World Turning

Even if Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan loses upcoming elections, critics at home and abroad could be in for a big disappointment if, as is likely, his legacy long outlasts him. My commentary. Read the article (and subscribe) at Substack: https://andrewhammond.substack.com/p/erdoganism-without-erdogan And follow on Twitter: @Hammonda1 #turkey #turkeyearthquake2023 #erdoğan #erdogan

Journalists have limited capacities to push back against the grand narratives that corporate media outlets insist on pushing. Anyone who has worked in Western media in the Middle East knows this well. Bahraini uprising? Surely led by Shia sectarians, right?? That's what you're editor in London or New York would say and insert into your story, and there was nothing you could do about it. Now since 2016 when Trump and Brexit overturned political orthodoxies, the stratagems to try to control public discourse have become ever more sinister and there's no better example of that than the Twitter Files. Sticking close to the script, mainstream media have ignored these revelations of covert intervention by US government agencies as much as they possible, while attempting to smear the journalists involved as biased or dupes of Elon Musk, or both. Check out my piece on Substack and subscribe!: https://andrewhammond.substack.com/p/the-new-information-security-order #twitterfiles #bahrain #trump #brexit #media #elonmusk #arabspring

Ottoman historian Helen Pfeiffer and I spoke at the Oxford Political Thought Seminar on 8 February, 2022. In my talk, titled "Late Ottoman religious reform and secular nationalism, 1908-1923", I discussed the intense debate between the Ottoman Islamists and the secular nationalists in the empire's final years, and how the Islamists fumbled in their response to arguments against not only Islamic institutions but faith itself -- a new development in Muslim society that provoked the emergence of modern Islamist movements. For more, follow Twitter @Hammonda1 and Substack https://andrewhammond.substack.com/ #ottomanempirehistory #islamic #enlightenment

The Twitter Files' expose of US government surreptitious interference in social media platforms by journalist Matt Taibbi and others has raised questions about archives, access, and the role of the researcher, with lessons for journalists and academics alike. All archival research is one part of a bigger process, and should be evaluated on that basis, contrary to the claims of mainstream media that simply doesn't want this particular archive exposed at all. Andrew Hammond reacts to some thoughts from Glenn Greenwald and Briahna Joy Gray.

Andrew Hammond discusses the Late Ottoman proto-Islamists who the secular nationalist revolution of Ataturk effectively erased from modern Islamic intellectual history. For more information see: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/turkey-ottoman-secret-history-political-islam https://andrewhammond.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-political-islam

Andrew Hammond discusses aspects of the Begum case that are rarely discussed in British media.

Andrew gives his Very Brief Take on the year past and what's coming, from the World Cup in Qatar to Trump's flagging fortunes.

Historian Victor Willi discusses his book The Fourth Ordeal: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968–2018 in an interview that looks at the leading movement of "political Islam".