Turkey Coup Reflection

Throughout the past couple months, Turkey has experienced a lot of changes in its post-coup times. The coup created quite a bit of tension within the country because President Erdogan went towards a much more totalitarian government afterwards. In the first post, we discussed the issue of the Turkish coup, its background, and its implications for the future. Then we discussed the issues that arose in the form of the detainment of 38,000 teachers and other nonviolent people. This led us to question to future of Turkey’s role in Global Politics as a newly more progressive nation, and where the government may be going with the new attitude of Erdogan and his supporters. Finally, we looked at the History of Kurdish/ Turkish relations which plays a large role in the politics of the whole nation and the coup as well. This long-lasting conflict is also effecting relations in Syria and Iraq as well, and connects well to all aspects of Global Politics.

Throughout the blog writing process, the sources I predominantly used were websites, including Aljazeera, BBC, and CNN. I also looked at more localized news outlets within Turkey and the Middle East. Through this process I hoped to gain a wide lens of the events to truly get the most accurate depiction of the issues we chose to focus on. Through searching for news outlets in the Middle East, I was able to see another form of media other than the mass media platforms that rule the United States news, and compare the two narratives being told.  

Throughout this project I have learned a lot about long term organization and group work as well as how to work with a group without meeting in person for all aspects of the project. I also learned a great deal about news sources and how to research for topics on a variety of different platforms to formulate the best version of the truth I can find. In addition, I had the opportunity to learn the history of a country whose importance in Global Politics is often overlooked in basic World History classes.

Reflection: EU Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

       During the course of this semester, my group and I researched the European Union’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis unfolding in Europe. First, we looked into what caused the exodus from Syria and how the EU began responding to the international crisis. Later, we geared our research toward the economic impact the refugee crisis has had, and continues to have, on the European Union. Finally, we explored and analyzed the social impacts of the crisis in the EU. Through all of this, we found the situation to be very complex; mainly due to the politics that influence policy surrounding the issue. 

The research for each post was divided by general subjects among each group member. Once each person had a general subject, they would conduct the research relevant to that subject and then finish with a refined analysis of what was once a broad topic. This allowed for the group to have a wealth of knowledge in multiple areas within a specific topic or subject. Working as a group helped reduce the burden of one or two people having to conduct all the research and determining what was relevant. Dividing the task of researching also helped foster unique ideas and views within the group as well. 

Most importantly, the group gained a vast amount of knowledge regarding the Syrian refugee crisis and the many issues surrounding it. We learned the humanitarian aid response by the EU is not as simple a task as some would like it to be. Although many European citizens want the government to help the Syrian refugees in anyway possible, financial and political barriers stand in the way. Clashes between differing social views and ideologies from the EU citizenry have also contributed to the slowing of distribution of further aid from EU officials and government organizations to the refugees. However, some EU countries, such as Germany, have began integrating the refugees into their society and have seen positive results for the most part. I will continue to be aware of the crisis in Europe . I hope that government officials in the EU will begin to tackle the crisis in a more productive manner to ensure the quick and successful integration of refugees into EU society. 

#SyrianRefugeeCrisis #EuropeanUnion #GermanResponse #EU #Syria

France Final Blog Post

What We Covered

We throughout our blog posts have researched what ISIS is as a terrorist organization, why they have remained hostile towards France specifically, and why we should care learning about this information. We explored why France has been the target for many of these terrorist attacks and looked into the long strained relations between French government and their Muslim communities. The government in France has long clashed with Muslim citizens because of religious and political ideologies that do not necessarily work together. Because of this Muslims have been discriminated against for generations before ISIS. We also looked on how the violent acts in France have had an effect on the country. Anti-Muslim legislation has been passed to oppress religious freedom, Muslim civilians have been experiencing discrimination much more often after the attacks, and finally, there has been harsher restrictions regarding immigration where French political candidates have built large anti-immigration platform.

How I Researched

Specifically with the posts I did a simple internet search and looked through many news sources that I found to be credible. I found much of my information from CNN, LA Times, and other popular journalistic websites. It was relatively easy to find certain information, like details about specific terrorist attacks because it is a common focus of interest for many people. Many news sources have a specific bias and that is fairly obvious in websites like CNN. They tend to look at both sides of the incident and sympathize with the Muslim community. What was more difficult was finding an easy to understand version of the history between Muslims and France. This issue is very complex and the information behind it was sometimes hard to understand because of the many layers to the story regarding colonialism. Working as a group has made me become more accountable for my actions because I realized I am responsible for not only my grade but the group aspect of the project that needed my participation to work. It was helpful to get other’s insight and background information for this project and I liked working together on certain parts that seemed to just came together to flow into one specific blog post.

Reflection

With this project, I have become more aware of reasons behind ISIS’s emergence and their acts of terror. This has allowed me to look at both sides of each incident and analyze why radical groups like ISIS attack. Between France and their Muslim communities the tension has been coming to a breaking point for many years. This has helped me understand more of the context of what is happening in France and the effects it has on French people. I have learned a lot about group work from this project and specifically I have learned about being responsible for my part of research/writing/posting. When one person does not do their work it can decrease the whole group's productivity and I have tried to remain consistent and responsible for my share of the blog posts. I have learned how important communication is between group members. Good and open communication can make working together as a group easier and more efficient. From this project, I have discovered aspects about how to work together with others and how to take initiative in certain situations. I wish I had been more consistent in starting my research ahead of time and making sure each blog post was easy to understand and flowed together as one. Overall, I am happy with the work I put into this project and hope to do similar research in the future.

Refugee Origins, Reflection

Throughout this semester, I deepened my knowledge in today's global refugee crisis. Headlines on our daily newsletters reflect the devastation that has occurred globally but rarely give the reader the impression on exactly how widespread the crisis is. Our group attempted to clarify this through focusing regionally and thematically on the causes of today's migration. From the devastating Syrian conflict to the hopelessness of central and northern Africa, we discussed the diversity of Middle Eastern refugees--namely Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Lebanese refugees, and African refugees--from Eritrea's famine to Nigeria's reigning Boko Haram.
Organizing our research to fulfill our posts required communication. We began by splitting our posts into regions, and designating a leader for each post. As an African studies minor,  my knowledge was most utilized in our post on the African migration, and its causes. In a way, this post forced me to further my own knowledge in order to make sure that we were telling as whole a story as possible, representing as many conflicts and causes as possible without overgeneralizing.
Despite the hectic moments during this project, I enjoyed working with my group and diving into a topic that is so clearly going to define much of the near future in our world. Not only does this topic matter but it is worsening day by day and without people, like my group members, to learn and teach more, its a dim future for all migrants seeking asylum.

Refugee Crisis Origins Reflection

During the course of the semester my group and I reported on the refugee crisis' origins. On our first blog post we decided to focus on the refugee crisis in North Africa and the Middle East's. The refugees in the Middle East are mainly coming from Syria but some are also fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo. Peaceful protests in Syria became a bloodshed due to conflict between the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian government. Citizens of Nigeria flee because of oppression implemented by Boko Haram. These displaced individuals seek asylum in neighboring countries but have also gone out of their way and made journey towards European countries as well as North American countries. On our second post we narrowed our focus to North African countries more closely. We focused our research on Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. South Sudan gained its' independence from Sudan in 2011 but began having problems within their new found freedom. Book Haram, in turn, has caused thousands of Nigerians to flee. The group kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. Even though the Nigerian government declared a state of emergency little has been done to stop the militant group. Somalia's displaced people are due to the state of violent civil war they are in. On our third and final post we decided to narrow our focus to Syrian refugees and describe the origins of the civil war and go further in depth on ISIS. We explained what ISIS is and how they came to be. We went in depth on the origins of the Syrian cilivl war. 

As a group we created a google document and posted a few links at the beginning of the semester that could be used for research. Those links were very handy to me because I wanted to have the most accurate information and the website was reliable since the one I used most was linked to the UN. Other than those shared sources, I looked up reliable articles to find more accurate information on the topic I was writing about at the time. Working as a group was just another added pressure for me since I did not want to affect my group's grade if my research was not well done. All my research was based on reliable resources and I informed myself well before writing anything. 

This blog assignment was a rollercoaster for me. It being my first group assignment in college. It taught me how to rely on a group of people and collaborate to compose a well written monthly assignment. I had a general idea about the refugee crisis when I first started working on this assignment but now after endless research and group discussions and unanswered questions being completely answered I feel proficient on this topic. I'm glad I was able to work on this topic particularly because I thought I knew what was going on before but by being involved in this project I became aware that I knew absolutely nothing about the crisis. Doing this project during the course of the semester really helped me judge my research in this class and on other classes by classifying good resources and not so good resources. 

France Blog Reflection

Since the beginning of the semester our group has focused on the terror attacks in France by the group ISIS. These have taken place with increased frequency over the past few years and sadly have been some of the deadliest in recent history. In the first blog post our group decided to cover a basic overview about the history of ISIS as a terrorist group. This included its formation in Iraq and Syria and its raising growth and popularity over the years. We also explained some of the reasons for ISIS attacks and why France in particularly is targeted as opposed to other European countries or even the US. The second blog post was more about the reasons for strained relations between France and the Middle East. This included France’s colonial development and the assimilation process which France was a big supporter of during that period, as well as the justifications that groups like ISIS use when carrying out terrorist attacks. Finally the last blog post was about the repercussions and aftereffects that are being seen in France’s society as well as attitude towards the Middle East in general. These included the policies of secularism being pointed more towards the Muslim faith, people of Middle Eastern decent and immigration policies. These were discussed in conjunction with the rising tensions and Islamaphobia that is spreading widely across the West. 

The research that went into the group was done mainly through the internet and the resources of the library on campus. The way in which research was done was that each post the group would be split individually, unless a large topic was being discussed. Each of us would then research the topic thoroughly and make notes on important dates or anything we though would be found interesting. After a couple of days we would then meet as a group and discuss what we had found. We then would write it together by combining notes and then switch papers and decide if something should be edited and consult the group. In my opinion this was a good system and it seemed to work for us whenever we needed to get things done. It was good to do these in groups as well as it enabled us to get a variety of sources from across the internet and also provide several of our opinions into one post. 

Finally the amount of information that I learned about the terrorists attacks was immense. On the surface these just seemed to be random acts of violence between one ideology against another however, when looking deeper there was a large amount of details about how and why these attacks occurred. It was also very good to learn about events that are taking place on another continent and explore more into what the local impact is having rather then just focusing on the United States. To me while working as a group was advantageous most of the time it was also difficult to organize when everybody was free to be together due to scheduling differences. There was also the issue of not always knowing what others were doing or ways in which they thought but overall these were more or less solved by the end. 

Reflection on the Origins of the Refugee “Crisis”

Over the course of the semester, our group has focused on the refugee “crisis”  emerging from Northern Africa and the Middle East. More specifically, we centered on the nations of South Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia, and Syria. Beginning with defining what a crisis actually is, our group outlined the basis of what we would discuss throughout the semester - factors leading to the migration of millions of people out of MENA and into Europe. In Northern Africa, we discussed factors of differing ethnic groups in a single nation, dictators, terrorist organizations, human trafficking, weakened governments, and civil wars as causes of migration. Climate change, terrorism, and civil war were components we examined as the cause of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.

Before we even began writing our first blog post, our group met in the library to decide how we would structure the three posts of the semester. We divided it up into the preliminary post to present what we were planning on discussing throughout the semester, a second focusing on Africa (we hadn’t quite decided which nations we would center in on at the time), and lastly, a Middle East refugee crisis post (we originally planned on exploring Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq - we ended up only doing Syria). From there, we divided up who would do what part of each post and we each did our own research. We did not designate one or two people to be researchers, another to be the writer, and another to be the editor/publisher, we each did our own research and wrote our own sections and put them together in a single document. I preferred doing my own research as opposed to doing the research for the entire group or having someone doing research for me because I was able to formulate what I wanted to write as I was gathering sources.

In the end, I learned a great deal from contributing to these blog posts. I learned not only about the Syrian Refugee Crisis more in depth, I became more aware of a refugee crisis in Africa. I discovered the role that climate change played in adding stress to an already tumultuous political climate in Syria, catalyzing a series of events that led to the Syrian Civil War and increased refugee migration from the area. Had I written the blog on my own, I most likely would have focused in on the refugee situation in the Middle East without giving much regard to Africa. Research, I’ve discovered, is difficult because you need to vet out unreliable sources to find ones that dependable material that also helped further the points we were trying to make in the blog posts. Over the course of the semester, I found that I prefer to do assignments on my own. My group and I were able to collaborate well, but I am the type of person who doesn’t enjoy doing group projects. Ultimately, I enjoyed this assignment. I was able to not only learn more about the topic our group focused on, but the subjects that other groups focused on as well.