DR Selin Calik

                                                          London, February In 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. The current coronavirus epidemic, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has so far infected around 80,000 people and killed more than 2,700, most of them in China. Can we expect to see this epidemic become a pandemic? Fears are now gripping the Middle East that this might well be the case. The region is in flux, with the constant circulation of pilgrims and merchants, traders and workers who might carry the virus. Ongoing wars, occupation and unrest have shattered the health systems of several countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, as well as occupied Palestine. Hence, serious consideration should be given to a united approach to tackling the virus, the  first case  of which appeared in the Middle East on 29 January in the UAE. The government in the Emirates s

                                                 patience makes kings out of slave/Al Ghazali

Author: Elif Selin Calik Will Erdogan’s ‘the world is greater than 5’ help establish  a new world order including Africa? By Elif Selin Calik Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, African affairs were regarded as a secondary issue in the new state’s foreign policy. Until relatively recently, that is, when Cold War dynamics compelled the Turkish government to align itself with the West. Having good relations and alliances with the West was one of the main pillars of Turkish foreign policy. Indeed, Turkey paid such special attention to its relations with Western countries that its stance at the historic Asian-African Conference of 1955 –  the Bandung Conference  in Indonesia aiming to counter imperialism and colonialism and protect the rights of Asian and African countries – caused the Turkish government to be defined as “the spokesperson of American imperialism”. After the adoption of the Action Plan for Opening up to Africa in the late 1