Daily Notations While Working Away: On Our World, #Turkey, #Iran & Other Thoughts

It has been an interesting 24 hours yet again as I worked on supporting the team with the Daily Social Grid curation and assessing our World.    I was not too shocked as I saw Tony Abbott in Australia being toppled by Malcolm Turnbill which I hope will see a more sensible Australia emerging after the chaotic time in Australia.  I suppose when Tony Abbott lost Rupert Murdoch, it was only a matter of time.    Australia is the "A" in the "NASIIM" concept our team is working on which will be a regular series in #Outsiders.    I have also been fascinated by the latest out of Singapore (The "S") as they just had elections.  

What I continue to be worried about is the inferno engulfing the Middle East.   As our team continues to review the horrific daily reports, it again brought home to me personally the gut-checking article Walter Russell Mead did for the Wall Street Journal.   I wanted to again release this here from his own Twitter Feed for all to review:

We are witnessing today a crisis of two civilizations: the ME and Europe. Immigration is where the two collide. http://t.co/2B3pzTjnvv

— Walter Russell Mead (@wrmead) September 11, 2015

His article was a hard read for me especially in the way he characterized Iran and Turkey.   Turkey is continuing the path of self-destruction after so much achievement during the enlightened years of AKP rule as Edrogan is continuing a misguided policy that is on the verge of tearing the country apart with an economy that is teetering, a security situation that is perilous and the inferno of the Kurdish insurgency that continues in such a profound way.   I commend the team at +BipartisanPolicy as they released this which I received on my personal inbox that underscores another domino that would fall:

Political, Ethnic Violence Tearing Turkey Apart Is Turkey on the brink of civil war? Both Turkish and foreign commentators have asked, following the collapse of the two-and-a-half year ceasefire between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The renewed conflict is playing out both within and outside Turkey’s borders, as Turkish warplanes bomb PKK camps in Northern Iraq and PKK militants launch attacks in Turkey’s cities. The intensification of violence has claimed the lives of at least 70 Turkish servicemen and hundreds of PKK fighters since July, causing widespread concern that Turkey may be returning to the violent conflict that consumed much of the 1980s and 1990s. The renewed violence is having disastrous spillover effects in Turkish society, encouraged by the charged rhetoric of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), that threaten to tear the social fabric of the country apart. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Turkey Task Force warned of this possibility in itsfirst report, stating that failure to address Turkey’s remaining democratic deficits, particularly the Kurdish question, could cause Turkey to “fall victim to some of its unresolved social tensions, potentially destabilizing the country and setting back its political and economic progress as well as its aspirations for regional influence.” If allowed to continue, this could lead to the “Syrianization” of Turkey, bringing ethnic conflict once again to Europe’s doorstep.

 I hate to use the "Domino" analogy--but the old rules and new alignments do not apply as we are witness to the profound implosion of the Middle East.