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Attiya Ahmad is Georgetown University’s 2009-10 Center for International and Regional Studies Post-Doctoral Fellow. She recently completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. Dr. Ahmad’s work brings together scholarship on Islamic studies, globalization, diaspora and migration studies, economic anthropology, and political economy.
Even the most skeptical of us would have to concede that things are better now than they were a few months ago, as they hasten to add that we have been here before and that this too shall pass.
Yes, things are better: Palestinian and Israeli officials are talking, and not about the weather. Final status issues are being discussed, though they are not being resolved.
Last month, I spent seven days in an Israeli living room, sitting “shiva” with my family to mourn the loss of a relative. Hundreds of people came to visit. Hundreds of conversations unfolded on almost any topic imaginable. One of the purposes of the shiva is to distract mourners from their loss through engagement with the living in conversations on the mundane.
“In the past week Iran’s president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, has damned it as a ‘worthless piece of paper’ and China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, has moaned that it is causing his country ‘big pressure’. The dollar’s relentless decline—it hit a new low of $1.49 against the euro on November 21st—is prompting jibes from America’s critics, jangling investors’ nerves and giving policymakers headaches.”[1]
Many Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians are convinced that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intractable because neither side has abandoned the goal of defeating the other, and neither really believes in compromise. This is a myth.
An Overview of the Turkish Economy: Outlook and Current Perspectives
Turkey is at the center of an economic and political area known as “Eurasia,” where three regions of the world — Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East — intersect. Turkey’s proximity to the Balkans and the rest of Europe as well as to the growing emerging markets in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa creates unique business opportunities. The experience of numerous global firms confirms Turkey as a predominant investment location and export platform.
