The Messy Business of Democracy

Juan Cole has an excellent post about the growth of democracy in two Muslim-majority countries (Turkey and Indonesia). While both countries have their very serious problems (lurking authoritarians, bad record on treatment of minorities) they are quietly achieving free and open societies. It is worth remembering that the attainment of our current forms of government in the West required a great deal of struggle and many setbacks. The point is though that this kind of reform seems to work best when people are given the chance to do it themselves. Go read the whole post, perhaps a little optimism for the new year.

Let slip the dogs of war (again)

Turkey (now with the support of Syria!) is authorizing its military to conduct incursions into the Kurdish areas of Iraq. I don't know what to say, but Turkey may be at the vanguard of far more open involvement of other regional powers in pursuing their interests in Iraq.

Invading Iraq to Stop Terror Attacks

Is it okay when Iran does it?

After Turkey had pretty much threatened to do the same thing, one wonders what reason the American military could give for declaring such actions unjust.

I'm sure that everyone involved in the invasion and occupation is eager to protect the Kurdish areas as they represent the one real glimmer of success in Iraq for now. If the Kurdish paramilitaries tolerate the more radical Kurdish separatist groups using Iraq as a base to attack Turkey and Iran, surely they will both respond.

Turkey and Iraq

Turkey is shelling PKK positions in Iraq, and what's more, it appears to be massing an invasion force for an incursion into northern Iraq. This is not encouraging for anyone, and yet it's par for the course in that part of the world.

Despite the obvious and frightening scenarios that may be unleashed by a major Turkish incursion, there may be little in the way of pretext to stop it.

Oh the Irony! Turkey/Kurdistan Edition

Remember how the US invaded Iraq ostensibly to limit terrorist threats - something trumpeted as the Bush Doctrine? Remember how Bush said he would not make a distinction between terrorists and those that harbor them?

Well now the Turkish government is accusing US-occupied Iraq of harboring terrorists! By the Bush Administration's own foreign policy doctrine, Turkey is able - nay ought - to invade and occupy Kurdistan to deal with the PKK.

Of course the reality is much more complex than that. The Turkish government hasn't exactly treated its Kurdish minority with the utmost of fairness and the US does regard the PKK as a terror organization. On the other hand the reality in 2003 was more complex too.

Did Canadian customs actually hold a man because of Wikipedia?

Or at least in part because of Wikipedia? That's what is being claimed by one Taner Akçam, a professor who has written about the Armenian genocide. Akçam writes:

"As a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in Turkey, I should not have been surprised. But my recent detention at the Montreal airport—apparently on the basis of anonymous insertions in my Wikipedia biography—signals a disturbing new phase in a Turkish campaign of intimidation that has intensified since the November 2006 publication of my book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility."

The story as it is laid out is worth reading, in part as a reminder that if you make a enough trouble for a government, you are never truly free from harassment, but really, are we considering Wikipedia as a source for terror watch lists?! Yes I use it (and probably you do too) as a quick-and-dirty reference tool, but then nothing I've used it for will get anyone detained. In Wikipedia's defense, it appears that the offending passages are now purged from Akçam's page.

This is a travesty. If you'll excuse me now, I have to go edit Stephen Harper's Wikipedia biography.