Hugh Pope

Author, Reporter, Editor

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about

Writer of books on Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia. Formerly Director of Communications & Outreach and Turkey/Cyprus Project Director for International Crisis Group. Ex-Turkey & Middle East staff correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

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  • With the Yezidis during the 2003 Iraq war

    Originally posted on From the archive: Chapter 17 THE YEZIDI HERESY An Alternative Approach to Military Liberation – We rejoiced at the rising Nile, then it drowned us. — EGYPTIAN PROVERB – Hugh Pope and Sagvan Murad in front of Yezidi shrine Sheikh Adi. Lalish, 2003. A good introduction is an invaluable asset. My fixer, Sagvan…

  • Tahrir, Taksim and the Ottoman Empire

    In 2011, a book review monthly sent me Michelle Campos’s Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine, asking for 5,000 words on all that it might mean. It set my head spinning, a dense, comprehensive battery of sources writing in 1908-1914, making me feel like I was in the same busy conference as…

  • Of Arab springs, Arab winters and created realities

    Some words of wisdom from a friend deep in U.S. officialdom. I had complained about the superficiality of some American approaches to the Arab revolts in the Mideast (continuing a theme of Dining with al-Qaeda), thus: [There is] unjustified hoopla about the dynamics of the Arab spring … and then, when it turns out that…