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Turkey in July: a Tale of Two Coups

Within days of the failed military coup attempt, president Erdogan announced his “good news” to the Turkish public: a state of emergency for three months. It’s been exceedingly difficult to identify with any of the protagonists of the last couple of weeks in Turkey. Essentially, what happened were two coups in quick succession: one—abortive military, […]

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Interview with “Prasvet” editor Tania Chyzhova

Tania Chyzhova, editor and author of the Belarusian marxist journal of left critique Prasvet (prasvet.com) and resource of wide-left orientation Left.by. Studied philosophy in the Belarusian State University, then was an academic researcher in social philosophy and political science (marxism, theories of social agency, protest actions in Belarus). Mattia Gallo talked to Tania about the regime […]

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A Parallel State

Note from LeftEast Editors: This text was originally in N+1 Magazine. AN HOUR OR TWO BEFORE SUNSET on a warm evening in mid-July, my friends are wondering where they can get a beer. They’re surprised that the local grocery store doesn’t carry alcohol, and that its sale on campus is illegal. But this is a fun-loving […]

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Brexit in an Obstinate Red: The Unsung Victory of the Radical Left

Brexit has been greeted as a darkly seminal event, likely to be enshrined as the first historical breakthrough of reaction in contemporary Europe. Everywhere it is being trumpeted as the triumph of xenophobia, populism and racism. In the eyes of the global media, “Vote Leave” irreversibly bears the signature of the Eurosceptic, nationalist right. And […]

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Turkey’s Failed Coup and Erdogan’s Anti-Kurdish Agenda

We republish this analysis by Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), published on 19 July 2016 on http://www.kongrakurdistan.org. On 15thJuly 2016 an unsuccessful attempt at a coup happened in Turkey. Even at this early stage, the post-coup process obviously will have important consequences. It is important to understand that this process was started on the 7th June 2015, […]

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“And then he would end up just like Morsi” Öcalan had said

This interview with Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of Peoples’ Democratic Party, was conducted by OSMAN OĞUZ and HABER MERKEZİ of YENİ ÖZGÜR POLİTİKA. This English language translation was taken from HDP’s English language blog.   Öcalan had warned Erdogan about this matter a lot. “Tell him, he does not get it, he is acting like an idiot” […]

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Neither Moscow, nor NATO: Notes on the NATO summit and the antiwar counter-summit in Warsaw

The main result from this weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw was the official proclamation of a “containment” strategy toward Russia. So far, the practical consequence of this declaration is modest in military terms—a total of 3,000 foreign troops will be deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Far more important are the politics of this […]

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Stones in the dark. The Brexit and the Left

During the Cold War, in the context of escalating tensions between Russia and China, a listener asks Radio Yerevan: “What do you advise: to drink Russian tea or Chinese tea?’ The answer comes in promptly: it’s wiser not to meddle with the business of great powers, better to drink coffee. It is the same now […]

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If we’re the 99%, why are we still at the bottom?

The ideologeme of 99% and 1% have been present in the popular imagination since 2011. They are obviously theoretically speaking rather crude and simplified, but still paint a good enough picture of a society divided into a political-economic elite at the top and the rest of the people. This division is one of the main […]

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“No significant pressure for a different model existed”: Joachim Becker on the Economy of Former Yugoslavia and its Successor States

Joachim Becker, professor of Economics and Business at Vienna University and deputy head of the Institute for International Economics and Development, was a guest of the conference Social Justice: New Perspectives, New Horizons in Belgrade. Becker’s research interests include development economics, theory of the state, regional integration and disintegration, Mercosur, Turkey, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. […]