Ina Merdjanova

"Swords into plowshares!" Religion & politics in Southeast Europe & Turkey. Books on nationalism, peacebuilding, Balkan Muslims, women in Orthodox Christianity.

[Aliza Marcus @AlizaMarcus]

Out now: My new book on the PKK & how it survived Ocalan’s capture, won & lost armed control of the Kurdish regions of Turkey & Syria, & is now testing peace talks with Ankara. Based on firsthand interviews.
Amazon: https://t.co/IVH39vbaru
NYU Press: https://t.co/zPLqm6xdp4

[Marysia @marysia_cc]

An Art Nouveau Icon of the the Protection of the Mother of God (Pokrov), 1911

[Almut Rochowanski @rochowanski]

"The dead Ukrainian kids, the ruined cities, the destroyed families — that’s not a price the West is paying. It’s a price Ukraine is paying so that politicians in Warsaw, Tallinn, and Brussels can feel important."

[Samantha Rose Hill @Samantharhill]

Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical citing Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism to warn AI risks producing the exact condition Arendt identified as the prerequisite for totalitarian domination by destroying people's ability to discern between fact and fiction.

[Poetic Outlaws @OutlawsPoetic]

Beauty is vanishing from our world becaue we live as though it did not matter.

-- Roger Scruton

[兔兒神 @chenchenwrites]

revisiting this Mary Oliver poem. or it’s revisiting me.

[Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem]

“who told you that this or that would last forever?”

— Stanisław Barańczak

[The Amargi @the_amargi]

#New: What does Öcalan’s “democratic integration” really mean?
Joost Jongerden writes on Öcalan’s call to move beyond armed struggle, the limits of Turkey’s “terror-free Turkey” framing, & the Kurdish search for democratic politics beyond the nation-state.
https://t.co/x7TWuPpudb

[Philosophy Quotes @philosophors]

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

— Haruki Murakami

[Philosophy Quotes @philosophors]

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Peace begins in the human heart, passes through relationships, takes root in neighborhoods and peripheries, and expands until it embraces the entire city and the world. Peace is built by promoting a culture that rejects violence, through daily gestures, education, and practical acts of justice. #PastoralVisit #Naples

[Philosophy Quotes @philosophors]

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

— Jane Austen

[Taj Ali @Taj_Ali1]

“We need to create sober, patient people, who do not despair in the face of the worst horror and who do not get excited about every little thing. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

- Antonio Gramsci

[Ina Merdjanova @InaMerdjanova]

Happy to share my article on Islam in Southeast Europe, just published in Spanish in AFKAR-IDEAS: https://t.co/BKyuuFtEwf

[Reuters @Reuters]

Pope Leo says those who wage war are thieves stealing away our peaceful future https://t.co/sJQoPG8bAI https://t.co/sJQoPG8bAI

[David Adler @davidrkadler]

Does no one else see in these videos the most terrifying premonition for all of human civilization?

[Loren Balhorn @fraubalhorn]

37% of Bulgarians live below the poverty line, one of the fastest-shrinking populations on Earth, but yeah thank god some technocrats got rid of the passport controls on the Romanian border!

[Almut Rochowanski @rochowanski]

.@venzie_m and I wrote about the elections in #Bulgaria and how outsiders need to stop projecting their geopolitical and culture war obsessions onto other people's democracy. It makes them look stupid, and it insults Bulgarians' dignity and intelligence. https://t.co/fdKrbfb2Qg

[Bethlehem Tekola @Bethlehemtekola]

Rejecting the use of GenAI for qualitative research on the grounds of ethical concerns/social and environmental justice (not just methodological concerns) is valid and important.

That is why I like this letter written by qualitative researchers from 32 countries: