Word: istanbul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...General Ali Reza Asgari, a former intelligence officer in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and deputy defense minister until 2005, was last seen in public around December 7 in Istanbul. Iran says Israel and the United States kidnapped him, presumably to coerce him into telling lies about Iran. The Washington Post has reported he is in U.S. custody, spilling his guts, and more recently the New York Times reported that the German defense minister, when asked about Asgari's whereabouts, said "I cannot say anything on this issue." But both the U.S. and Israel deny having him, let alone...
...accepted into Sweden is relatively simple compared with what it takes to actually get there. Iraqis say the odyssey north typically costs $10,000 per person and involves relying on a network of nameless smugglers and middlemen. Most Iraqis flee first to Jordan; from there smugglers arrange flights to Istanbul, where it is easy to find illegal European Union passports--red passports, as the Iraqis call them, which contain the refugees' real photos but use other people's names. "Daniel," 23, a Christian Iraqi student sitting in a Stockholm café, said he bought a fake Iraqi passport...
...begin this story knowing everything that will happen to him during his time in Kars,” our narrator—who will later identify himself as “Orhan”—informs us.Ka, a poet and occasional journalist, has returned to Istanbul after a 12-year political exile in Germany to attend his mother’s funeral. A journalist friend offers Ka the opportunity to see what Turkey is “really like” after his absence: Ka will travel to the remote hamlet of Kars near the Russian border...
Sectarian relations worsened in the 16th century. By then the seat of Sunni power had moved to Istanbul. When the Turkish Sunni Ottomans fought a series of wars with the Shi'ite Safavids of Persia, the Arabs caught in between were sometimes obliged to take sides. Sectarian suspicions planted then have never fully subsided, and Sunni Arabs still pejoratively label Shi'ites as "Persians" or "Safavis." The Ottomans eventually won control of the Arab territories and cemented Sunni dominance. The British, the next power in the Middle East, did nothing to change the equation. In the settlement after World...
...BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak The cover: a traditional Islamic design of repeating floral patterns, in cerulean, turquoise, and a deep Tyrian purple. The title: “The Bastard of Istanbul.” The cover and title together certainly make me want to know who the bastard is, not to mention how and why a bastard of Istanbul becomes “the” bastard of Istanbul. Perhaps it’s a “Fear Factor” type deal in which all of the bastards in Istanbul vie for the prized title, though...