Review Bahan: Hamas (Pejuang Kota Suci Baitulmuqaddis)

Assalamualaikum,

untuk posting ini dan posting2 seterusnya, insyaallah sy berniat utk buat catatan utk buku-buku yang sy baca. Satu posting, satu buku. Jadi posting akan sentiasa di review semula untuk sambung2 chapter dalam buku tersebut sehinggalah sy menghabiskan pembacaan. maklumlah tanggungjawab kepada perkara lain juga perlu :)

Jadi, this posting, kita start on buku Hamas: Pejuang Kota Suci Baitulmuqaddis oleh Maszlee Malik.

Insyaallah

Turkey's neo-Ottomanism

I read this article for one of my uni subjects. The question was put to be considered by readers is whether ‘warnings about Turkey’s neo-Ottomanism are more sensational than factual’? Giving the facts, evidences and some knowledge about the Islamic history in Turkey, i guess this article really caught my attention haha.

Mustafa Akyol, ‘Turkey's Maturing Foreign Policy: How the Arab Spring Changed the AKP’, Foreign Affairs, 7 July 2011.

On June 12, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most popular Turkish prime minister of the last half century, marked his third straight electoral win by averring his leadership over not only Turkey but the entire region. “Believe me,” he said in a victory speech, “Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul; Beirut won as much as Izmir; Damascus won as much as Ankara; Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.” The speech reaffirmed the foreign policy that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has pursued since it came to power in 2002. As the AKP’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, puts it, Turkey’s goal has been to have “zero problems” with its neighbors. And over the past decade, Davutoğlu has dramatically improved Ankara’s relationships with capitals across the region through constant diplomatic engagement, fostering mutual trade, and opening national borders.

Some in the West have seen Turkey’s new foreign policy as a shift Eastward. Indeed, Turkey has drawn closer to authoritarian governments in Iran and Syria. And Erdogan and his team’s Muslim identity have influenced some of their foreign policy rhetoric, such as their strong stance in support of Palestine. Accordingly, some, including the British historian Niall Ferguson, even suggest that Turkey might be heading toward “a revived Ottoman Empire” that would dominate the whole Middle East.

But warnings about Turkey’s neo-Ottomanism are more sensational than factual, and miss a broader point. Like any major power, Turkey bases its foreign policy on calculations of hard national interests, and coats it in value-laden rhetoric that reflects popular sentiments. Moreover, even as the AKP has supported friendly autocrats, it has positioned itself as a model democracy for the rest of the Muslim world. At a May 2003 summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tehran, Abdullah Gül, who was then Turkey’s foreign minister and is now its president, argued for “a vision of accountability, transparency, fundamental rights and freedoms, and gender equality.” And in 2006, in remarks before a meeting of AKP members in support of President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda, he said, “Had there not been freedom and democracy in Turkey, we would not be in power right now.”

The popular protests that swept the Middle East this spring put the dual nature of the AKP’s foreign policy to the test. At times, especially in the case of Libya, Turkey’s reaction to events seemed haphazard. According to Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Erdogan and his team looked like “stumbling politicians afraid of a new regional order.” But a closer look at events reveals that Turkish foreign policy was actually the result of careful balancing between hard policy and values. In fact, as Ibrahim Kalin, the chief policy adviser to Erdogan, argued recently, the Arab Spring might have “vindicate[d] the new strategic thrust of Turkish foreign policy.”

The United States’ foreign policy conundrum -- how to maintain the tricky balance between national interests and idealism -- is not unique. Other countries looking to lead on the world stage will have to find that balance, too.
The first two stages of the Arab Spring -- Tunisia and Egypt -- were fairly unproblematic for Turkey’s foreign policy. Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had been dictatorial but fiercely secularist and, like the AKP’s opponents in Turkey, had banned headscarves and suppressed religious movements. AKP party leaders found it easy to publicly sympathize with the protesters who took to Tunisia’s streets in December. Pro-AKP media in Turkey even drew parallels between the protests and the AKP’s own fight against what they see as Turkey’s excessively secularist Kemalist order.

Similarly, the AKP viewed President Hosni Mubarak’s February 11 ouster from Egypt as a welcome development. Mubarak had also been a secular dictator, suppressing Islamic parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, his regime resented Turkey’s rising regional influence, which seemed to have sidelined Egypt’s role in negotiating Israeli-Palestinian peace. No wonder that when thousands gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Erdogan publicly lauded their efforts and called on Mubarak to “listen to the wishes of the people.” In the same speech, Erdogan reminded Mubarak that every Muslim would go to the grave “as neither a president nor a prime minister” but as a humble man or woman who would be measured only by his deeds.

It was not as easy, however, for the AKP to condemn Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi; Libya has been one of Turkey’s major economic partners, and Turkish businesses have invested billions of dollars there in the past few decades. Hence, when the anti-government riots started in Benghazi in February, some 25,000 Turks were living in Libya. The AKP focused on evacuating these people first, and refused to speak out against Qaddafi, since, in the words of one Turkish diplomat, any condemnation of the regime could “put our citizens at risk.” Still, even after most Turkish citizens in Libya had returned home, Ankara remained unwilling to denounce Qaddafi. Davutoğlu explained that he wanted to “be able to speak with both sides of the conflict” so he could find a mutually agreeable settlement. Surely, he also wanted to protect Turkey’s vast economic interests in the region.

When Ankara proved reluctant to back the ongoing NATO operation to support the Libyan rebels, many were quick to criticize the AKP for backing away from its values -- including Libya’s provisional government in Benghazi, protestors across the Middle East, and politicians in the West. The opprobrium changed the AKP’s calculations. “Zero problems” foreign policy has always required the AKP to be in good standing among Middle Eastern leaders. But the empowerment of the region’s people meant that the AKP could no longer rely on its standing among government officials alone. So in May, Erdogan, who had shifted gradually from criticizing the NATO operation to backing it, finally called on Qaddafi to step down, and welcomed the head of the Libyan opposition, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, to Ankara later that month. During the meeting, Abdul-Jalil noted that Turkey’s support for the rebels proved that NATO’s military “action is not a (medieval) crusade, as alleged by Moammar Qaddafi.” And when Davutoğlu visited Benghazi in early July, he was welcomed by anti-Qaddafi masses, who cheered, “Thank you, Turkey.”

The AKP applied what it learned in Libya to Syria, as that country, too, was engulfed in protests. Before the AKP came to power, the relationship between Syria and Turkey had been cold. Syria was a longtime supporter of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist group and one of Turkey’s biggest headaches; Syria had hoped to use the PKK as a bargain chip in order to win access to more resources and water. But once Davutoğlu was in power his zero-problems policy paid off: one by one, the two countries resolved many of the biggest problems between them, including their border disputes and Syria’s support for PKK terrorism. In 2008, Ankara even came close to brokering a peace agreement between Syria and Israel, which was halted by Israel’s December 2008 operation in Gaza.

When the Syrian regime began cracking down on popular protests, Ankara tried to use its leverage in Damascus to convince the regime to reform. But Erdogan’s rhetoric grew harsher as it became clearer that Assad would not reform. Still, in early June, when Turkey criticized Assad for his “barbarism” against the protesters, Assad, and his backers in Tehran, felt betrayed. Meanwhile, Turkey welcomed the thousands of Syrian refugees who fled Assad’s violence, housing them in camps on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border.

All this underlines an increasingly people-focused tone in Ankara’s policy toward the Middle East. As Ersat Hurmuzlu, an adviser to President Gül, put it in a June interview with Turkey’s Star, a daily newspaper, “Turkey is with the people, not the regimes.” In a conference of Turkey’s regional and Western ambassadors, Davutoğlu called the Arab Spring “a late normalization process,” citing Turkey as “a source of inspiration” for the region.

Davutoğlu’s characterization might not be too far-fetched. Indeed, the AKP’s Turkey is not just an economic success. It also shows a third way between the two extremes that have haunted the modern Middle East -- secular authoritarianism and Islamist authoritarianism. Having thrown off secular authoritarianism, Turkey’s new system, which incorporates both secular democracy and Islamic values, offers an attractive model. It was not an accident, for example, that both of the mainstream Islamic parties in Tunisia and Egypt -- the NAHDA and the Muslim Brotherhood -- announced that they would use the AKP as their example and run in elections, rather than striving for complete control.

To be a truly admirable model, of course, Erdogan still has some work to do. The AKP’s success story is incomplete because of Turkey’s own conflict with Kurdish nationalists and the AKP’s waning incentive for political reform after nearly a decade firmly in power. In the coming years, the AKP will have to heed popular calls to draft a new liberal constitution and build the political consensus to ratify it, which will necessitate reconciliation between Turkey’s conservatives and secularists, and Turks and Kurds. If Erdogan can accomplish that grand consensus, he might really turn Turkey into a beacon of democracy for all other Muslim nations.

Meanwhile, the Arab Spring seems to have been a learning experience for Ankara. It also showed that the United State's foreign policy conundrum -- how to maintain the tricky balance between national interests and idealism -- is not unique. Other countries looking to lead on the world stage will have to find that balance, too. It isn’t far fetched to believe that, soon, Turkey’s policymakers and think tanks will be discussing some of the same questions as the American ones, namely how to support democracy in the Middle East, where autocrats have been so politically, and economically, useful.

Israeli-Palestine Issue - in brief

I have been searching for videos that could briefly explained what was and is happening in the most geopolitically unstable region of the world, the Israeli-Palestinian part of the world. I like the Jewish attitude more, they are "never to forgive, never to forget" So many dead, so much destruction have happened. Know the history, understand the pain, then you will realise that this is your problem too.
Norman Finkelstein, he is a Jewish from America yet he takes his side to support the rights of the Palestinians. He fights for their rights and often lead his way by asking a reasonable and sensible question which is "if we accept the legitimacy of the Israeli state, why dont we accord to the same standard that we put to that to accept the legitimacy of the Palestinians' rights/state?"

So pleaseee watch his videos. Quite long but they are very interesting. I could type out his points but i'm a big fan of great speakers. I love to hear his speech. Try to listen to some other videos, they are great! :)

Only For "Dreamers whose Aspirations are discouraged by Reality."

IF FROM THE TITLE YOU THINK THIS IS A CHILDISH WHINING, YOU CAN CHOOSE NOT TO READ. THANK YOU.

If you happen to have this instinct, you will realize that nobody can fake in front of you and you can see through things that not everyone can see.

The good about it is you always have ideas that not everyone can conceive, which is of great help to realize your dreams. Creativity is your greatest asset, if there is someone out there who question you, and laugh at you because of your dreams, do not get disheartened. Be confident. Follow your own way.

However, bear in mind that you will not be always at the advantaged position, because unethical opportunists stand in your way. Do learn to deal with this type of people. It's not wrong to take necessary precautions against such people, but with one rule: As long as no harm is caused to anybody.

And if you happen to be seen as a nobody although you know you are somebody, do not feel discouraged. You are not seen as somebody because you are humble and do not like to show off. Remember, it is not wrong to speak up and show your skill as long as you do not belittle others. And beware of people who do that because if you do not, you will find yourself being unfairly portrayed.

Sometimes people may find you weird or strange. Let me tell you this. You are not weird. People find you weird because they simply do not understand you. It's not their fault for not being able to understand you. And it's not your fault either. You are just not ordinary.




This note was actually wrote by Ong Wei Jie, a friend of mine. He will always be my english tutor, like forever!
Wei Jie, i love all your words!!! must confess this =)

A lil' consideration makes a difference

Currently i'm reading a motivational book called Life is an Open Secret by Zabrina A. Bakar. Its more to learning good values and the way we should lead our life in Islam. It covers not only from Islamic perspectives represented by Islamic scholars, but with many opinions from other religions.

Let me share one poem written by a lil' girl in the Recipe of Life,

Fold two hands together, and express a dash of sorrow
Marinate it overnight, and work on it tomorrow
Chop one grudge in tiny pieces, add several cups of love
Dredge with a large sized milk, mix with the ingredients above.

Dissolve the hate within you, by doing a good deed
Cut it and help your friend, if he/she should be in need
Stir in laughter, love and kindness, from the heart it has to come
Toss with genuine forgiveness, and give your friends some!
The amount of people served, will depend on you
It can serve the whole world, if you really want it to!


It is a beautiful poem and seriously i cant create such a good poem myself.

well this sort of what i want to write for today

see ya later
bye =)

I'm in malaysia by the way!

A comment do make a difference.

I read this comment from Chedet posted by Mapax..
its a good comment.. it's simple but strong
it went like this

"Dear Tun,
1. When I was little, I used to make mistakes all the time, and my mother would give me a lecture. I would point out that someone else made the same mistake, and my mother would say this:
"I'm scolding you because you are my son, not them!"
2. In this case, the sad thing about it is that instead of trying to correct and learn from our mistakes, we justify ourselves by pointing out the mistake of others!
3. How are we to improve if we keep on doing this? Mistakes are acceptable as long as we learn from it! That is the natural process of acquiring knowledge and growing up.
4. I am sure a good number of people do not care about how contracts are given. The only reason that is an issue is because we have bridges on the verge of falling down!
5. And don’t take this the wrong way, the only reason for posting this is because I am a Malaysian, not an American or a Britain."

Are not you feel anything? ;)

Bye

Democracy: what is it ? where does it start?

The idea of democracy is said has started during the Greeks in the six century BC. It derives from 2 base Greek words which are 'demo' means the people and 'kratein' means rule by the people. So just looking briefly to the meaning, i believe that all of us should have sort of understanding of what it could mean.

The Greek ruled their territories under the system of democracy. dividing their civilizations into small city-states and all the men voted on all issues of government.
a well-known quotation that well represents democracy is 'a government of the people, by the people, for the people'

This is kind of some history lies behind the introduction of democracy.
i Would say mahathir's new post is one of the best way to explain the good and bad about democracy and of course he's referring his idea to what is currently facing by malaysia.

http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/2010/03/democracy.html

read this, i suggest to you
well maybe this is gud for you too ;)