Turkey, Syria and the Geopolitics of Identity
The Syrian shelling of Akcakale -- a Turkish village on the Syrian border -- and Turkey's military response against Syrian targets was shocking. Personally, it made me think of a 2009 trip I took to Antep and Urfa -- cities in southeastern Turkey -- sponsored by the Rumi Forum. The region, long underdeveloped, was experiencing a boom thanks to infrastructure investment and trade with Syria, as I saw in both of these cities. I wondered what a trip there would be like now, given Urfa is less than an hour from Akcakale and Antep two and a half hours away.
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