During summer 2013, Turkey witnessed the most serious challenge to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decade-long rule. In Istanbul and other major cities throughout the country, demonstrators took to the streets en masse to voice a host of grievances against the prime minister and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Encompassing a broad and eclectic swath of the country’s population, the resistance gave voice to Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, feminists, members of the LGBT community, secularists, Marxists, anti-capitalist Muslims, environmentalists, university students, and everyday citizens. Although the uprisings have abated, their after-effects continue to ripple across all spheres of Turkish life to the present day...

Apart from various errors in the qurʾānic text itself, my report addresses the illuminations and ornaments used in MS 11. These elements, which coincide with those commonly used in Christianity, have prompted me to call this manuscript a ‘baptized’ one. That is, by adding these elements, the copyist may have intended to visually mark this Qurʾān as associated with Christians or Christianity somehow...

Several statements and policy decisions made by the new Trump administration after the inauguration in January 2017 have confirmed many observers’ fears that the extreme behavior, language, and proposals associated with the Trump campaign were in fact mere hints of worse to come. The now-notorious “American carnage” speech Trump delivered at his inauguration established that apocalyptic urgency and messianic deliverance would continue to be defining themes of his presidency, moderated only by the more tedious realities of governance that have inevitably interfered...