one of China’s main strategic regional projects was the economic region (or belt) of the 21st century Great Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road, which intends to create a wide area of Chinese economic presence from China’s western borders to Europe
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Egypt blows up houses for Sinai buffer zone - 0 views
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Putin brings China into Middle East strategy - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
www.al-monitor.com/...-consequences-middle-east.html
putin china middle east syria strategy politics
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Chinese leader opened the Sixth Ministerial Meeting of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum on June 5 in Beijing
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energy cooperation; infrastructure construction and creation of favorable conditions for trade and investment; and high-tech domains of nuclear energy, the space rocket sector and new energy sources
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suggested that the creation of a free trade zone between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) be accelerated
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China supports the peace process and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, "enjoying full sovereignty."
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, why shouldn’t Russia and China in the current situation — given the proximity of their interests and positions — undertake joint initiatives to unblock the peace process, while initiating steps to "introduce this activity within an institutional framework?
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, the unilateral efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process are not bearing fruit
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Russia is interested in using this unprecedented convergence with China in its operations on the Middle East arena, where Moscow has in many ways already been acting in unison with Beijing
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, the Middle East Quartet is one of few international platforms where Russia can constructively engage with the United States and the EU
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China's growing economic cooperation with Arab countries not a cause for concern in Moscow, but it is also viewed in a very favorable light
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will not one day replace the United States as the security guarantor for the transportation routes of these resources
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Moscow’s and Beijing’s interests converge in the joint countering of terrorism, extremism and separatism
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. Among the militants from radical groups fighting against government troops in Syria, there are people hailing not only from Russia and Central Asia (fewer in numbers to those coming from Arab and Islamic as well as Western countries), but also from the Uighur minority in China.
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recently, Beijing came under harsh criticism from Ankara for its actions in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region against the Uighur population, which the Turks believe to be their next of kin
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. Disappointed by the failure of EU accession, the Turkish leadership has even started talking about the desire to join the SCO as an observer
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Ankara expresses its willingness to cooperate with China in the fight against terrorists and condemns the separatism coming from some groups in Xinjiang
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There is no doubt that a comprehensive strategic partnership, in which Russia and China would act in concert along the political consensus reached by their two leaders, would in the short term
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According to both, this convergence is neither a union nor a tournament of predators, but a very pragmatic integrationist instrument of protection and projection of interests by the two powers, including in the Middle East.
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roughly 50 agreements ushering in a period of unprecedented convergence between the two countries
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Such consensus includes Syria, despite Beijing’s lesser involvement on this issue, relative to Moscow; Iran, within the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program; the fight against terrorism and extremism; the creation of a weapons of mass destruction-free Middle East; the condemnation of external intervention and the strategy of "regime change" as well as the push for "color revolutions;" the policy to reach a settlement in the Middle East; and relations with the new Egyptian regime and with respect to the Sudanese issues.
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The rise and rise of Libya's rogue general - 0 views
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Hafed al-Ghwell is a senior non-resident Fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. On Monday, Libya's House of Representatives, whose legitimacy has been questioned since the day it was elected by a mere 15 percent of the country's eligible voters, decided to add more gasoline to the already raging fire that is the four-year civil war in the country.
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ANNE R. PIERCE: Beware ISIS strategy that fortifies Russia, Iran, and Syria - Washingto... - 0 views
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Demonstration of united resolve against blood-thirsty terrorists whose ranks, ambitions and territory have grown exponentially is important
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forging strategy to battle ISIS without also forging strategy to thwart Syria, Russia and Iran is a terrible mistake
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brutality and aggression of the Islamic State, he still whitewashes the brutality and aggression of established states Syria, Russia and Iran, and still ignores the need for grand strategy to deal with them
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potentially, an even greater threat to the “free world” than ISIS. Because they are terror sponsors and supporters, WMD in their control means WMD out of control, susceptible to being sold or given to fanatics who are willing to work for their cause
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working with the Iranian, Russian and Syrian regimes to address Middle Eastern problems and fight ISIS is a sure way to alienate Middle Eastern moderates and traditional partner
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Russia’s staunch support of Syria and Iran; its ruthless aggression in Ukraine; and its expansionist designs in Eastern Europe, should make containing Russia an American foreign policy priority
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Instead, much of the White House plan for combating ISIS plays right into Syrian, Iranian and Russian hands, for it revolves around their plans –which include allowing Assad to stay in power, legitimizing Russian-sponsored “peace conferences” that buy Assad time and raise Putin’s stature, accommodating the Iranian nuclear program, and giving Iran the lead in the battle against ISIS and in the Levant.
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the United States has been mostly passive, while Russia, Iran and its proxies, and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, have seized the day.
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opened the door to extremist groups eager to hijack the Syrian revolt and/or defend the Syrian regime
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While the Obama administration justified its unwillingness to give meaningful aid to Syrian rebels with fear of helping extremists within rebel ranks, that stance allowed extremism within Syria to metastasize
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Russia provided cover for Syria in the UN, and supplied many of the very weapons Assad uses to massacre civilian
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President Obama and Secretary Kerry have backed even further away from demands that Assad leave, while even the goal of a transitional government which characterized the previous talks has been dropped
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Two rival Libyan governments claim to control oil policy | Top News | Reuters - 1 views
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Oil traders are concerned about the uncertainty over who is in charge of Libya's vast oil reserves after the Misrata group appointed its own oil minister and took over the official website of state firm National Oil Corp (NOC).
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ncertainty about the oil industry, which had just started to show signs of recovery after Thinni managed to end a blockage of major eastern ports by groups of rebels demanding autonomy.
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Thinni, whose government is recognised by the international community, responded from Bayda, a town east of Benghazi, where his government has relocated and is trying to stay in contact with ministries almost 1,000 km (620 miles) away in Tripoli.
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He said oil revenues for the OPEC member state continued to enter a Libyan bank, which transferred them to the central bank.
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"They are under the control of the state of Libya and the government approved by the Libyan parliament," he said, referring to the elected House of Representatives, which has moved to Tobruk, east of Bayda near the Egyptian border.
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Zawi said oil revenue, Libya's sole source of income, would be around only a fifth of last year's level due to the wave of protests at oilfields and ports.
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Western powers worry that the conflict between the Bayda- and Tripoli-based governments will lead to civil war and that the elected government's nascent army is no match for former rebels of various factions who defy state authority.
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As their sole source of income the control over oil policy and revenue proves to be a huge factor in which government will gain control over the greater Libya. Thinni, the prime minister recognized by the international community, has assured OPEC members that oil revenues are deposited into the Libyan Bank, which then transfers them to the central bank. While this may be true, OPEC members are worried that the continuation of Islamist militant aims for political autonomy through the occupation and attacks on oil ports. BPD have already become a fifth of what they maintained just one year ago.
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Egypt's powerful street art packs a punch - 2 views
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. I must make people remember this culture, this history – because we can lose it. And we can’t know our future if we forget our past.”
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This article from BBC showcases how Egyptian street art is a new voice among Egyptian protestors. In response to events, artists have filled the walls with murals and slogans in response to events such as the Maspero Massacre in 2011. Some of the reoccurring images are of a tank aiming its cannon at a boy on a bicycle carrying bread on his head as well as a melancholy panda. Other artists have integrated some of Egypt's history in their murals showcasing Egyptian pride amongst the rebellion.
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More than two years after protesters toppled Hosni Mubarak, Cairo is still ablaze with fiery visual reminders of Egypt's revolution. On the edge of Tahrir Square - the nerve centre of dissent - the burned-out tower block that once housed the headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party stands blackened and empty.
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CIA Knew Al Qaeda Involved in Benghazi from 'Get-go' - 1 views
How the story of two fires reveals the UAE's great inequities - The Washington Post - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...veal-the-uaes-great-inequities
uae human rights immigrants ex-pats labor safety housing urban space
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Three Years After Gadhafi's Death, Libya Slides Into Civil War As Death Toll Rises In B... - 0 views
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sliding further and further into all-out civil war, with pro-government forces battling Islamist militias for power in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolution that ousted Gadhafi started in 2011.
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renegade army general Khalifa Hifter, the man who has assembled a militia of former Libyan soldiers and is leading them on a campaign to oust Islamists from the country.
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He is now at the head of a militia that supports moderate values against radical Islam in a campaign called "Operation Dignity."
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The new Libyan House of Representatives, which was elected in June, has formally announced its alliance with Hifter on Monday
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Operation Dawn, seized Tripoli in August, parliament and the rest of the government have all decamped to faraway Tobruk, in the eastern end of the country close to Egypt.
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Egyptian officials told the Associated Press that Egyptian warplanes, operated by Libyan pilots, were bombing Islamist militias in Libya. Both Libyan and Egyptian officials later denied those reports, and aviation experts said it was highly unlikely that Libyan pilots would have the skills needed. On Monday, the presidents of Egypt and Sudan said they would support the Libyan military.
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Prime Minister Abdullah al Thinni is planning to visit Moscow to seek Russian support for the army.
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ISIS releases new video of Paris attackers - CNN.com - 0 views
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Footage shows Britain's Prime Minster David Cameron and the vote in the British House of Commons last year in which the United Kingdom voted to join the anti-ISIS coalition conducting airstrikes on Syria.
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"The following are the final messages of the nine lions of the khilafah who were mobilized from their dens to bring an entire country -- France -- to her knees," the video reads.
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Egypt fills its prisons, but don't worry, it'll make more - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of th... - 0 views
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People are being assaulted on many fronts, from travel restrictions and false imprisonment to limits on freedom of expression, torture and killings.
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pproved 16 new prisons in only 2½ years in response to the detention of thousands of young people. Some facilities are still under construction. The number of prisons in Egypt has risen from 42 to 52 since 2011,
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10,000 detainees are under investigation or awaiting trial in detention centers and prisons, and Eid wrote in a Jan. 13 Twitter post that Egypt now houses around 60,000 political prisoners.
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The statement condemned the arrest of journalists and a number of activists affiliated with certain social movements, primarily the April 6 Youth Movement. T
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he movement has said it considers the regime’s attempts to crush it as "failures," further characterizing this era of Egypt’s judiciary as bleak.
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Egyptian authorities are not content with merely preventing some citizens active in society from leaving the country. They also are barring the return of others who they allege pose a security risk
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he was questioned for about 16 hours and her personal laptop and cellphone were searched. She was subsequently denied entry and deported back to Tunisia, an incident that rights organizations consider blatant police interference in academic liberties.
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In October, Alexandria University canceled, for “security reasons,” a lecture by Essam Heggy, a NASA scientist and former adviser to Mansour. Heggy is known for his critical views about the Egyptian government.
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Online Activism to Real-World Activism: Social Media's Role in the Egyptian Revolution ... - 0 views
revolutionegypt.blogs.wm.edu/...tion-of-2011-and-its-aftermath
Revolt Egypt Internet Usage Cyber Activism
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This article is statistically strong with lots of factoids about the Egyptian Revolution and more specifically its ties to social media. It says that social media has three downfalls in the Egyptians revolution. These 3 things being, "enabling passive "activism," romanticizing the revolution, and failing to provide structure for a cohesive plan with leaders". This article discusses the idea of anonymous activism and what role it actually plays for uprisings. They also talk about how "perverting activism" was popular when starting the revolution. This was when people would post shocking images and videos of the carnage from protests being shut down by police. This would get everyone's attention, but would not carry the revolution itself.
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Iraq divisions undermine battle against IS - BBC News - 0 views
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More than in any other country, Iraq's future is intimately bound up with the fate of self-styled Islamic State (IS).
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But even if initially successful, such an ambitious project, indeed, any further moves to oust IS, could go badly wrong if the foundations are not sound
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The IS fighters were able to lodge so easily in the Sunni Arab heartlands because the people there had been largely alienated by the sectarian policies and practices of the Shia Arab-dominated Baghdad government under Nouri al-Maliki, who was finally prised out of the prime minister's office in August 2014.
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gislation to empower the Sunnis by devolving security and financial responsibilities to the provinces has not happened.
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Nor have measures to reverse the persecution of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, or the random arrests, detentions, and to assuage other Sunni grievances.
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he US, who have about 3,500 military personnel training and advising Iraqi government forces on the ground, also seems to be aware that military muscle is not enough.
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If that process continues and the militants are defeated, the way Iraq fits together - if it does - will be decided by who pushes them out, and how the resulting vacuum is filled.
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Some residents may still see IS - about 85% of whose fighters in Iraq are believed to be Iraqi - as their protectors against an Iranian-backed, Shia-dominated Baghdad government.
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When the Iraqi army collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the IS eruption in June 2014, it was a motley array of hastily-assembled Shia irregulars, loosely banded into the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) that prevented the militants reaching Baghda
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Ramadi gave a boost to the embattled Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.He has scant support even from his own Shia Daawa party, and is seen across the board by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians as weak, hesitant, lacking in leadership and unable to stand up to the militias.But there was a down-side to the Ramadi victory too: heavy destruction, and the displacement of the entire population.
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Nor can the formula that finally and slowly worked in Ramadi simply be applied at Mosul. It took government forces with coalition backing seven months to regain Ramadi. Mosul is 10 times bigger.
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He omitted to mention coalition air support, which would also clearly be crucial to the campaign.Some Iraqi analysts believe outside ground forces would also be needed. US military leaders, while reticent, clearly want to up the pace and have not ruled out more boots on the ground. In the absence of serious moves towards national reconciliation, one senior government figure also saw a campaign to retake Mosul as a vital way of forging national unity.
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Make No Mistake - the United States Is at War in Yemen - 0 views
foreignpolicy.com/...war-in-yemen-saudi-arabia-iran
United States Yemen Saudi Arabia Houthi Iran proxy war
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Egypt News, Egypt Current Events, Modern Egyptian Society, Egyptian Tourism | Modern Eg... - 0 views
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The new law will give women more than 12 percent of the seats in an expanded parliament after the next election in 2010.
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• There was a significant increase in the proportions of mothers assisted at delivery by medical provider - from 61.5 percent in 2000 to 78.6 percent in 2006;
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The percentage of women who gave birth at an age younger than 18 decreased from 23.7 in 1992 to 20.4 in 2000 then to 15.8 in 2005.
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This site stats that women's rights have improved over the years. A new law made in 2010 gave women 12% of he seats in Parliament.
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Information on women rights in Egypt are presented. Women political, voting, educational and health rights are included.
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This piece talks about women in politics, voting, and it public positions. It also gives facts dealing with women's health and education.
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Obama Promises U.S. Aid to Jordan for Syria, Iraq Refugees - 0 views
www.bloomberg.com/...jordan-for-syria-iraq-refugees
egypt ISIS politics israel revolution iraq Syria
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Schooling in a crisis: the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey - ODI HPN - 0 views
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The Syrian civil war has created one of the largest and most intense episodes of human suffering of the early twenty-first century.
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Turkeys efforts to meet the needs of refugees have been spearheaded by the Afet ve Acil Durum Yonetimi Baskanligi
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majority of refugees are women and, especially, children; of the 200,000 refugees in Turkish camps, about 60% are children.
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t was left to him to find tents, wooden flooring, carpets and paving bricks, desks, chairs, drawing boards, teaching aids and, of course, textbooks
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he pre-school director in Islahiye Camp used empty office and storage space in the warehouse to house five rooms full of loud young children
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curricula are not recognised or sanctioned by the Turkish education authorities, and so licenced Turkish teachers cannot be assigned to them.
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Indeed, one source of tension between Syrian parents and the Turkish authorities has been the Syrian demand for special classes for advanced students whose preparations for university entrance exams were interrupted by the war.
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Syrian parents also tend to insist that their daughters wear headscarves (hijab) in public and in schools, while it is illegal for Turkish teenage girls to cover their hair at school.
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Tensions over the separation of the sexes, curriculum and language of instruction are compounded by the politics of Syrians refugee status
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y contrast, the Turkish government chose not to officially recognise the Syrians as refugees as defined by UNHCR, and did not ask UNHCR to register the newcomers as refugees.
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Even guests can outstay their welcome, and with no end in sight to the civil war and no prospect of a return of Syrians to Syria, Turks are beginning to question how long they can sustain their assistance. I
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une 2013 AFAD began accepting offers of financial and other aid from outside agencies, including UNHCR and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
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The schools developed in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey provide valuable models for establishing schools for rapidly growing refugee populations.
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The next critical challenge for Syrian education in Turkey is what to do with the growing number of Syrian teenagers who need to finish their high-school studies at accredited schools in order to compete for places at universities in Turkey or elsewhere.
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This was probably the most interesting article I have read about education in the MIddle East. It is from the "Humanitarian practice Network". This article is about Turkey and the Syrian refugees, who are not documented as refugees, and the growing desire for improvements to education. Right now, the education which is in place for Syrians is adequate for a temporary stay of preserving knowledge. It is not designed to be used long term, to advance students, or to prep them for universities. This article looks at those issues and tensions which are happening currently in Turkey