The images and reports from Aleppo defy all description and beg the question how the people still stuck there can cope with the atrocities. MO* called Syrian journalist Rami Jarrah, who is in Turkey at the moment, obliged to follow the situation from there. 

Turkey redraws the geopolitical maps of the Middle East by working together with Russia and Iran, while relations with the NATO-allies are at their lowest point. What is the meaning of Turkey’s tanks and combat aircrafts in Syria? Amanda Paul, expert in Turkish, Russian and European external policies, comments.

Radicalization has become so closely tied to the use of violence against citizens, that each call to radical change sounds criminal. The American researcher and activist Lena Slachmuijlder advocates the respect extreme ideals – on the condition that they are pursued without violence.

The truck attack in Nice once again raises the question: how can people deliberately plan and execute a blood bath? There’s a system behind the madness, say MO* chief editor Gie Goris. So the answer has to be systematic as well. And better.

On May 16th, it was exactly one hundred years ago that a British and a French diplomat drew the borders of the contemporary Middle East and, in doing so, were responsible for many of the conflicts of the past century. Bruno de Cordier and Tom Kenis weigh the importance of Sykes-Picot.

It becomes clearer by the day: IS (Daesh) tries to provoke a war between ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’. And they make it a cultural war. MO* talked about cultural rights and identities in times of terrorism with Karime Bennoune, UN-Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights.

'In 2004, there was barely any debate concerning Europe, outside of the EU-bubble. Today, because of all the misery and crises, we are agitatedly shouting at each other. However, we do that as Europeans. This means a European debate is trending', Geert Mak says.

Nowadays, emergency relief is being organised much more efficiently compared to decades ago, but it is the far-reaching bureaucratisation that remains a threat to the actual needs. That’s what François Grünewald says, who will be giving a MO*lecture in Brussels the 21st of April.

In an editorial I wrote on Monday, after a week intense anti-terror activity in Brussels, I used an Uzbek proverb –‘One man builds a bridge, a thousand men cross it’- to advocate an active, two-way engagement between Brussels Muslim communities and the Belgian state.

Over a thousand people attended a lecture organized by MO* earlier this month. Gie Goris, editor-in-chief, sat down with Robert Fisk beforehand and talked about Syria, the importance of history and the numerous contradictions in the Middle East. 'Unless we see Syria as a product of its past as well as its present, we will come up with crazed ideas ...

The current capitalist system is not fueled by money and consumption, instead it is fueled by financial speculation, according to Saskia Sassen, one of the top US political scientists. The current situation leaves us with dead land, dead water, and the massive expulsion of the common man. But it also offers us plenty of opportunities to start worki ...

Three wars in six years and every time Hamas claims victory. 'But what kind of victory is this, when houses, schools and hospitals are reduced to rubble? When there are more than two thousand casualties', Montasser Alde'emeh asks. According to him, the Palestinians should opt for a radically different approach: non violent and designed to embarrass ...