One year ago today I sat down at my laptop, signed up for a WordPress account, thought for five minutes about what to name my blog, and started writing. Although I hoped someone would notice, I had very little expectation that anyone outside of my family and friends would read it, and I just wanted to use it as an outlet to get my thoughts down in some sort of regular fashion as I had been frustrated at repeatedly sending pitches to places like Foreign Policy and the Atlantic and rarely having them accepted. One year later, the attention O&Z has gotten has outpaced anything that I anticipated, and I am truly grateful to all of my readers for listening to what I have to say and engaging me with your comments, emails, and responses. There are few things that give me more enjoyment than meeting someone new who turns out to be a reader of the blog, and interacting and debating with other folks in these arenas of Israeli politics and Turkish politics has led to a bevy of new friendships and professional contacts and immensely enriched my own knowledge and understanding of Israel and Turkey. The circle of people who seriously study one or both of these countries is growing, and I hope that even more people join the chorus of voices in writing about these two places in one form or another. For evidence that blogging is a worthwhile endeavor, just take a gander at my list of publications and note how many of them came pre-O&Z and how many of them are from the past year. So a sincere and heartfelt thank you to anyone who has ever made their way over to this corner of the Internet, I hope something I have written has made you think whether or not you have agreed with it, and I’ll do my best to keep writing about issues that I feel should be highlighted. In the meantime, since I doubt there is even a minyan of people who read my first post back on March 13, 2012, I am reproducing it below since it still applies one year later.

 

This is a blog about Turkey. And Israel. And Turkey and Israel. As someone who has lived in, written about, and studied both countries intently, I spend a good chunk of my day thinking about the politics of each. There is a lot of good commentary out there on Israeli and Turkish politics and current affairs, but I think I come from a unique enough place to add my voice to the din.

Over the past few years, in response to the domestic politics of each country and exacerbated by the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair, there is a growing trend among commentators and analysts who feel the need to pick sides and institute a mutually exclusive dynamic where you can be either “pro-Turkey” or “pro-Israel.” It escapes me why this has to be the case, but it is nevertheless largely the state of affairs that exists. This blog is an attempt to move past this dynamic. I love the culture, language, history, and general environment of both countries, and I also recognize that both of them are deeply flawed. I think that one can comment on both, considered separately and together, without letting one’s feelings about either of them adversely affect one’s analysis. This blog is an attempt to put forth what I hope will be an interesting take on the geopolitics of two important states without the animosity that characterizes lots of the commentary about both.

Aside from my own academic and professional interest, Turkey and Israel are fascinating to study in their own right. As I have written in a different (and far more distinguished!) venue, Israel and Turkey are remarkably similar. Both are non-Arab countries in the Middle East seeking to attain regional hegemonic status and are the two strongest military powers in the region; both were founded by staunch secularists who thought that the influence of religion would wane over time and yet both countries now find themselves with increasingly religious populations and are struggling to balance the religious with the secular; both are dealing with similar foreign policy problems; both have significant populations either within their borders or under their control that would like to form an autonomous state; and until recently the two were firm allies who remain linchpins of American strategy in the Middle East.

Despite this, Turkey and Israel seem to be moving in opposite directions in the eyes of the world. Turkey is widely seen as ascendant, with a strong economy, a growing hand in world geopolitics, and a foreign minister widely respected and viewed as one of the world’s influential thinkers. In contrast, Israel is viewed by many as a country under siege, with an imminent demographic problem, a rapidly deteriorating relationship with its most important Arab neighbor and ally, and most crucially a possible war with Iran on the horizon. Tracking these developments over the next few years as the aftershocks of the Arab Spring continue to be felt will be fascinating to me, and I hope to others as well.

So there you go. I hope to make this blog a valuable resource for commentary, analysis, and links on all things related to Israel and Turkey, and pick up some readers along the way. And given my past academic life and other interests, don’t be surprised to see some ruminations along the way on constitutional issues related to war and civil liberties, the Boston Red Sox, the politics of the American Jewish community, or why Parks and Recreation might be the best sitcom in the history of network television.

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