Nicholas Danforth
@NicholasDanfort
Senior Visiting Fellow, German Marshall Fund. Mideast Politics. Turkey. Maps. Historical Randomness. Retweets are not endorsements nor necessarily sarcastic.
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the era of mitigated idiocy is over
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But it is an opportunity to reach out and apologize to everyone you called "worse than ISIS" over the past five years. Friends, colleagues, exes, geopolitical rivals...https://www.msnbc.com/mtp-daily/watch/brennan-al-baghdadi-s-death-is-not-the-end-of-isis-72351301595…
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, presents Erdogan with a special gift: a "peace train," named after his famous song.pic.twitter.com/VYTSHqobtx
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Also i particularly like the hilarious misrepresentation of
@PatrickOsgood's comments.Show this thread -
you dont have to like the syrian govt or even oppose us intervention to support a mildly objective use of the english language
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With America gone, the Syrian government is carving up Syriahttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/30/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-maps.html…
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what gets me is that I actually made this exact, entirely self-evident, argument years ago for
@WarOnTheRocks as a rebuttal to people like Shadi who were talking about Islamic exceptionalism and how much Muslims loved the Caliphatehttps://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-the-buddhist-al-baghdadi/…Show this thread -
its true. no one in the west ever thought of violence as a strategy for exerting political authority until
@shadihamidhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/what-america-never-understood-about-isis/601156/…Show this thread -
And yes, the US had made plenty of mistakes too. But that doesn’t mean fixing them will solve the problem. It’s not about assigning blame, just recognizing reality
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I think Erdogan really does want to have a good relationship with the US, but on terms that won’t ever - and shouldn’t - be acceptable to Washington. The problem for Turkey’s defenders is that he’s been pretty clear about this and people are finally starting to believe him
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Who knows if a policy of backing the YPG over Turkey's objections could have worked with full presidential support. But this approach definitely wasn't going to work without it. Which, I assume, is why Brett McGurk resigned when Trump made it clear he wasn't on board.
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US policy only made sense if you assumed Turkey fundamentally didnt mind the us working with the YPG and wanted us to stay in NE Syria. Outspoken YPG critics and supporters both realized this was false.pic.twitter.com/FC6ktogfsC
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Ironically, both skeptics and supporters of working with the YPG can agree that the ultimate policy of trying to stay in Syria by appeasing Turkey was delusionalhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/iran-hawks-botched-trump-syria-policy-james-jeffrey-turkey/…
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Honestly I'm not sure "we only helped with the coup" was a great defense to begin withhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/the-united-states-overthrew-irans-last-democratic-leader/…
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Curious if there are any cases where everyone in the world outside of one country believes something and it’s the everyone who’s wrong
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At the end of the day, nothing Trump does will change the fact that everyone in the world outside of Turkey recognizes the Armenian genocide.https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1189583547616677894…
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As Mark Mazower has argued, the Holocaust was a unique historical event that has come to define the way we understand genocide. This creates a situation where many or the arguments made by Turkish genocide denialists are true, but not relevant to the definition of the term
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Historically, most genocides have in fact been part of civil wars that saw death on both sides https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-asked-trump-administration-respond-us-congress-over-genocide-and-sanctions-bills …pic.twitter.com/ffTAdo249l
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
From the founding of Intourist in the USSR in 1929,
#maps were commonly included in Soviet poster art, which trafficked in alterity, the#USSR as another world, Soviet cities as exotic or Not Europe. The craft's evolution from the 1930s into the#ColdWar: https://retours.eu/en/39-intourist-USSR-posters/ …pic.twitter.com/02fmSR283e
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
US Congress has recognized the Armenian Genocide. Because my own country has been denying this for 105 years, our tragedy is discussed in other world parliaments. The real healing for Armenians will come when we can talk about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey’s own parliament.
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
FWIW France and Germany passed genocide recognition bills and the sun still rises. Obvious lots a problems on the timing front but wouldn’t be surprised if this gets overshadowed by some other nonsense in the days, weeks and months ahead.
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It was USG officials explaining why these bills would compromise our national interests. It was former congressmen serving as the lobbyists.
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I like how everyone is citing Turkish "lobbying" and "blackmail" to explain why Congress didnt act sooner as if those are completely external factors that Washington was not at all complicit in.
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
In the light of doubts raised about the 'academic consensus' over the recognition of the Armenian Genocide I think it is worth highlighting how far historical research has now moved. There is a consensus, most academic historians have moved beyond the issue of finding 'proof'
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why exactly is the Post describing this as an "attempt" at genocide? https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trumps-dealings-with-turkey-pave-way-for-house-vote-acknowledging-armenian-genocide/2019/10/29/00adb200-fa7d-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html …pic.twitter.com/k55zjHnf49
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
The US was silent for all the wrong reasons. That they speak out for different wrong reasons is progress.
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
Ruined big game w/
#OperationPeaceSpring. Those whose projects were frustrated turn to antiquated resolutions.Circles believing that they will take revenge this way are mistaken.This shameful decision of those exploiting history in politics is null&void for our Government&people. -
Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
Genocide and mass atrocities are already vexed areas for leftist foreign policy. This is a troubling and deeply unfortunate way for a standard bearer to be thinking about these questions.https://twitter.com/byrdinator/status/1189303734163124227…
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
1. Today after 40 years of disputes the US House passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Armenian Americans are celebrating. I do not want to begrudge them this moment. They feel closure and acknowledgement of their grandparents' loss.https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-29/house-approves-resolution-recognizing-armenian-genocide…
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The Armenian genocide happened and its good congress recognized it. They did it in the worst, most hypocritical way possible and its hard for me to feel good about it. But I hope others for whom this is far more meaningful feel differently and I hope some real good comes of this.https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1189294083669254145…
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
After 104.5 years, the House just voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide. 405 yes, 11 no, 3 present. This has taken decades, & while I’m supposed to keep myself out of coverage, I will slip just this once to say that vote is an affirmation of history to every Armenian-American.
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
The genocide is a matter of almost universal consensus among historians. But this resolution has much less to do with historical truth than with the sorry state of US-Turkey relations. Politics was why Congress never recognized the genocide; politics was why it did so today.https://twitter.com/p_zalewski/status/1189293243994902530…
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Whenever I read smarmy tributes to civility I'm reminded of this North Carolina police officer in the 1950s explaining to a visiting Turkish journalist the importance of throwing eggs at Mamie Eisenhower: https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1188823262874275842 …pic.twitter.com/EkvCvx3jy4
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A good look at the complexities and uncertain future of Turkish-Russian cooperation in Syria from
@crmiller1https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/28/putin-erdogan-deal-syria-kurds-agreement-war-continues/… -
If Turkey's going to do the whole whataboutism thing, why not at least highlight something Americans will learn from: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/asia/indonesia-genocide-panel/index.html …https://twitter.com/HouseDailyPress/status/1189241247191445506…
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Nicholas Danforth Retweeted
GMF's
@NicholasDanfort on the consequences of#Baghdadi's death: “For years, Turkey has faced criticism, both fair and unfair, about its relationship with IS. Whatever facts emerge, this will undoubtedly intensify because of where Baghdadi was found."https://bit.ly/2PqGMVw -
Ataturk and Fatih standing guard over the newly opened Bosporous Bridgepic.twitter.com/6M4VxfUwTw
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“It would be all guerrilla warfare, not this open field-style kind of thing,” he said, gesturing at the reenactment of the 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek in Middletown, Virginia, earlier this month. “I would probably be an officer in that effort.”https://twitter.com/JuliaHarte1/status/1189239490172407808…
