HUFFINGTON POST 05/21/15 By Michael Shank It’s official. The Department of Homeland Security has placed me on a travel watch list. Every time I travel abroad, I now have “SSSS”, which stands for Secondary Security Screen Selection, on my boarding documents. That means I get an extra rigorous full-body screening, […]
HUFFINGTON POST 4/17/15 By Michael Shank As Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan made his rounds recently in the Middle East, talking with Iran about ending sectarianism in the region, and with Egypt about freeing political prisoners, he would’ve done well to start at home. There’s much to do, and Erdogan […]
HUFFINGTON POST 03/12/15 By Michael Shank Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent attack on the West for “hate speech” and misattributing terrorism during the Paris attacks is ironic. Erdogan is erroneously doing both already: labeling the Gulen movement a terrorist organization and using hate speech to characterize it. In fact, […]
FOX NEWS 02/01/14 By Michael Shank From a political perspective, defending Turkey’s blend of political Islam and neoliberal economic policies was not terribly difficult a decade ago. After all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan helped build the 17th largest economy in the world and what would be the sixth largest […]
HUFFINGTON POST 12/10/13 By Michael Shank It appears that Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based Islamic preacher from Turkey who promotes peace and tolerance, and the schools associated with his religious Hizmet movement can’t get a break. They were first targeted in America, via discrimination aimed at the Turkish American community centered […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 12/02/13 By Michael Shank It appears that Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based Islamic preacher from Turkey who promotes peace and tolerance, and the schools associated with his religious Hizmet movement can’t get a break. They were first targeted in America, via discrimination aimed at the Turkish […]
USA TODAY 9/23/13 By Michael Shank Focus on African security missing development needs. Last month, at the beginning of a trip to Somalia, my twitter feed started buzzing with breaking news about explosions in Mogadishu. A local rebel group, al-Shabab, claimed credit. Their tactic was fairly unsophisticated: break the Ramadan […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 08/27/13 By Michael Shank If the United States was genuinely interested in preventing an escalation of violent conflict in Syria, we would impatiently pursue all preventive mechanisms available to us – from international law to international diplomacy to international weapons inspection – before adding more […]
POLITICO 06/02/12 By Michael Shank CBS News “60 Minutes” recently produced a show about Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, spurred by concern about the so-called Hizmet movement’s alleged connection to a growing network of high performing and nationally ranked charter schools in the US. These schools rank in Newsweek’s top […]
ROLL CALL 05/23/12 By Michael Shank Recent Istanbul negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 and this week’s Baghdad negotiations have tempered, albeit temporarily, the cry for war. It was close under President George W. Bush, who rallied regime-changers to invade, but it is worse now. The Pentagon publicly prepares plans, […]