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The effects of these suspensions was not just hiding a set of tweets critical of the government, but completely disabling the influence network of Egypt’s dissidents. This is potentially the first documented politically motivated mass shutdown of twitter accounts at a time when online interaction was high and translated to possible action on the ground

accusations are not limited to Egypt but the entire region who have a sense that being critical of their governments was met with punitive measures by Twitter against them

many of those suspensions had a common denominator: being critical of the Egyptian government

suspensions seemed to have happened around late September and lasted from one day to a few days. In many cases Twitter had responded that they had suspended the accounts by mistake. The accounts affected varied from having a few followers to hundreds of thousands

a trending anti-Sisi hashtag disappeared suddenly in July 2018, and then later on in 2019. It didn’t help either to find that an officer in the British Army information warfare unit was head of editorial in Twitter for the MENA region.

I interviewed @OfficialAmro1, a user affected by mass suspensions with over 265K followers and 115K tweets. He was suspended without cause and added, “I don’t even curse.”To which I foolishly replied, “Cursing would not suspend your account, particularly if directed against a public figure. Incitement will.”“No, now it does,” he replied. He also added that if you criticize a figure loyal to the Arab regimes, you can get your account locked or suspended.

The 'hateful conduct' policy as defined by Twitter states: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.Analyzing the message contents that were flagged for hateful conduct I saw that most did not violate Twitter’s rules. Soon I began to discover that what @OfficialAmro1 had told me was true. The content I was seeing contained profanity. But that wasn’t the whole story.Arabic curse words are used often. I sampled around a little under 50 claims, with over 30 screenshots that contain Twitter’s email identifying the violating tweet. It was clear that profanity alone was not causing the suspensions.

Tragically funnier still are those who were joking around with their friends using their usual language that has profanities @ism3lawy_ ended up cursing Egypt’s Zamalek football club and for that his account was suspended permanently along with that of one of his friends. In a separate conversation, his friend @EHAB_M0 was also joking around with his friends and eventually got a permanent suspension.

Within seconds of my post, the algorithm identified the curse words and locked my account for 12 hours. It was my first violation ever. The irony of documenting this as a reply to the platform’s account is probably lost on them.

the most dangerous and disconcerting of my findings is that the appeal system in Twitter for MENA is broken.

Even things like talking about prostitution can get you banned

There is an element of guardianship that is present in despotic Arab regimes, and that moral guardianship is reflected in the algorithm by Twitter as was shown through the numerous examples above.

With my limited access to Twitter’s data, I have found nearly 20 accounts probably wrongfully and permanently suspended. I imagine hundreds or even thousands more have been kicked off the platform.

“Thank you for trying to help make Twitter a free space once again.”

Saud al-Qahtani, the crown prince’s chef de cabinet and head of the sinister rapid intervention group, is portrayed as the mastermind of a campaign of digital surveillance. Hubbard himself was sent a link to a nonexistent website on his phone. The operation to kill Khashoggi was launched “based on a standing order from Saudi intelligence to bring dissidents home”, an official told him. The murder was a disturbing wake-up call to those who had been impressed by Prince Mohammed’s dynamic vision for the future.

Hubbard’s account acknowledges significant social changes, including the introduction of western-type entertainment, sports events and tourism, and tackling the conservative religious establishment. But he questions their overall impact. The crown prince may be socially liberal but he operates on an autocratic basis. Women can indeed now drive, but activists of either gender are still subject to arbitrary arrest and torture.

on 8 October 2019, Shehab responded to a tweet by a verified Saudi account that reports on developments in the kingdom’s infrastructure projects. When the account tweeted about the launch of a new network of buses, she tweeted the word “finally!”.

On official Saudi websites, Kollona Amn – which also has a Twitter account – is described as an app that allows citizens and expatriates to submit security and criminal reports related to personal life attacks, threats, impersonation, extortion, penetration of social media accounts, defamation, fraud and other criminal offences and security reports.

“new phase of digital authoritarianism”.

“It is very concerning because people who post something cannot predict the risk or who is going to report them, and who is going to go back and search their feed for posts that don’t align with government propaganda,”

Recalling her own experience in Syria, Aljizawi described the phenomenon of citizens being unable to trust their own neighbours.“Sometimes people find themselves in trouble. They need a promotion or need to prove their loyalty to the state, so they do something like this. It’s enough to just take a screenshot and report it,”

in the hands of a dictatorship targeting human rights defenders, technology transforms into a terrifying tool which fast tracks repression

Shehab would regularly tweet to support the rights of others but believed it went unnoticed because she did not have many Twitter followers.“She [would] always stand with all human rights in Saudi or outside of Saudi

Shehab, who has been studying in the UK since 2017, was not especially critical of the government and was a supporter of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and towards services such as health and tourism.

Although I was the target of this latest assault — no doubt because I regularly present critical reporting about Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the message to journalists across the Middle East is very clear: Don’t criticize the crown princes.

There has been a disturbing rise in gender-related harassment and threats against female public figures. The movement for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia has terrified the government, which has insisted on doling out reforms on its own terms while detaining the female activists behind the movement. Loujain al-Hathloul, the most prominent of the Saudi women campaigners, and several others remain behind bars.

Last Friday, a Turkish court began hearings on Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder — a stark reminder that justice has still not been served two years on. Jamal himself once warned me to ignore and block these Twitter accounts. Even though the man widely believed to be responsible for Jamal’s murder may never be held to account, we must not let him and those who work for him imperil one of the fundamental pillars of a free society — a free press.

Twitter and other social media sites must take action to protect journalists such as myself and ensure that its platform is no longer misused by authoritarian regimes.

Activists and protesters have added their own slogans to the cartoon, as well as printing it out, cutting it up, and turning it into masks, banners and posters. It has popped up at protests in New York, Washington, Berlin, Paris and Oslo - and even in the back alleys of Cairo.

Egypt has seen an outbreak of protests against Sisi since 20 September, when protesters took to the streets of Cairo and other cities, calling for him to step down.

the most public show of opposition to the president since a crackdown on dissent after the 2013 military coup that brought Sisi to power. Hundreds of protesters were killed by security forces in Rabaa Square, with tens of thousands more arrested and imprisoned

A new wave of repression has followed this month's protests, with more than 2,200 people arrested, according to local activists. Last Friday Egyptian security forces locked down the centre of Cairo and other cities to deter crowds from taking to the streets.

Activists say Ganzeer's image not only plugged into the rising anger on the streets; drawing Sisi as a burglar fundamentally stripped the president down from a so-called statesman to an ordinary, petty thug who had literally stolen the presidency and now the coffers of the state.

Ganzeer’s Twitter account was among those briefly suspended earlier this week.

Middle East Eye asked Twitter why it had suspended the accounts of Egyptian activists and whether it was investigating the closures.

Ganzeer says his Twitter account was reactivated a couple of hours after he filed his appeal, but he told MEE he believed he had faced a coordinated online attack since publishing the image of Sisi. “Since I released the image, I have had to spend a lot of time just blocking [trolls]. It has been coordinated with a number of suspicious handles and accounts that clearly began in September.”

"Some back home are complaining that people are ignoring the deaths and detentions and crackdowns and his attempt to stay in power and now talking about corruption. "But if you ask me, I think this wave of protest is about exposing Sisi as a liar from the inside - and you could say it's a key to opening up all the other lies."

The way for Turkey to achieve a sustainable growth rate by financing its current deficit is to make the country attractive for direct foreign investment. That in turn requires Turkey to have a properly functioning legal system, properly and justly operating independent institutions, good governance, a stable democracy and a free market — in short, to be predictable. Authoritarian and arbitrarily governed countries first lose their predictability.

The same situation has emerged concerning the Koc Group, which has been subjected to one tax penalty after another. The Koc Group, the largest capital group of Turkey, attracted the ire of Erdogan during the June 2013 Gezi Park protests when the nearby Divan Hotel it owns opened its doors to those escaping the pepper gas and brutality of the police. Erdogan perceived that as a challenge and accused the Koc Group of being accomplices to the protesters. Alluding to the group June 17, he actually said, "We know those who cooperate with terrorists and accommodate them in their hotels. We will settle accounts on this. Now we have an interest lobby emerging.” We all discovered how that account was be settled when tax audit teams from the Ministry of Finance accompanied by police raided the Koc companies.

Mustafa Boydak, the president of the Chamber of Industry of the Anatolian industrial city of Kayseri and a well-known conservative industrialist, denounced the tax audit of the Koc Group and called on the government "not to become party to the business world and not to treat the companies that carry Turkey as an enemy.” The government clearly didn’t appreciate Boydak’s call and responded with a tax audit of the Boydak Holding group of companies.

Some public corporations led by Turkish Airlines and private companies with ties to the government withdrew 900 million lira ($391 million) of deposits from Bank Asya, recognized as the Gulen movement's bank, on the same day without waiting for the deposits to mature, and put the bank in a tough bind. Bank Asya was saved from going under when companies and businessmen affiliated with Gulen deposited the same amount of money.

The first allegations of the AKP government using tax penalties as a political weapon came out in 2008, when the Dogan Media Group was openly targeted by Erdogan and fined $1.6 billion

the unions’ most dangerous intervention has been their advocacy for the “Prosecution of Abuses Against the Armed Forces” draft law. In 2015, after the passage of a counterterrorism law, police unions began pushing for the Ministry of the Interior-drafted bill, which would, according to an Amnesty International report, “authorize security forces to use lethal force to protect property even when it is not strictly necessary to protect life, contrary to international standards.” It would also outlaw the “denigration” of the security forces and criminalize the unauthorized publication of “national security” information—a vague law posing an obvious threat to journalists.

Yassine Ayari, a rebellious Tunisian MP, is one of the country’s youngest, at 37. He’s also the only MP to have called for the dissolution of a security union. In a clamorous cafe in the basement of Tunisia’s parliament, he said that at several critical junctures since the revolution, the unions have intervened to protect those in the security apparatuses caught up in cases of torture or murder—citing the unions’ 2011 besieging of a military court that was trying officers accused of killing protesters, their call for members not to attend hearings by Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, and their storming of a courthouse to stop a trial and release five colleagues accused of torture

When police units have been accused of torture, they have responded with vicious defensiveness

the police unions aren’t just hostile to individuals claiming police abuse. They also oppose post-revolutionary institutions aimed at reckoning with the past and achieving a semblance of accountability. Hammami said, “Police unions have also been very hostile to the IVD (the French acronym used for Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, charged with carrying out investigations of almost 60 years of abuses, whose mandate ended in December of last year). The IVD summons officers that might be involved in cases they’re investigating. [The unions] have encouraged their members not to cooperate. They issue statements publicly on Facebook. They put out the message to their members that they don’t have to cooperate with the IVD. Sometimes it’s even more aggressive, saying, ‘Don’t go.’”

Truth and Dignity Commission President Sihem Bensedrine said that she believes the security unions are one of the parties most responsible for the undermining of transitional justice in Tunisia. “One of the strongest anti-justice groups are the police unions,” she said. “We have in our final report published their communiqués where they call for police not to testify before the IVD, and where they say they will not assure the security of the courts judging the police officers.”

the old regime elements in government need the security forces if they want to maintain power and return Tunisia to the way it was before the revolution. “The old powers want to come back,” she said. “They’re trying to use the police unions to do this. They’re organizing themselves to repress our free voices and protect themselves from accountability,”

Demonstration events account for 99% of all disorder in the country, with the remaining 1% consisting of violence against civilians, predominantly perpetrated by state forces; rare clashes between the authorities and anti-government militia groups, such as Saraya Al Ashtar; and sporadic bomb attacks. More than 20 fatalities are reported between 2016 and early 2020

The most active group involved in demonstrations is the February 14 Coalition, a decentralized organization primarily consisting of youth activists. Named for the start date of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising,3 the Coalition is not affiliated with any formal political groups and contains both Shiite and Sunni members

Many demonstrations are also led by the Shiite community at large

Despite accounting for a majority, the Shiite community is marginalized and often faces discrimination by the government, which is dominated by the Sunni royal family

The data show spikes in demonstration activity around executions and extrajudicial killings committed by the government

multiple gay men in Morocco told PinkNews that they were living in a state of absolute terror: watching as other gay men were outed on social media, beaten up by their families, kicked out of their homes, disappearing and, in several, unverified, cases, killing themselves as a result of being publicly outed. Now, tragically, reports of gay men dying by suicide in the Muslim-majority country have been confirmed.

uman Rights Watch told LGBTQ Nation that it was looking into the situation. “The law inherently discriminates against LGBT+ people, so it can only be an incubator for this type of abuse,” said Ahmed Benchemsi of HRW. “Homophobic people feel empowered because the law is on their side.”

“We took immediate action by sending a security message to all our 41,000 users in Morocco, we blocked all profiles created from the time this person addressed her users and contacted Facebook to have the group page taken offline.”

Images of gay men in Morocco are being shared in closed Facebook groups by women following Moussa’s instructions.

Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism

Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs

This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”

Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.

While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.

As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period

she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime

Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies

Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.

Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015

Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman

As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history

The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further

Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book

Although the destabilizing contradictions of this dependency have now undercut both American hegemony and the power of the North Atlantic hydrocarbon industries, the oil-for-insecurity entanglement has nonetheless created dangerously strong incentives for more conflict ahead.

In a series of studies that began in late 1980s, economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler charted the extent to which the world’s leading oil companies enjoyed comparatively handsome rates of returns on equity—well ahead of other dominant sectors within North Atlantic capitalism—when major wars or sustained unrest occurred in the Middle East.

When oil prices began to collapse in the mid-1980s, the major oil companies witnessed a 14-year downturn that was only briefly interrupted once, during the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The events of September 11, 2001, the launching of the global war on terror and the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq reversed the fiscal misfortunes of the North Atlantic oil companies in the previous decade. Collectively, they achieved relative returns on equity several orders of magnitude greater than the heyday of 1979 to 1981. As oil prices soared, new methods of extraction reinvigorated oil production in Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In effect, war in Iraq made the shale oil revolution possible

fracking—not only benefitted from sky-high oil prices, generous US government subsidies and lax regulation, but also the massive amounts of cheap credit on offer to revive the economy after 2008

In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis, the Carter Doctrine declared America’s intent to use military force to protect its interests in the Gulf. In so doing, Carter not only denounced “the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East,” but he also proposed new efforts to restrict oil imports, to impose price controls and to incentivize more fossil fuel extraction in the United States, all in conjunction with solidifying key alliances (Egypt, Israel and Pakistan) and reinforcing the US military presence in the region.[5] In effect, America would now extract geopolitical power from the Middle East by seeking to secure it.

What helps make energy security discourse real and powerful is the amount of industry money that goes into it. In a normal year, the oil industry devotes some $125 million to lobbying, carried out by an army of over 700 registered lobbyists. This annual commitment is on par with the defense industry. And like US arms makers,[9] the revolving door between government, industry and lobbying is wide open and constantly turning. Over two-thirds of oil lobbyists have spent time in both government and the private sector.[10]

A 2015 report by the Public Accountability Initiative highlights the extent to which the leading liberal and conservative foreign policy think tanks in Washington—the American Enterprise Institute, Atlantic Council, Brookings, Cato, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Council on Foreign Relations and Heritage Foundation—have all received oil industry funding, wrote reports sympathetic to industry interests or usually both

For some 50 years, the United States has been able to extract geopolitical power from Middle Eastern oil by posing as the protector of global energy security. The invention of the concept of energy security in the 1970s helped to legitimate the efforts of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations to forge new foundations for American hegemony amid the political, economic and social crises of that decade. In the wake of the disastrous US war efforts in Korea and Southeast Asia, Henry Kissinger infamously attempted to re-forge American hegemony by outsourcing US security to proxies like Iran under what is referred to as the Nixon Doctrine. At the same time, regional hegemons would be kept in check by “balancing” competing states against each other.

The realization of Middle Eastern insecurity was also made possible by the rapid and intensive arms build-up across the region in the 1970s. As oil prices skyrocketed into the 1980s, billions of so-called petrodollars went to purchase arms, primarily from North Atlantic and Soviet manufacturers. Today, the Middle East remains one of the most militarized regions in the world. Beyond the dominance of the security sector in most Middle Eastern governments, it also boasts the world’s highest rates of military spending. Since 2010, Middle Eastern arms imports have gone from almost a quarter of the world’s share to nearly half in 2016, mainly from North Atlantic armorers.

For half a century, American policy toward the Middle East has effectively reinforced these dynamics of insecurity by promoting conflict and authoritarianism, often in the name of energy security. High profile US military interventions—Lebanon in 1983, Libya in 1986 and 2011, the Tanker Wars in the late 1980s, the wars on Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan since 2001, the anti-Islamic State campaign since 2014 and the Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen since 2015—have received the most scrutiny in this respect, alongside the post-2001 “low intensity” counterterrorism efforts worldwide

cases abound where American policy had the effect of preventing conflicts from being resolved peacefully: Trump’s shredding of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran comes to mind; the case of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara have likewise become quintessential “peace processes” that have largely functioned to prevent peace.

the myth of authoritarian stability

A year after the unexpected 2011 uprisings, the IMF’s former director Christine Lagarde admitted that the Fund had basically ignored “how the fruits of economic growth were being shared” in the region

In denouncing certain governments as “pariahs” or “rogue states,” and in calling for regime change, American policy has allowed those leaders to institute permanent states of emergency that have reinforced their grip on power, in some cases aided by expanded oil rents due to heightened global prices

From 2012 to 2018, organized violence in the Middle East accounted for two-thirds of the world’s total conflict related fatalities. Today, three wars in the region—Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—now rank among the five deadliest since the end of the Cold War. Excluding Pakistan, the Middle East’s share of the worldwide refugee burden as of 2017 was nearly 40 percent at over 27 million, almost double what it was two decades prior.

profound political and financial incentives are accumulating to address the existing glut of oil on the market and America’s declining supremacy. A major war in the Middle East would likely fit that bill. The Trump administration’s temptation to wage war with Iran, change Venezuela’s regime and to increase tensions with Russia and China should be interpreted with these incentives in mind.

While nationalizing the North Atlantic’s petroleum industries is not only an imperative in the fight against climate change, it would also remove much of the profit motive from making war in the Middle East. Nationalizing the oil industry would also help to defund those institutions most responsible for both disseminating the myths of energy security and promoting insecurity in the Middle East.

Among the 1930s cultural and intellectual figures given place of pride are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and John Steinbeck. Guernica is reproduced in an inset about Picasso, illustrating the artist’s hatred of war. (47) A lengthy excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath concludes with Steinbeck’s denunciation of depression-era America: “And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

The book places added emphasis on the harsh terms imposed on Germany at Versailles. Prefiguring the later treatment of Al Qaeda terrorism, the intention appears not so much to justify Nazism, but rather to present injustice as the causal force behind violence and cruelty in world politics.

Early Cold War era decolonization also provides an opportunity to celebrate Atatürk’s role as an anti-imperialist hero for Muslims and the entire Third World. (122-123) “Turkey’s national struggle against imperialism in Anatolia struck the first great blow against imperialism in the 20th century,” the authors write. “Mustafa Kemal, with his role in the War of Independence and his political, economic, social and cultural revolutions after it, served as an example for underdeveloped and colonized nations.” Atatürk himself is quoted as saying, in 1922, that “what we are defending is the cause of all Eastern nations, of all oppressed nations.” Thus, the book explains that “the success of the national struggle brought joy to the entire colonized Islamic world, and served as a source of inspiration to members of other faiths.” The section ends with quotes from leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Habib Bourguiba about how Atatürk inspired them in their own anti-imperial struggles or was simply, in Nehru’s words, “my hero.” An accompanying graphic shows Atatürk’s image superimposed over a map with arrows pointing to all the countries, from Algeria to Indonesia, whose revolutions were supposedly influenced by Turkey’s War of Independence.

The foundation of the UN is immediately followed by a discussion of Israel under the heading “Imperial Powers in the Remaking of the Middle East.” (80-81) The Palestine problem, students learn, is the principal cause of conflict in the region. It began when the Ottoman Empire, “the biggest obstacle to the foundation of a Jewish state,” grew weak, leading to the creation of Israel.

Next comes a discussion of the post-war financial order and the International Monetary Fund. Students learn that “the IMF’s standard formula, which recommends austerity policies for countries in economic crises, generally results in failure, chaos and social unrest.” (81-83) An excerpt, which students are then asked to discuss, explains how the IMF prescribes different policies for developed and developing countries.

only in the context of the Cold War origins of the EU does the book engage in any explicitly religious clash-of-civilizations style rhetoric. The idea of European unity is traced back to the Crusades, while a quote about the centrality of Christianity to European identity appears under a dramatic picture of Pope Francis standing with European leaders. (112) The next page states that the EU’s treatment of Turkey’s candidacy, coupled with the fact that “all the countries within it were Christian” had “raised questions” about the EU’s identity.

the Holocaust instead appears here as one among several examples of Western barbarity

The authors also offer a balanced treatment of the fraught domestic politics during the period from 1945 to 1960 when Turkey held its first democratic election and experienced its first coup. (138-142, 144-146) They focus their criticism on the negative impact of U.S. aid, arguing that Washington intentionally sought to make Turkey economically and politically dependent, then sponsored a coup when these efforts were threatened.

Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkey’s drone program, said that as a student “I was obsessed with Noam Chomsky.” [16] During the 1980s and 90s, America sold Ankara F-16 jets and Sikorsky helicopters that were used to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in southeast Anatolia. No one was more critical of this than left-wing scholars like Chomsky.[17] Now, Ankara is selling Bayraktar drones to Ethiopia, where they are being used to kill civilians and destroy schools in another violent civil war.

The narrative of national independence also helps smooth over Turkey’s Cold War domestic divides. Students are introduced to the ‘68 Generation and left-wing leaders likes Deniz Gezmiş as anti-imperialists protesting against the U.S. Sixth Fleet in support of a fully independent Turkey. (185-186)[9] In this context, Baskin Oran’s work is again cited, this time quoting Uğur Mumcu on the role of “dark forces,” presumably the CIA, in laying the groundwork for Turkey’s 1971 coup.

The book also offers a relatively neutral treatment of political activism during the ensuing decade, suggesting that rival ideological movements were all good faith responses to the country’s challenges. On this, the authors quote Kemal Karpat: “Both right and left wing ideologies sought to develop an explanation for social phenomena and a perspective on the future. A person’s choice of one of these ideologies was generally the result of chance or circumstance.” (202) Thus the authors imply that while foreign powers provoked or exploited these movements, the individual citizens who participated in them can be given the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the book takes a similar approach in discussing the 2013 Gezi protests: “If various financial interests and foreign intelligence agencies had a role in the Gezi Park events, a majority of the activists were unaware of it and joined these protests of their own will.”

Turkey’s real struggle in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is against dependence on foreign technology

a book which begins with a portrait of Atatürk ends with a photo of the Bayraktar TB2.

the book’s biases are less in the realm of wild distortion and more reminiscent of those that plague ideologically infused nationalistic history education in all too many countries

its exaggerated critique of European imperialism may be no more misleading than the whitewashing still found in some European textbooks

At moments, Contemporary Turkish and World History is better aligned with recent left-leaning scholarship than the patriotic accounts many Americans grew up reading as well

Throughout the 20th century, America defined itself as the world’s premier anti-imperialist power, all while gradually reproducing many of the elements that had defined previous empires.[11] Today, it often seems that Turkey’s aspirations for great power status reflect the facets of 20th century American power it has condemned most vigorously

Turkey’s marriage of power projection and anti-colonial critique have been particularly visible – and effective – in Africa. Ankara has presented itself as an “emancipatory actor,” while providing humanitarian aid, establishing military bases, selling weapons across the continent.[13] In doing so, Turkish leaders have faced some of the same contradictions as previous emancipatory actors. In August 2020, for example, members of Mali’s military overthrew a president with whom Erdoğan enjoyed good relations. Ankara expressed its “sorrow” and “deep concern.”[14] Then, a month later, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu became the first foreign official to meet with the country’s new military leaders. “Like a brother,” he “sincerely shared” his hopes for a smooth “transition process” back to democracy

Amidst the polarization of the Erdoğan era, what is striking in this book is the authors’ efforts to weave together the conflicting strands of Turkish political history into a coherent narrative. Illustrating Ernst Renan’s argument about the role of forgetting in nation-building, this account glosses over the depth of the divisions and hostility between rival historical actors, presenting them as all working side by side toward a common national goal

certain themes dominate Contemporary Turkish and World History. At the center of its narrative is the struggle for global hegemony, in military, economic, technological and artistic terms

too many Arab leaders are betting on a mix of fear, inertia and confusion to change the subject. Masters of distraction, they are seeking to replace the alibis of old — “resistance” to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and resentment of the power of the United States — by stoking new, and far more dangerous, fears

Much as many of the region’s embattled leaders wish to deceive their allies in the West, themselves and their people that this is about perfidious Persia, Shiite sectarianism or political Islam (as threat or savior), the reality is much simpler: The Arab young want competent, responsive and responsible rule

in response to an expression of concern about human rights abuses in Egypt, Mubarak abruptly changed demeanor and delivered his standard ultimatum: It’s him or the Muslim Brotherhood. Was Mubarak right? Well, yes, but only up to a point, and only because he made it so by ensuring that the only effective opposition to his rule was channeled through the mosque

Power’s purpose has never been so contested, or so contingent, as it is today in the Middle East. Genuine legitimacy must now be earned, and re-earned, through the accountable exercise of power

He also posted at least three times while drunk, by his own admission, and opined on topics unrelated to hacking such as the role of religion in politics and policy toward Iran.

MBS’s repression machine is alive and well thanks in no small part to the Trump administration’s refusal to hold the Saudi strongman and his regime to account. 

Since Khashoggi was murdered last October, the CIA has observed its “duty to warn” on three separate occasions, sharing intelligence to alert dissidents based in the U.S., Canada and Norway to threats originating from Saudi Arabia. 

multiple media outlets have cited sources saying that he is still in MBS’s good graces and continuing to work in a similar capacity as before he was officially ousted from the royal court.

The best open-source indication to date that al-Qahtani is continuing his hacking work comes from the Guardian, which reported in June 2019, that it was targeted by a Saudi hacking team at the order of al-Qahtani. The newspaper was initially warned of the order by a source in Riyadh earlier this year, and the threat was subsequently corroborated by a confidential internal order signed by al-Qahtani, which the Guardian reviewed. The document, dated March 7, 2019, was written in Arabic and instructed “heads of technological and technical departments” run from the cybersecurity directorate within the private office of the MBS to “carry out the penetration of the servers of the Guardian newspaper and those who worked on the report that was published, and deal with the issue with complete secrecy, then send us all the data as soon as possible.”

On June 19, 2019, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, published a report on Khashoggi’s death, calling it a “premeditated extrajudicial execution” at the hands of the Saudi state. “His killing was the result of elaborate planning involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned and endorsed by high-level officials. It was premeditated.”

The report specifically names al-Qahtani and MBS as two high-level officials who have not been criminally charged but for whom there is “credible evidence meriting further investigation.” 

In addition to the 22 domains analyzed above, this investigation identified several other domains that are likely linked to al-Qahtani but require further research and analysis

The government is expected to play a "crucial" role in tourism development by injecting $6 billion over 25 years to trigger $43 billion worth of investments from the private sector.

the promises to allocate 223,000 direct tourism jobs to Omani nationals by 2040 does not align with Oman's undersized tourism education sector, which graduates only a few hundred students per year, mainly from the Oman Tourism College

although the number of tourists visiting Oman has doubled since 2008, the industry employs less than 17,000 Omanis.

“Corruption was also an issue since local authorities requested me to pay imaginary taxes," he said. "I am an ordinary man so I had to shut up and comply.”

“The concept of SMEs [small and medium enterprises] does not exist in the field of tourism anyway, the whole system is designed for large corporations,” said Christopher Chellapermal, a French entrepreneur. Chellapermal ran a scuba diving business in Oman for 15 years before being forced out of business in 2017.

The country’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product is rated junk by all three major agencies, as it has multiplied by 12 since 2014. Moreover, the Omani economy is ranked the worst performing among Gulf countries

For Chellapermal, Oman "makes the crazy wager" of luxury tourism by prioritizing premium visitors when the backpacker segment would be a better fit.

“Chinese and Indian tourists are very much interested in culture and heritage destinations," Hollister said. "Oman could focus on this segment to make it their niche, a differentiator.”

wealth of cultural and natural assets. The Ministry of Tourism promotes Oman as a hidden jewel at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. 

regional tensions had very little impact on tourism

As Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said takes power, analysts worry that Oman’s foreign policy of neutrality could be at stake. Will “any of Oman’s more assertive neighbors seek to sway Haitham to align more closely with their own approach,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen wrote for Al-Monitor.

The prospect of tensions between Muscat and neighboring states does not please tourism actors, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are Oman’s key source regional markets for tourism. In 2018, Gulf citizens accounted for about half of international arrivals.

Saudi Arabia’s aggressive push to develop its leisure tourism industry and attract 100 million visits by 2030 collides with Oman’s ambitions

Bureaucracy, in short, is all the fundamental building blocks of civilisation some people have the luxury of taking for granted.

These days, a westerner can hardly imagine how complicated the world would be without bureaucracy. But try to picture it: living without an address, without a social security number. Could you open a bank account? No. Start a business? No way. Register to vote? Never.And yet, about four billion people around the world have no address.

imagine having no proper tax authority. Without one, a government loses out on billions of dollars of potential revenue. There’s no money for social services or infrastructure. People living in poverty stay living in poverty.

people living in poverty own much more than they’re able to prove on paper. In Cairo, for example, they have $241.4bn worth of unregistered property, according to De Soto. In his book The Mystery of Capital (2000), he puts this figure into perspective: it’s six times all the money held in Egyptian savings accounts, 30 times the market value of every publicly listed company in Cairo, and 116 times the value of all Egypt’s privatised former state companies.

Without papers proving ownership, you can’t record the sale of your property or use it as collateral to secure a loan.The evidence is ample: bureaucracy – and the security that comes with it – is what people living in poverty need to climb out of poverty.

capacity building remains the neglected stepchild

Tax Inspectors Without Borders

British tax veteran Lee Corrick went to Kenya in 2011 to train local inspectors. For years, the Kenyan tax office had had problems with a big multinational company – something to do with tea auction licence rights and letters of credit. It sounds overly complicated, and the Kenyans thought so too. But after two workshops with Corrick and a stern talk with the multinational, the Kenyan tax office managed to collect $23m. In fact, revenues from Kenyan tax inspections doubled after Corrick came to town. And in Colombia, the take increased tenfold after training.

In one area, farmers’ land was officially added to a land registry; in another, it wasn’t. The researchers then looked at how the farmers used their land.Here’s what they found: farmers who owned their land on paper invested more. For example, they more often planted trees, such as oil palms, that would continue to provide income all their lives. And since they no longer feared their land would be snatched out from under them, they spent less time guarding it. That left them more time to do other things – like earn money.

If development economists and people living in poverty like Lebrun are calling for bureaucracy outright, why doesn’t everyone – aid organisations, governments, companies – get behind it 100%?The answer is simple. Bureaucracy is boring.

A TV ad showing a sweetly smiling Haitian girl who’s just got her first school uniform works better than one with a blah bureaucrat in a fluorescent-lit office drawing lines on paper with a ruler

one agency after the other has started donating paperwork, Excel sheets and bookkeeping courses. They call it "capacity building".

the truth is, real progress is a gradual, thoroughly bureaucratic, deadly dull process. Saving the world isn’t sexy.