving", including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631.[10][11] According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.[12] Now called Oktober Feest, Leiden's autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims' plans to emigrate to America.[13] Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony's thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.[14][15][16] The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.[17]
Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress,[18] each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes.[19] As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God".[20]
Wikipedia - Thanksgiving In the United States
Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity.[7][8][9]
Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving", including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631.[10][11] According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.[12] Now called Oktober Feest, Leiden's autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims' plans to emigrate to America.[13] Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony's thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.[14][15][16] The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.[17]
Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress,[18] each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes.[19] As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God".[20]
Friday, November 22, 2019
The Middle East has always been totally fucked up and the problems are getting worse. It's all thanks to religion. Religion is bullshit and it destroys everything. This New York Times article is interesting whether or not you agree with it.
Opinion
One Thing Trump Gets Right
Israel’s settlements are not the principal obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
November 21, 2019
In this week’s Mideast news, the Iranian regime has reportedly killed more than 100 of its own people as it attempts to suppress another wave of nationwide demonstrations. The Islamic State is taking advantage of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria to regroup. Governments in Lebanon and Iraq remain paralyzed by popular discontent. And Israel has struck dozens of targets near Damascus after intercepting Iranian rockets fired from Syria.
Into this thicket of trouble, Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the State Department would reverse a 41-year-old legal opinion claiming that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were inconsistent with international law. The decision has garnered outsized attention, as if it’s another gratuitous Trumpian obstacle on the road to peace.
It’s not. To paraphrase Ariana Grande, we have one less problem without it.
I rarely have anything positive to say about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, and his overall approach to the Middle East is damaging and potentially disastrous for the United States and Israel alike. America cannot turn its back on the region, as Trump would like to do, and imagine the Middle East will return the favor. And Israel will not be safe in an America First world in which allies like the Kurds are cavalierly betrayed and enemies like Iran are only haphazardly confronted.
But let me give the administration some credit: When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least it isn’t stuck in a time warp, hanging on to hoary shibboleths.
Among those shibboleths: That the conflict can be solved by returning to the status quo ante 1967, or at least an approximation of it. That peace between Israel and the Arab states hinges on delivering a Palestinian state. And that settlement construction is the principal obstacle to peace.
This is all nonsense. The pan-Arab campaign to “liberate” Palestine began two decades before Israel controlled an inch of Gaza or the West Bank. Resolving the territorial dispute arising from the 1967 war does nothing to solve the existential issues arising from Israel’s creation in 1948. Relations with much of the Arab world have flourished in recent years, not on account of any progress on the Palestinian front, but because Arab states see Israel as a capable ally against an imperialist Iran.
As for settlements, Israel withdrew all of its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The result was more war, not less. What began as a moment of hope rapidly descended into a Palestinian civil war. That was followed by a Hamas victory, three major wars, and innumerable bloody skirmishes. Now we have an endless limbo in which Israelis live under constant threat, Gazans chafe under a remorseless tyranny, and groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad somehow have the means to acquire and fire hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilian targets.
Whatever else one might say about the administration, at least it understands that it would be worse than useless to demand that Israelis repeat the experiment on a much larger scale. Reversing a legally shaky opinion that does little more than drive American policy down a familiar cul-de-sac advances nobody’s interests, including those of the Palestinians.
I say “legally shaky” because it was never clear just whose territory Israel supposedly occupied when it wrested the West Bank from Jordanian control in a defensive war: Jordan’s claims to the area weren’t internationally recognized, either.
The more important point is that no progress can be made by repeatedly exhuming an increasingly distant past. As a matter of principle, Israel needs a two-state solution because it should not indefinitely rule (even indirectly) people who do not wish to be ruled by Israel. As a matter of survival, Israel also requires that a Palestinian state have neither the ambition nor the means to devote itself to Israel’s ultimate destruction.
The core problem with the past half-century of failed peacemaking efforts has been the facile assumption that meeting the need for two states would ultimately fulfill the requirement for security. The lesson of experience has been the opposite. The failure of Palestinians and their international enablers to satisfy that requirement — or even feign concern for it — has only made the need seem like little more than a remote abstraction to most Israelis.
This presents its own dangers. Having a right to build settlements is one thing. Having the right and exercising it wisely are separate things. A wise Israel needs to understand that it will have to compromise with the Palestinians at some point, in conditions that make compromise possible.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who on Wednesday failed to assemble a ruling coalition, gets this. Benjamin Netanyahu, who lately has promised to annex parts of the West Bank, does not. We’re a long way from knowing which of them will become prime minister.
In the meantime, the administration’s ruling on settlements cleans out some of the cobwebs under which thinking about the conflict has moldered. Good. Peace, if it comes, will not be the result of a diplomatic solution, much less as part of a legal argument over the Geneva Convention. It will happen as a cultural evolution, in which a new generation of Palestinian leaders dedicate themselves to building up the institutions of a decent state rather than attacking those of their neighbor; and in which Israelis have the wisdom to wait for those leaders, if necessary for decades.
Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. Facebook
One Thing Trump Gets Right
Israel’s settlements are not the principal obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
November 21, 2019
In this week’s Mideast news, the Iranian regime has reportedly killed more than 100 of its own people as it attempts to suppress another wave of nationwide demonstrations. The Islamic State is taking advantage of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria to regroup. Governments in Lebanon and Iraq remain paralyzed by popular discontent. And Israel has struck dozens of targets near Damascus after intercepting Iranian rockets fired from Syria.
Into this thicket of trouble, Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the State Department would reverse a 41-year-old legal opinion claiming that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were inconsistent with international law. The decision has garnered outsized attention, as if it’s another gratuitous Trumpian obstacle on the road to peace.
It’s not. To paraphrase Ariana Grande, we have one less problem without it.
I rarely have anything positive to say about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, and his overall approach to the Middle East is damaging and potentially disastrous for the United States and Israel alike. America cannot turn its back on the region, as Trump would like to do, and imagine the Middle East will return the favor. And Israel will not be safe in an America First world in which allies like the Kurds are cavalierly betrayed and enemies like Iran are only haphazardly confronted.
But let me give the administration some credit: When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least it isn’t stuck in a time warp, hanging on to hoary shibboleths.
Among those shibboleths: That the conflict can be solved by returning to the status quo ante 1967, or at least an approximation of it. That peace between Israel and the Arab states hinges on delivering a Palestinian state. And that settlement construction is the principal obstacle to peace.
This is all nonsense. The pan-Arab campaign to “liberate” Palestine began two decades before Israel controlled an inch of Gaza or the West Bank. Resolving the territorial dispute arising from the 1967 war does nothing to solve the existential issues arising from Israel’s creation in 1948. Relations with much of the Arab world have flourished in recent years, not on account of any progress on the Palestinian front, but because Arab states see Israel as a capable ally against an imperialist Iran.
As for settlements, Israel withdrew all of its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The result was more war, not less. What began as a moment of hope rapidly descended into a Palestinian civil war. That was followed by a Hamas victory, three major wars, and innumerable bloody skirmishes. Now we have an endless limbo in which Israelis live under constant threat, Gazans chafe under a remorseless tyranny, and groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad somehow have the means to acquire and fire hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilian targets.
Whatever else one might say about the administration, at least it understands that it would be worse than useless to demand that Israelis repeat the experiment on a much larger scale. Reversing a legally shaky opinion that does little more than drive American policy down a familiar cul-de-sac advances nobody’s interests, including those of the Palestinians.
I say “legally shaky” because it was never clear just whose territory Israel supposedly occupied when it wrested the West Bank from Jordanian control in a defensive war: Jordan’s claims to the area weren’t internationally recognized, either.
The more important point is that no progress can be made by repeatedly exhuming an increasingly distant past. As a matter of principle, Israel needs a two-state solution because it should not indefinitely rule (even indirectly) people who do not wish to be ruled by Israel. As a matter of survival, Israel also requires that a Palestinian state have neither the ambition nor the means to devote itself to Israel’s ultimate destruction.
The core problem with the past half-century of failed peacemaking efforts has been the facile assumption that meeting the need for two states would ultimately fulfill the requirement for security. The lesson of experience has been the opposite. The failure of Palestinians and their international enablers to satisfy that requirement — or even feign concern for it — has only made the need seem like little more than a remote abstraction to most Israelis.
This presents its own dangers. Having a right to build settlements is one thing. Having the right and exercising it wisely are separate things. A wise Israel needs to understand that it will have to compromise with the Palestinians at some point, in conditions that make compromise possible.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who on Wednesday failed to assemble a ruling coalition, gets this. Benjamin Netanyahu, who lately has promised to annex parts of the West Bank, does not. We’re a long way from knowing which of them will become prime minister.
In the meantime, the administration’s ruling on settlements cleans out some of the cobwebs under which thinking about the conflict has moldered. Good. Peace, if it comes, will not be the result of a diplomatic solution, much less as part of a legal argument over the Geneva Convention. It will happen as a cultural evolution, in which a new generation of Palestinian leaders dedicate themselves to building up the institutions of a decent state rather than attacking those of their neighbor; and in which Israelis have the wisdom to wait for those leaders, if necessary for decades.
Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. Facebook
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
The religion of never ending violence.
On This Day...
November 20, 2003: Istanbul, Turkey
Suicide bombers target HSBC and the British consulate: 30 Killed
Wikipedia - 2003 Istanbul bombings
November 20, 2003: Istanbul, Turkey
Suicide bombers target HSBC and the British consulate: 30 Killed
Wikipedia - 2003 Istanbul bombings
Saturday, October 12, 2019
My favorite columnist at the New York Times, Gail Collins, ridiculed the President of the United States, aka Fucktard Trump.
Opinion
Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nest
Getting stranger every day in every way.
By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist
October 9, 2019
Two ways to judge anything Donald Trump does these days: A) Is it a good idea? And B) Is it further evidence he’s going nuts?
Think about Turkey. Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to attack our old Kurdish allies in northern Syria. The White House announced late Sunday night that it was O.K. with the whole deal and was pulling out the small American military contingent that’s been fighting alongside the Kurds.
Nobody seemed to have run this by Defense Secretary Mark (Finally Confirmed!) Esper, who sent out a tweet Monday morning opposing the Turkish operation. Which was later deleted.
“If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey,” Trump reassured the nation.
Well, we’ve always known he suffers from delusions of grandeur. (“There are those that think I’m a very stable genius.”) And although the way the administration handled the whole Turkey thing was wildly inept, we’ve known for a long time there’s no ept in this White House.
But here’s the other part: Donald Trump is in the middle of a super impeachment crisis, and he’s surviving in office only through Senate Republicans’ support. And he chose this time to create a foreign affairs uproar guaranteed to outrage and offend the Republican senators.
“Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration. This move ensures the emergence of ISIS,” tweeted Lindsey Graham.
This from a fervid supporter. If Graham were, say, a miniature poodle, he’d be the one trotting along, carrying the master’s socks in his mouth.
The president’s sudden decision to give a shout-out to the Turkish government came after a phone call with Erdogan. By now there have been so many phone-related disasters you’d think the family would have taken away his communication devices. But Trump believes he’s always very careful and conscious that tons of people are listening in. “My knowledge — I know all about it,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.
The gathering degenerated into a yelling meltdown, during which our president declared that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff “had some kind of a mental breakdown.”
Nobody muttered “takes one to know one.”
Most of the Republicans are just sort of curled up under their beds, quivering. Lately, the squad of across-the-board Trump defenders has dwindled down to people like Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Perhaps you remember Gaetz having argued that violence in America was not due to guns but to “illegal aliens.” This time he said that the impeachment process was “a kangaroo court and chairman Schiff is acting like a malicious Captain Kangaroo.”
Well, you take whoever you can get and Trump does not currently have a lot of universally enthusiastic troops. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming called the American pullout from Syria a “catastrophic mistake.” Any daughter of Dick Cheney is going to be a person who can overlook a whole lot. When you lose her, you’re really down to … Matt Gaetz.
All this is going on while the White House is refusing to let Congress have access to administration officials who have information on the whistle-blower charges. Which, as of course you remember, stem from the time the man who believes he knows all about being careful on phone calls tried to get the Ukraine president to come up with some dirt on the foreign business dealings of Joe Biden’s son.
The man who later demanded that China investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings there. Even China found that loony, a high standard for a country that can’t even manage to have a reasonable relationship with basketball teams.
And, of course, the president whose daughter and son-in-law have both been working for the White House while raking in tens of millions of dollars from their business dealings. Some came from the clothing Ivanka manufactured in places like … China.
Why would he bring up children making money abroad? This isn’t just a guy who makes stupid decisions. It’s a guy who’s off his rocker. Whose great pal is Rudy Giuliani, the talking head whose TV appearances can terrify toddlers. I’m not saying Trump is the only unbalanced person in this story. Just that he’s the only one who controls our nuclear weapons.
In a happier time Americans went about their lives, complaining about Washington, then sort of shrugging and moving on to a discussion of the World Series. Or medieval history. Or goat yoga. Whatever. Now we aren’t even free to change the subject. We’re looking at the pileup and wondering whether the next thing will usher in the Big Crackup.
So there’s the president of the United States. Trying to get around the current controversy by rebranding the Turkish invasion “a bad idea.” Stonewalling Congress on the whistle-blower crisis. Which includes a report that one White House official who listened to Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president described it as — yes! — “crazy.”
What a coincidence.
Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist and a former member of the editorial board, and was the first woman to serve as the Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @GailCollins • Facebook
Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nest
Getting stranger every day in every way.
By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist
October 9, 2019
Two ways to judge anything Donald Trump does these days: A) Is it a good idea? And B) Is it further evidence he’s going nuts?
Think about Turkey. Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to attack our old Kurdish allies in northern Syria. The White House announced late Sunday night that it was O.K. with the whole deal and was pulling out the small American military contingent that’s been fighting alongside the Kurds.
Nobody seemed to have run this by Defense Secretary Mark (Finally Confirmed!) Esper, who sent out a tweet Monday morning opposing the Turkish operation. Which was later deleted.
“If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey,” Trump reassured the nation.
Well, we’ve always known he suffers from delusions of grandeur. (“There are those that think I’m a very stable genius.”) And although the way the administration handled the whole Turkey thing was wildly inept, we’ve known for a long time there’s no ept in this White House.
But here’s the other part: Donald Trump is in the middle of a super impeachment crisis, and he’s surviving in office only through Senate Republicans’ support. And he chose this time to create a foreign affairs uproar guaranteed to outrage and offend the Republican senators.
“Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration. This move ensures the emergence of ISIS,” tweeted Lindsey Graham.
This from a fervid supporter. If Graham were, say, a miniature poodle, he’d be the one trotting along, carrying the master’s socks in his mouth.
The president’s sudden decision to give a shout-out to the Turkish government came after a phone call with Erdogan. By now there have been so many phone-related disasters you’d think the family would have taken away his communication devices. But Trump believes he’s always very careful and conscious that tons of people are listening in. “My knowledge — I know all about it,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.
The gathering degenerated into a yelling meltdown, during which our president declared that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff “had some kind of a mental breakdown.”
Nobody muttered “takes one to know one.”
Most of the Republicans are just sort of curled up under their beds, quivering. Lately, the squad of across-the-board Trump defenders has dwindled down to people like Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Perhaps you remember Gaetz having argued that violence in America was not due to guns but to “illegal aliens.” This time he said that the impeachment process was “a kangaroo court and chairman Schiff is acting like a malicious Captain Kangaroo.”
Well, you take whoever you can get and Trump does not currently have a lot of universally enthusiastic troops. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming called the American pullout from Syria a “catastrophic mistake.” Any daughter of Dick Cheney is going to be a person who can overlook a whole lot. When you lose her, you’re really down to … Matt Gaetz.
All this is going on while the White House is refusing to let Congress have access to administration officials who have information on the whistle-blower charges. Which, as of course you remember, stem from the time the man who believes he knows all about being careful on phone calls tried to get the Ukraine president to come up with some dirt on the foreign business dealings of Joe Biden’s son.
The man who later demanded that China investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings there. Even China found that loony, a high standard for a country that can’t even manage to have a reasonable relationship with basketball teams.
And, of course, the president whose daughter and son-in-law have both been working for the White House while raking in tens of millions of dollars from their business dealings. Some came from the clothing Ivanka manufactured in places like … China.
Why would he bring up children making money abroad? This isn’t just a guy who makes stupid decisions. It’s a guy who’s off his rocker. Whose great pal is Rudy Giuliani, the talking head whose TV appearances can terrify toddlers. I’m not saying Trump is the only unbalanced person in this story. Just that he’s the only one who controls our nuclear weapons.
In a happier time Americans went about their lives, complaining about Washington, then sort of shrugging and moving on to a discussion of the World Series. Or medieval history. Or goat yoga. Whatever. Now we aren’t even free to change the subject. We’re looking at the pileup and wondering whether the next thing will usher in the Big Crackup.
So there’s the president of the United States. Trying to get around the current controversy by rebranding the Turkish invasion “a bad idea.” Stonewalling Congress on the whistle-blower crisis. Which includes a report that one White House official who listened to Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president described it as — yes! — “crazy.”
What a coincidence.
Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist and a former member of the editorial board, and was the first woman to serve as the Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @GailCollins • Facebook
Friday, August 9, 2019
I just played chess with someone in Sivas, Turkey. I never heard of the place so as usual I looked it up.
Everything you always wanted to know about Sivas, Turkey, population 360,000.
Wikipedia - Sivas, Turkey This is some of it. Click the link if you want to see the whole thing, as if anyone cares. Nobody is going to read any of this stuff.
Sivas is a city in central Turkey and the seat of Sivas Province.
The city, which lies at an elevation of 1,278 metres (4,193 ft) in the broad valley of the Kızılırmak river, is a moderately-sized trade center and industrial city, although the economy has traditionally been based on agriculture. Rail repair shops and a thriving manufacturing industry of rugs, bricks, cement, and cotton and woolen textiles form the mainstays of the city's economy. The surrounding region is a cereal-producing area with large deposits of iron ore which are worked at Divriği.
Sivas is also a communications hub for the north-south and east-west trade routes to Iraq and Iran, respectively. With the development of railways, the city gained new economic importance as junction of important rail lines linking the cities of Ankara, Kayseri, Samsun, and Erzurum. The city is linked by air to Istanbul. The popular name Sebastian derives from Sebastianòs, Σεβαστιανός, meaning someone from the city.
A cultural hub as well as an industrial one, Sivas contains many examples of 13th-century Seljuk architecture. The Mavi Medrese from 1271, the Şifaiye Medresesi from 1218 and the Çifte Minare Medresesi from 1271, with its intricately carved façade and minarets, are among the most noteworthy monuments. The city is also famous for its Medreses (Islamic seminaries). Gök Medresesi (the Celestial Madrasa; depicted on the obverse of the Turkish 500 lira banknote of 1927-1939) and Mavi Medrese, Sifaiye Medresesi, on the other hand, was completed earlier, on the eve of the second wave of Turkic immigration to Anatolia, in 1218 and with its intricately carved façade and minarets are among the most noteworthy edifices carries on the traditional Seljuk Medrese plan.
The city also contains some fine examples of the Ottoman architectural style. Kurşunlu Hamamı (Leaden Bath) which was completed in 1576, is the largest Turkish bath in the city and it contains many details from the classical Ottoman bath building. Behrampaşa Hanı (Caravansaray), was completed in 1573 and it is famous for the lion motifs around its windows.
Atatürk Congress and Ethnography Museum (Atatürk Kongre ve Etnografya Müzesi) is a museum with two sections. One is a dedicated to the Ottoman heritage of Sivas. The other is to the Sivas Congress, one of the pivotal moments in the Turkish national movement.
The modern heart of the city is Hükümet Square (Hükümet Meydanı, also called Konak Meydanı) located just next to the Governor's mansion. This area is also home to many of the city's high end hotels and restaurants. The city's shoppers usually head to Atatürk Avenue.
Cuisine
Specialties of Sivas are tarhana (a soup made using sour yogurt), kelecos (a sour potato soup made with yoghurt) and katmer, a kind of flatbread. One distinct feature of Sivas cooking is the use of madimak, which is a local herb used similarly to spinach. Sivas kebabı is a variety of kebab originating from Sivas. Sivas is also famous for its thermal springs which have a respectable percentage in the city's income. People believe that the water of these thermal springs can cure many illnesses. The most famous thermal areas are, Sıcak Çermik, Soğuk Çermik and Kangal Balıklı Kaplıca.
On 2 July 1993, 37 participants in an Alevi cultural and literary festival were killed when a mob of demonstrators set fire to the Madimak hotel in Sivas during a violent protest by some 15,000 members of various radical Islamist groups against the presence of Aziz Nesin. The deaths resulted in the Turkish government taking a harder stance against religious fanaticism, militant Islam, and antisecularism. In late 2006, there was a campaign by the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Institute to convert the former hotel into a museum to commemorate the tragedy, now known as the Sivas massacre.
The city was acquired by Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (1389–1402). In 1398, Tamerlane swept into the area and his forces destroyed the city in 1400, after which it was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1408. Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the administrative center of the province of Rum until about the late 19th century. The Armenian Apostolic Church maintained six Armenian churches in Sivas, being the Meryemana, Surp Sarkis, Surp Minas, Surp Prgitsh, Surp Hagop, Surp Kevork, four monasteries Surp Nschan, Surp Hreshdagabed, Surp Anabad, Surp Hntragadar, an Armenian Apostolic orphanage and several schools. The Armenian Catholic Church and the Latins also had one church and a metropolitan of Sebastea, as did the Greek Orthodox Church. Two Protestant churches and eight, mostly German- and American-staffed, schools. During the genocide against Armenians as well as against Greek Christians from July 5, 1915 onwards, the Christian community of Sivas was exterminated by deportations and mass executions.
Wikipedia - Sivas, Turkey This is some of it. Click the link if you want to see the whole thing, as if anyone cares. Nobody is going to read any of this stuff.
Sivas is a city in central Turkey and the seat of Sivas Province.
The city, which lies at an elevation of 1,278 metres (4,193 ft) in the broad valley of the Kızılırmak river, is a moderately-sized trade center and industrial city, although the economy has traditionally been based on agriculture. Rail repair shops and a thriving manufacturing industry of rugs, bricks, cement, and cotton and woolen textiles form the mainstays of the city's economy. The surrounding region is a cereal-producing area with large deposits of iron ore which are worked at Divriği.
Sivas is also a communications hub for the north-south and east-west trade routes to Iraq and Iran, respectively. With the development of railways, the city gained new economic importance as junction of important rail lines linking the cities of Ankara, Kayseri, Samsun, and Erzurum. The city is linked by air to Istanbul. The popular name Sebastian derives from Sebastianòs, Σεβαστιανός, meaning someone from the city.
A cultural hub as well as an industrial one, Sivas contains many examples of 13th-century Seljuk architecture. The Mavi Medrese from 1271, the Şifaiye Medresesi from 1218 and the Çifte Minare Medresesi from 1271, with its intricately carved façade and minarets, are among the most noteworthy monuments. The city is also famous for its Medreses (Islamic seminaries). Gök Medresesi (the Celestial Madrasa; depicted on the obverse of the Turkish 500 lira banknote of 1927-1939) and Mavi Medrese, Sifaiye Medresesi, on the other hand, was completed earlier, on the eve of the second wave of Turkic immigration to Anatolia, in 1218 and with its intricately carved façade and minarets are among the most noteworthy edifices carries on the traditional Seljuk Medrese plan.
The city also contains some fine examples of the Ottoman architectural style. Kurşunlu Hamamı (Leaden Bath) which was completed in 1576, is the largest Turkish bath in the city and it contains many details from the classical Ottoman bath building. Behrampaşa Hanı (Caravansaray), was completed in 1573 and it is famous for the lion motifs around its windows.
Atatürk Congress and Ethnography Museum (Atatürk Kongre ve Etnografya Müzesi) is a museum with two sections. One is a dedicated to the Ottoman heritage of Sivas. The other is to the Sivas Congress, one of the pivotal moments in the Turkish national movement.
The modern heart of the city is Hükümet Square (Hükümet Meydanı, also called Konak Meydanı) located just next to the Governor's mansion. This area is also home to many of the city's high end hotels and restaurants. The city's shoppers usually head to Atatürk Avenue.
Cuisine
Specialties of Sivas are tarhana (a soup made using sour yogurt), kelecos (a sour potato soup made with yoghurt) and katmer, a kind of flatbread. One distinct feature of Sivas cooking is the use of madimak, which is a local herb used similarly to spinach. Sivas kebabı is a variety of kebab originating from Sivas. Sivas is also famous for its thermal springs which have a respectable percentage in the city's income. People believe that the water of these thermal springs can cure many illnesses. The most famous thermal areas are, Sıcak Çermik, Soğuk Çermik and Kangal Balıklı Kaplıca.
On 2 July 1993, 37 participants in an Alevi cultural and literary festival were killed when a mob of demonstrators set fire to the Madimak hotel in Sivas during a violent protest by some 15,000 members of various radical Islamist groups against the presence of Aziz Nesin. The deaths resulted in the Turkish government taking a harder stance against religious fanaticism, militant Islam, and antisecularism. In late 2006, there was a campaign by the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Institute to convert the former hotel into a museum to commemorate the tragedy, now known as the Sivas massacre.
The city was acquired by Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (1389–1402). In 1398, Tamerlane swept into the area and his forces destroyed the city in 1400, after which it was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1408. Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the administrative center of the province of Rum until about the late 19th century. The Armenian Apostolic Church maintained six Armenian churches in Sivas, being the Meryemana, Surp Sarkis, Surp Minas, Surp Prgitsh, Surp Hagop, Surp Kevork, four monasteries Surp Nschan, Surp Hreshdagabed, Surp Anabad, Surp Hntragadar, an Armenian Apostolic orphanage and several schools. The Armenian Catholic Church and the Latins also had one church and a metropolitan of Sebastea, as did the Greek Orthodox Church. Two Protestant churches and eight, mostly German- and American-staffed, schools. During the genocide against Armenians as well as against Greek Christians from July 5, 1915 onwards, the Christian community of Sivas was exterminated by deportations and mass executions.
Friday, June 21, 2019
I bet you never heard of this place before. ŞANLIURFA Turkey. I just played chess with someone who lives there. My previous opponent lives in Auch, France which is another interesting place I never heard of before.
Wikipedia - Urfa, Turkey
Urfa, officially known as Şanlıurfa (pronounced [ʃanˈlɯuɾfa]; Kurdish: Riha; Ուռհա Uṙha in Armenian, ܐܘܪܗܝ Ūrhay in Syriac) and known in ancient times as Edessa, is a city with a population of over 2 million residents[2] in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is a multiethnic city with a Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian and Arab population. Urfa is situated on a plain about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. Its climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters.
For a while during the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 - 164 BCE) the city was named Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe (Ancient Greek: Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Καλλιρρόης). During Byzantine rule it was named Justinopolis. Prior to Turkish rule, it was often best known by the name given it by the Seleucids, Ἔδεσσα, Edessa.
Şanlı means "great, glorious, dignified" in Turkish, and Urfa was officially renamed Şanlıurfa (Urfa the Glorious) by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1984, in recognition of the local resistance in the Turkish War of Independence. The title was achieved following repeated requests by the city's members of parliament, desirous to earn a title similar to those of neighbouring cities 'Gazi' (veteran) Antep and 'Kahraman' (Heroic) Maraş.
The history of Urfa is recorded from the 4th century BC, but may date back at least to 9000 BC, when there is ample evidence for the surrounding sites at Duru, Harranand Nevali Cori.[4] Within the further area of the city are three Neolithic sites known: Göbekli Tepe, Gürcütepe and the city itself, where the life-sized limestone "Urfa Man" statue was found during an excavation in Balıklıgöl and is now on display at the Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum.[5] The city was one of several in the upper Euphrates-Tigris basin, the fertile crescent where agriculture began.
According to Jewish and Muslim tradition, Urfa is Ur Kasdim, the hometown of Abraham.[citation needed] This identification was disputed by Leonard Woolley, the excavator of the Sumerian city of Ur in 1927 and scholars remain divided on the issue. Urfa is also one of several cities that have traditions associated with Job.
For the Armenians, Urfa is considered a holy place since it is believed that the Armenian alphabet was invented there.[6]
Urfa was conquered repeatedly throughout history, and has been dominated by many civilizations, including the Ebla, Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Hurri-Mitannis, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Ancient Macedonians (under Alexander the Great), Seleucids, Arameans, the Neo-Assyrian Osrhoenes, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, and Arabs
Urfa, officially known as Şanlıurfa (pronounced [ʃanˈlɯuɾfa]; Kurdish: Riha; Ուռհա Uṙha in Armenian, ܐܘܪܗܝ Ūrhay in Syriac) and known in ancient times as Edessa, is a city with a population of over 2 million residents[2] in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is a multiethnic city with a Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian and Arab population. Urfa is situated on a plain about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. Its climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters.
For a while during the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 - 164 BCE) the city was named Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe (Ancient Greek: Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Καλλιρρόης). During Byzantine rule it was named Justinopolis. Prior to Turkish rule, it was often best known by the name given it by the Seleucids, Ἔδεσσα, Edessa.
Şanlı means "great, glorious, dignified" in Turkish, and Urfa was officially renamed Şanlıurfa (Urfa the Glorious) by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1984, in recognition of the local resistance in the Turkish War of Independence. The title was achieved following repeated requests by the city's members of parliament, desirous to earn a title similar to those of neighbouring cities 'Gazi' (veteran) Antep and 'Kahraman' (Heroic) Maraş.
The history of Urfa is recorded from the 4th century BC, but may date back at least to 9000 BC, when there is ample evidence for the surrounding sites at Duru, Harranand Nevali Cori.[4] Within the further area of the city are three Neolithic sites known: Göbekli Tepe, Gürcütepe and the city itself, where the life-sized limestone "Urfa Man" statue was found during an excavation in Balıklıgöl and is now on display at the Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum.[5] The city was one of several in the upper Euphrates-Tigris basin, the fertile crescent where agriculture began.
According to Jewish and Muslim tradition, Urfa is Ur Kasdim, the hometown of Abraham.[citation needed] This identification was disputed by Leonard Woolley, the excavator of the Sumerian city of Ur in 1927 and scholars remain divided on the issue. Urfa is also one of several cities that have traditions associated with Job.
For the Armenians, Urfa is considered a holy place since it is believed that the Armenian alphabet was invented there.[6]
Urfa was conquered repeatedly throughout history, and has been dominated by many civilizations, including the Ebla, Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Hurri-Mitannis, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Ancient Macedonians (under Alexander the Great), Seleucids, Arameans, the Neo-Assyrian Osrhoenes, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, and Arabs
Monday, March 11, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Everything you always wanted to know about Merzifon, Turkey.
There's at least one chess player in this middle-of-nowhere town and I just played one chess game with him thanks to https://lichess.org/ which now has about 28,000 people playing chess at the same time.
History[edit]
Far antiquity[edit]
Archaeological evidence (hundreds of burial mounds höyük) indicate settlement of this well-watered farmland since the stone age at least 5500 BC. The first fortifications were built by the Hittites, who were pushed out around 1200BC by invaders coming in from the nearby Black Sea. From 700BC the fortifications were rebuilt by the Phrygians, who left a number of burial mounds and other architecture. From 600BC the Phrygians were pushed out by more invasions from the east, this time Cimmerians from over the Caucasus mountains; graves from this period have been excavated and their contents displayed in the museum in Amasya. Merzifon then became a trading post of the kings of Pontus, whose ruled the Black Sea coast from their capital in Amasya.
Rome and Byzantium[edit]
The district of Amasya was destroyed during civil wars of the Romans and, including Merzifon, was restored by command of the emperor Hadrian. Remains of Roman temples from Merzifon are also on display in Amasya today. The city grew in importance under Roman rule as walls and fortifications were strengthened, and remained strong under Byzantine rule (following the division of the Roman empire in 395), although it was held briefly by Arab armies during the 8th century expansion of Islam. Following which the castle of Bulak was built as a defence.
Turks and Ottomans[edit]
Islam was finally established by the Danishmend lords in the 11th century and the Byzantines never regained control. The Danishmend were followed by Seljuk Turks, Ilkhan, and from 1393 onwards the Ottomans. Merzifon remained an important city for the Ottomans, because of its proximity to Amasya (where Ottoman princes were raised and schooled for the throne). Evliya Çelebi records a well-fortified trading city. Merzifon was home to one of the last communities of Armenian Zoroastrians - known as Arewordik ( children of the sun ), who are believed to have been killed in the Armenian genocide between 1915 - 17 . Merzifon became a center of European trading and missionary activity by the 19th century. American missionaries established a seminary in 1862. In 1886, a boarding school, Anatolia College in Merzifon was founded (and expanded to also serve girls in 1893). By the 1920s, the schools had over 200 boarding students, mostly ethnic Greeks and Armenians. The complex also had one of the largest hospitals in Asia Minor, and an orphanage housed 2000 children. However, the town also became a focal point for both Armenian nationalism (Armenians comprised half of the population of what they called Marsovan in 1915) and anti-Western sentiment. It suffered at least two riots in the 1890s, but the damage was rebuilt. In 1916, over 11,000 Armenians were deported from the city (which had approximately 30,000 inhabitants the previous year); others were killed and their property confiscated and sold to Turkish insiders, supposedly to benefit the Ottoman war effort, as documented by missionary George E. White. Anatolia College in Merzifon was closed in 1924 and all remaining Christians were forced to leave.
Turkish Republic[edit]
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, unrest continued. British troops deployed in formerly Ottoman lands to ensure the terms of surrender; some arrived in Merzifon in 1919 as American missionary White returned and reopened the college and orphanage, as well as a new "baby house" for displaced Armenian mothers and infants. However, the British troops soon withdrew and unrest continued in Merzifon.
Merzifon is now a typical large but quiet Anatolian town providing schools, hospitals, courts and other important infrastructure in concrete buildings, but offering few cultural amenities. Few travellers stop here, preferring to press on to reach the Black Sea coast. The best-known dish is the boiled wheat, chick-pea and meat stew called keşkek; there are also a number of well-known kebab houses and a famous köfte restaurant called Ciloşoğlu. And at weekends there is plenty of attractive countryside around for a picnic or other escapes.
There is a large airbase nearby. Merzifon is twinned with the city of Pleasant Hill, California.
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