The four New York Times journalists, who had been captured by Libyan forces while covering the conflict there, pose with Turkey’s Ambassador to Libya Levent Sahinkaya (C) at the Turkish embassy in Tripoli in this undated handout released March 21, 2011. Libya released the four on Monday, nearly a week after they had been captured, although three journalists for other outlets remained missing. The journalists are reporter and videographer Stephen Farrell (L), photographers Tyler Hicks (2nd L) and Lynsey Addario and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid (R). REUTERS/Turkish Foreign Ministry/Handout

Turkey?s role in the Libya crisis

Libya intervention

Libya and the fashionable vice

Libya: Moving targets | Editorial

The longer the Libyan campaign goes on, the sooner the issue will have to be confronted: where is it leading?

George Bush assembled coalitions of the willing, a euphemism for his failure to get the UN to back his invasion of Iraq in 2003. Barack Obama has UN cover for a no-fly zone in Libya, but he has paradoxically produced a coalition of the unwilling to enforce it. US commanders expected that Nato would announce yesterday that it was taking over. That was blocked by Turkey, whose prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for immediate talks. Neither Germany nor eastern European members are keen on Nato heading an operation that has nothing to do with the defence of Europe. That might leave Britain or France carrying the can, “using Nato machinery”.

The West’s Aim in Libya: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad by Prabir Purkayastha

Live Crisis Mapping: Update on Libya and Japan

Update: The Japan Crisis Map team is now partnering with government officials. Government staff will be using iPads with the Ushahidi iPad app to report information from the field. Also, one of the Japanese cell phone operators has pledged to lend over 12,000 cell phones to volunteers.

All of us had really hoped that 2011 would be a quieter year for crisis mapping. The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti during the very first month of 2010 in many ways created a new generation of volunteer crisis mappers. This was followed rapidly by crisis mapping operations for the US, Chile, Pakistan, Russia and Colombia among other crises, which prompted the launch of the Standby Volunteer Task Force for Live Mapping in October 2010.

Turkey, the EU and the Mediterranean uprisings | Czech Position

Can Live Crisis Maps Help Prevent Mass Atrocities?

Live crisis maps tell stories, hopefully compelling stories the last chapters of which have yet to be written. To paraphrase my New York Times colleague Anand Giridharadas: They used to say that history is written by the victors. But today, before the victors win, if they win, there is a chance to scream out with a text message, a text message that will not vanish, a text message that will remain immortalized on a map for the world to bear witness. What would we know about what passed between Turks and Armenians, Germans and Jews, Hutus and Tutsis, if every one of them had had the chance, before the darkness, to declare for all time: ?I was here, and this is what happened to me??

Libya: Mourning Mohammed Nabbous

from Global Voices Online by John Liebhardt

Massive crowd turns out to bury Yemen ‘martyrs’

EUROPE: European Diplomacy?s First Test

ROUBINI: The Economic Consequences of the Arab Revolt

EUROPE: Imagining a New Mediterranean World

Turkey?s lessons for Egypt

Bahrain: A Video Timeline of Police Brutality

from Global Voices Online by Hisham

Palestine: Ongoing Protests for Unity

Written by Betsy Fisher

March 15th marked the beginning of protests for unity between Palestinians and an elimination of the political divisions in Palestinian society; however, on that day, protesters were violently dispersed both in Ramallah and in Gaza.

Morocco: Peaceful Marches Across the Kingdom

from Global Voices Online by Hisham

Syria: Protests Continue to Gain Momentum

from Global Voices Online by Amira Al Hussaini

FP roundup

Turkey?s ?moral politics? in Libya: Seduction by analogy? by Şaban Kardaş

Finding the right balance

Turks in Africa

Wikileaks documents reveal Turkey-US Gulf War II negotiations

Turkey?s rescue of a reporter

Be it covering earthquake and radiation-hit Japan or the conflict-ridden Middle East and Maghreb, reporters have one of the toughest jobs. Each of these situations has its own peculiar risks, and it is in each such case that a tough call awaits editors.

Educating Thilo Sarrazin | Aylin Selçuk

from World news: Turkey | guardian.co.uk by Aylin Selçuk

The multiculturalism debate in Germany is ignoring the glaring flaws in our education system

‘If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to your own country? We Germans would love it, because we like you as much as a terminal illness.” I get emails like this nearly every day. The reason why is that I recently decided to take legal action against Thilo Sarrazin. Sarrazin is a former head of the Bundesbank, a Social Democrat, and the author of a bestselling book, Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (“Germany is digging its own grave”), in which he claims that the poor intelligence of young German Muslims is dragging down the education system.

We in Turkey and the Middle East have replaced humiliation with dignity | Ahmet Davutoglu

From Libya to Turkey the will of the people has revived a sense of common destiny. This is now our region

The wave of revolutions in the Arab world was spontaneous. But it also had to happen. They were necessary in order to restore the natural flow of history. In our region ? west Asia and the south Mediterranean ? there were two abnormalities in the last century: first, colonialism in the 1930s, 40s and 50s that divided the region into colonial entities, and severed the natural links between peoples and communities. For example, Syria was a French colony and Iraq a British one, so the historical and economic links between Damascus and Baghdad were cut.
Erdogan accuses foreign press of “defamation campaign” against Turkey
Southeast European Times
Speaking at the opening of the Leaders of Change Summit in Istanbul, Erdogan said this campaign was carried out through “unrealistic news and comments”. He urged foreign journalists to analyse events properly and reflect these analyses in their writing

German finance minister says too many Gastarbeiter were allowed in

Wolfgang Schäuble enters multiculturalism row, saying problems of integrating Turkish guest workers have grown with third generation

Germany’s finance minister has waded into the country’s simmering row over multiculturalism, saying it had been a mistake to bring in so many Gastarbeiter, or guest workers, from Turkey during the economic boom years of the 1960s.

Oops, She is Turkish

Geert Wilders is upset. He thinks while doing brain surgery on himself as shown in the picture and says to himself “YOU EAT SOMETHING, YOU DRINK SOMETHING, TAKE A HOLIDAY, LISTEN TO TARKAN AND OOPS YOU ARE TURKISH. Maybe Petra Kouwenberg truly went Dutch. Half and half. C’mon Geert, after giving up her Turkish passport she wont be half the woman she was before. It is not clear how Ms Kouwenberg – who has refused to comment on the situation – has obtained Turkish nationality.

Mavi Boncuk |

Freedom Party PVV leader Geert Wilders says he assumes a female PVV member recently elected to the Gelderland pronvincial council will get rid of her double nationality as soon as possible.

Al Jazeera Forum: Ahmet Davutoglu

Visa exemption question

European Parliament: critical but balanced

Does EP really understand Turkish politics?

Russia, Turkey in South Stream tug of war

When will the EU admit us?