The German legal scholar and Nazi ideologue Carl Schmitt described a ‘State of Exception’ as the process by which a sovereign leader can transcend the rule of law in the name of the public good.
The accusation of conspiracy within the State is not just a red herring, it is a strategy meant to turn American democracy against itself.
The belief that there exists a central truth that can be secured from above yet that remains somehow liberal rather than authoritarian is a fatal mistake.
We must keep in mind that as academics we are at our best, not when we agree to disagree, but exactly when we disagree to agree.
Ironically, Britain’s PM did not counter the slanderous comments made against Turks, but instead sought to demonstrate that he too would prevent them from entering the country.
It is hard to shake the feeling that the real reason why the Böhmermann crisis has exceeded all rational proportions has more to do with German dissatisfaction with Merkel than with Erdogan.
One can only conclude that the Turkish Government’s heavy-handed reaction to petitions supporting arrested academics is the continuation of a wider trend of restricting civil liberties and freedom of speech.
The Government’s immediate response was to enforce a media ban throughout Turkey, rather than attending to the needs of its beleaguered citizens.
Depending on who one believes the country is either on the brink of civil war, or instead heroically participating in the Global War on Terror.
Strikingly, during the hastily convened NATO meeting on Tuesday, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg refrained from directly mentioning Kurdish militant groups.
The elections have been widely interpreted as a revitalization of parliamentary politics in Turkey. Yet a paralyzed parliament's inability to tackle key issues may prove the undoing of opposition promises of change.
