Middle East

As anyone who has tried knows, teaching teenagers about places far away, and in which they have no particular knowledge or special interest, is a challenge. It is especially a  challenge when typical American teenagers—generally affluent, monolingual, and seemingly...

The Greater Middle East — defined as the Arab world, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus — is the site of the world’s largest supply of fossil fuels and a place where several ambitious powers actively seek...

1. It is odd that Jews, a religious group, have Israel as a state. Israel is unique, but not exactly for this reason. In ordinary countries one can distinguish readily between ethnicity and religious affiliation among the people who...

On September 13, 1999, Israel and the Palestinian Authority held a ceremonial opening of the final status talks ordained six years earlier by Oslo I. In fact, this was the third ceremonial opening of such talks: once in 1995,...

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has apparently been set adrift. Ever since last February, when Turkey captured the terrorist organization’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the group has struggled— and largely failed— to maintain any sense of its former military or...

Ehud Barak’s victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in the May 17 Israeli election has been interpreted widely to mean the triumph of a secular, Oslo-supporting majority over a religious and nationalist opposition. But this fails to explain either the large...

The death of Hussein bin Talal, the estimable King of Hashemite Jordan, is a deeply saddening event. He was a rare man in political life in that he was both very rich in deeds and even richer in decency....

On February 16, in Nairobi, Kenya, Abdullah Ocalan, the founder and supremo of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), was captured and promptly sent to Turkey to face trial. As the main engineer of a Maoist guerrilla organization, he stands...

After the arrest of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) “Chairman” Abdullah Ocalan on February 16 in Kenya, and his subsequent transfer to a Turkish jail to stand trial, widespread “Kurdish” demonstrations erupted throughout Europe, Canada, Australia, and the Middle...

On November 13, the Italian police arrested Abdullah Öcalan, founder and leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), at Rome’s airport. He had just arrived from Moscow with a false passport and, upon arrest, asked for political asylum. Coming...