Man, this article about how Modi is nothing like Erdogan sure reads like the kind of thing people spent the last decade saying about Erdogan foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/22/m...

Register for our in-person event happening tomorrow at 5:00 PM EDT: From Life Itself, a book talk with author Suzy Hansen and Nick Danforth.

I think pt 1 is a good bit more than microscopic but no disagreement on 2.

I said having a prominent voice of pro-Palestine politics in the US be a guy who had a Nazi tattoo and appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast will make it harder for me to convince wavering family members that pro-Palestine politics are not all antisemitic, and I got, "Oh, so your family are all genocidal?"

The Stockholm Institute for Turkish Studies was nice enough to organize an interview/book launch for me with Howard Eissenstat (@heissenstat.bsky.social) and Paul Levin (@paultlevin.bsky.social). Check it out: www.su.se/english/divi...

@nicholasdanfort.bsky.social and I are going live in 5 minutes. This week, we'll be talking about Turkey in Europe, Greece in the Middle East. open.substack.com/live-stream/...

This rhetorical move is called the Selective Anderson

I was lucky enough to have a conversation with @reubensilverman.bsky.social about his new volume on the Menderes Era in Turkey (1950 - 1960), hosted by @paultlevin.bsky.social at SUITS You can watch it here. www.su.se/english/divi...

Glad to finally see Robert Guiscard, Terror of the World, in the pages of Foreign Policy: foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/24/p...

So many solutions work if Trump stops being Trump: "addressing the most acute dangers that Iran poses against its neighbors, the United States and the world if the administration can prioritize, focus and overcome its addiction to quick fixes.”

my supposition is that the authors of such pieces have access to some kind of extra-dimensional technology, whereby our Trump-A can simply be swapped for a Trump-B, seemingly indistinguishable but completely different in character, ideology, and skill.

@nicholasdanfort.bsky.social and I are going LIVE to talk about Hungary's elections, (and whether there are lessons in there), as well as the devastating school shootings in Turkey this week. open.substack.com/live-stream/...

By 1914, the Ottoman empire looked much more promising as a multiethnic society than a multireligious one. foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/10/o...

A growing number of historians argue that the Ottoman Empire’s decline was overstated and its collapse was not predestined.

📰 Sunday Extras: "What if the Ottomans Survived?" by @nicholasdanfort.bsky.social. [1/5]

For the weekend: my brief foray into the alternate history of the Ottoman Empire based on some excellent recent books foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/10/o...

Okay, but what if the Ottoman Empire somehow survived World War One?

"Agreeing or disagreeing with McGurk’s body of work is, in a sense, a Rorschach test for whether one thinks U.S. policy in the Middle East this century has been a success or failure. foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/09/b...

A term whose time has come

The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process was a rare one to which Trump made a real contribution. But now there are worries both in Baku and Yerevan that Iran has distracted the White House from the work that still needs to be done. Me in @foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/08/i...

Went to an anti-war protest by the White House last night. Giant Iranian flags. Speaker declaring "our missiles" closed Hormuz. Joined abt 4 other people on the opposite corner in the anti-war, anti-regime camp. Would be great to see some non-tankie protests going forward but not holding my breath.

My chat with @diegocupolo.bsky.social at @turkeyrecap.bsky.social on Turkish - Israeli relations. The dynamics of the Middle East are changing radically, I argue. And it is Israel, rather than Turkey, that is the main disrupting force www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyzX...

I suspect if the pilot is captured Tehran will now make a big show of treating them well to score a global pr win

“if Trump is looking for a rerun of the 1991 Gulf War, he is likely to be disappointed”: the wonderful and blueskyless Daniel Neep on the how the US’s fading relationship with the UN reveals that escalation, not limited war, is the sole way forward the US has left open for itself

Personally, I think your willingness to appear on TRT should directly reflect your willingness to appear on Russia Today.

Great new piece by @selimkoru.bsky.social on Turkey, democracy and national solidarity: foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/27/t...

my job as an academic isn't to predict the future, but "this will be even worse than you think it will be" has yet to serve me wrong as a guide to any given government choice during the Trump years

Graeber was the leftist Malcolm Gladwell.

And to think some people believed him...

It's important to think about what work the claim "Crash Bandicoot is political" is doing in a conversation, and that work is usually supporting the claim "now I get to yell at you about Crash Bandicoot".

@centuryintl.bsky.social colleague @freddydeknatel.bsky.social on the ways in which Trump's war on Iran is a degraded, copy-of-a-copy Xerox of Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq: newlinesmag.com/essays/the-u...

Reproducing this in meme format, which @nicholasdanfort.bsky.social introduced to me years ago re Turkish nationalists and the Armenian genocide

Incidentally, this article implicitly acknowledges that Israeli rhetoric about freeing Gaza from Hamas was actually bullshit

This is one of the funniest corrections I’ve ever read

Dude, this war - after myriad prior outrages - demonstrates conclusively that the “principles” you “fear” the US “may be retreating from” have long been thrown out of the window and lie in the gutter. It’s happened already. Catch up

Reposting this piece on the aesthetics of empire: foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/22/t...

A very thoughtful piece on the predicament of Iranian Kurds foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/05/i...

A very thoughtful piece on the predicament of Iranian Kurds foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/05/i...

Great piece! @joelhs.bsky.social writes: "What is uncomfortable about this time period is how easily legitimate questions about Israel’s role in stoking this war can slide into conspiracy theories. The lines are not always as easy to maintain as we might like." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It’s worth noting that for all his flaws, George W. Bush didn’t frame the War on Terror as ‘Western Civ’ or Christianity against Islam or the East but as a struggle of decent peoples against a new form of totalitarianism. Now we’re doing the full on Christian nationalist dream of war with Islam.

I gather that everyone here is 100% certain Donald Trump is a misogynist. So who here actually knew that his wife is a woman? And how does that influence your certainty?

Selim on the Turkish angle on the war: kulturkampftr.substack.com/p/turkey-wat...

Nathalie Tocci weighs in on the European response foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/03/e...

If the war ends well for Trump, It was his brilliant idea. If it doesn’t, blame the Jews.

The people of Maine shouldn't have to choose between Susan Collins and a quasi-nazi.

you know, this is why you should not elect people who have never once learned anything about anything

Trump has no plan. This is a damning summary from The Economist’s Middle East Correspondent Gregg Carlstrom.

Thought of this essay the other day. Most imperial nostalgia whitewashes the role of violence in empire. But perversely, a lot of what passes for realism these days ignores the fact that successful empires also maintained some measure of political legitimacy www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...