Turkish Captain Charged for Manslaughter and Human Trafficking

The captain of a boat that capsized off the western Turkish coast while transporting migrants has been charged with manslaughter and human trafficking. The first mate has also been detained over similar accusations after at least 61 people died when the fishing boat, which was carrying mostly Arab refugees, sank on its way to Europe […]

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Human Rights Watch Report Describes the Brutal Torture Seen in Syria

Human Rights Watch has released a report on Syria’s state policy of torture, which includes testimony from former prisoners and security officers, while also revealing that among the victims are women, senior citizens and children. However, Syria’s government routinely denies all allegations of any such abuse.   “Basat al reeh.” “Dulab.” “Falaqa.” They are Arabic names for torture […]

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Syria’s President Promises Reform Amid Protests

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad used his third televised appearance in the three months since anti-regime protests first erupted to deliver a monotonous, rambling and technocratic speech to a handpicked audience at Damascus University on Monday — and while the autocratic leader promised a national dialogue, the offer is unlikely to damper the violent dissent rocking his country. There was little new in his more than hour-long address

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Palestinian Border Protests: The Arab Spring Model for Confronting Israel

After more than 100 Palestinians breached Israel’s border with Syria on Sunday, knocking down a fence and striding into a village in the Golan Heights, overmatched Israeli security forces scrambled to glean what they could from the protesters who had just, without so much as a sidearm, penetrated farther into the country than any army in a generation.

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Starving the Rebellion: Syria’s Brutal Tactics

Abu Ibrahim, a stocky, bespectacled Syrian from the besieged southern city of Dara’a, bounded into the general store on the Jordan-Syria border in his white plastic sandals, grasping his daughter Noor’s hand as the 6-year-old struggled to keep up. He’d left Dara’a, the center of a two-month-old antigovernment uprising, just a few hours earlier and was desperate to get back before the end of Friday midday prayers — and the start of the weekly nationwide protests that have always followed.

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How Syria and Libya Got to be Turkey’s Headaches

With neighboring Syria in crisis, the Arab Spring has finally arrived on Turkey’s doorstep — and with it, one big headache for a government that has spent recent years staking its political fortunes on the region. Since coming to power in 2002, the Islamic-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to become a kingpin in the Muslim world, driven by shared religious sensibility and economic expansionism

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