Turkish Rambo : Geopolitical Dramas as Narrative Counter-Hegemony

Arabs and Turks share a historically complicated relationship. After 400 years of Ottoman imperialism over Arab lands that lasted until after World War 1, Turkish leader Mustafa kemal Atatürk\u27s secularized Turkey and cut linguistic ties with Arab culture. Secularism, nationalism and NATO membership during the second half of the 20th century further distanced Turkey from Arab countries. This changed in 2001 with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkis acronym AKP). Incorporating electoral politics in a pro-business platform reflecting the AKP\u27s pious and entrepreneurial constituency in Anatolian cities, the AKP has consolidated power in electoral victories since 2002. In the past decade, Turkey\u27s forceful foreign policy, public criticism of Israeli actions, increased economic entanglement in the Arab world, and overall rising status, has been discussed via the trope of neo-Ottomanism. Despite Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan\u27s autocratic tendencies and his government\u27s worrisome imprisonment of numerous journalists and academics, the AKP appeared to be unshakable until popular demonstrations in Gezi park in Istanbul in 2013 put Erdoğan on the defensive

Clinical significance of cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome

Although diabetes mellitus is predominantly a metabolic disorder, recent data suggest that it is as much a vascular disorder. Cardiovascular complications are the leading cause of death and disability in patients with diabetes mellitus. A number of recent reports have emphasized that many patients already have atherosclerosis in progression by the time they are diagnosed with clinical evidence of diabetes mellitus. The increased risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients is related to the frequently associated dyslipidemia, hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and endothelial dysfunction. The evolving knowledge regarding the variety of metabolic, hormonal, and hemodynamic abnormalities in patients with diabetes mellitus has led to efforts designed for early identification of individuals at risk of subsequent disease. It has been suggested that insulin resistance, the key abnormality in type II diabetes, often precedes clinical features of diabetes by 5–6 years. Careful attention to the criteria described for the cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome should help identify those at risk at an early stage. The application of nonpharmacologic as well as newer emerging pharmacologic therapies can have beneficial effects in individuals with cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome and/or diabetes mellitus by improving insulin sensitivity and related abnormalities. Early identification and implementation of appropriate therapeutic strategies would be necessary to contain the emerging new epidemic of cardiovascular disease related to diabetes

Neo-Ottoman cool: Turkish popular culture in the Arab public sphere

In the past decade, Turkish television drama has enjoyed popular success in the Arab world, fueling wide-ranging controversies in the pan-Arab public sphere. Such popularity is at first sight puzzling. After all, Arabs lived under Ottoman rule for 400 years, and for most of the 20th century Turkey's foreign policy neglected Arab interests. Why, then, would Turkish drama be popular with Arab audiences, especially at a time of unprecedented vibrancy in Arab cultural production? This article grapples with that question via a systematic analysis of pan-Arab discourse about Turkish popular culture, concluding that some Turkish dramas conjure up an accessible modernity while others enact a counter-hegemonic narrative that puts Middle Easterners in the role of heroes. The rise of Turkish television drama in the Arab public sphere offers insights into the geopolitical underpinnings and geocultural consequences of transnational media flows

The Turkish Al-Jazeera? TRT

Turks and Arabs, intoned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, one spring evening in April 2010, are like the fingers of a hand. They are as close as the flesh and the nail of a finger… We belong to the same history, the same culture and above all the same civilization. 1 Erdoğan was speaking at the launching ceremony of TRT-al-Turkiyya, Turkey\u27s Arabic-language satellite television channel, and his speech was carried live on al-Jazeera and other Arab news networks. The event the speech keynoted crowned a multi-year rapprochement between Turkey and its Arab neighbors expressed through Erdoğan\u27s soft-Islamist, socially conservative and economically liberal rhetoric and policy. However, three years into the Arab uprisings, Turkey\u27s initial charm offensive towards the Arab region has turned defensive, as Ankara has gotten embroiled in the war in Syria and the turmoil in Egypt. This turn of events, however, should not write-off the story of the Arab-Turkish love affair and the central role media played in it, especially when considered against the backdrop of history, as the Ottomans were the imperial overlords of most Arab societies for centuries, and secular nationalist Turks were not interested in their Arab neighbors

Holocene faulting and earthquake recurrence along the Serghaya branch of the Dead Sea fault system in Syria and Lebanon

An edited version of this paper was published in Geophysical Journal International by Blackwell Publishing. Blackwell Publishing retains the copyright. Copyright 2003, Blackwell Publishing. See also: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-246X.2003.01933.x; http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/deadsea/publications/Gomez2003_GJI.htmThe Serghaya fault, located approximately along the Syrian-Lebanese border, is a prominent structure within the 200 km restraining bend in the left-lateral Dead Sea fault system. This study documents palaeoseismic and geomorphic expressions of Holocene movements on the Serghaya fault based on trench excavations and radiocarbon dates. Trenches were excavated across and parallel to a 4.5 m fault scarp where Late Pleistocene sediments are faulted against Holocene alluvium and colluvium. Locally oblique slip on the Serghaya fault has produced a sequence of fault-derived colluvial wedges that distinguishes individual palaeoseismic events. In addition, the trench excavations also depict a sequence of buried and displaced channels. Our palaeoseismic study reveals evidence for five surface-rupturing events within the past ~6500 yr. The last event involved 2-2.5 m of primarily left-lateral displacement and may correspond to one of two historically documented earthquakes during the 18th century (in 1705 and 1759). The displaced channels provide an estimated slip rate of approximately 1.4 - 0.2 mm yr-1 during the Holocene. The chronological relationships between the colluvial wedges and faulted channels demonstrate an average left-lateral displacement of about 2 m per event, suggesting that such events correspond to earthquakes of M >~ 7 with a mean return time of about 1300 yr. These results demonstrate that the Serghaya fault may present a previously overlooked earthquake hazard for populations in the vicinity of the AntiLebanon Mountains, including the cities of Damascus and Beirut. In a regional context, the inferred slip rate along the Serghaya fault accounts for about 25 per cent of the total expected motion of Arabia relative to Africa along the Dead Sea fault system. The fact that the Serghaya fault accounts for only a fraction of the expected plate motion implies that the remaining strike-slip and shortening must be accommodated by other active fault branches within the large restraining bend of the Dead Sea fault system. These results contradict suggestions that the northern Dead Sea fault system in Lebanon and Syria is presently inactive as a result of an evolving regional stress field in the eastern Mediterranean region

Evidence for 830 years of seismic quiescence from palaeoseismology, archaeoseismology, and historical seismicity along the Dead Sea fault in Syria

An edited version of this paper was published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters by Elsevier Science. Elsevier Science retains the copyright to this paper (Copyright 2003). See also: http:\\dx.doi.org\10.1016\S0012-821X(03)00144-4; http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/deadsea/publications/Meghraoui2003_EPSL.htmThe long historical record of earthquakes, the physical effects on ancient building structures and the palaeoseismology provide a unique opportunity for an interdisciplinary tectonic analysis along a major plate boundary and a realistic evaluation of the seismic hazard assessment in the Middle East. We demonstrate with microtopographic surveys and trenching that the Dead Sea fault (DSF) offsets left-laterally by 13.690.2 m a repeatedly fractured ancient Roman aqueduct (older than AD 70 and younger than AD 30). Carbon-14 dating of faulted young alluvial deposits documents the occurrence of three large earthquakes in the past 2000 years between AD 100 and 750, between AD 700 and 1030 and between AD 990 and 1210. Our study provides the timing of late Holocene earthquakes and constrains the 6.990.1 mm/yr slip rate of the Dead Sea transform fault in northwestern Syria along the Missyaf segment. The antepenultimate and most recent faulting events may be correlated with the AD 115 and AD 1170 large earthquakes for which we estimate Mw =7.3^7.5. The 830 yr of seismic quiescence along the Missyaf fault segment implies that a large earthquake is overdue and may result in a major catastrophe to the population centres of Syria and Lebanon