Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke recently on the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.

“Enough is enough. The longer the Palestinian-Israeli issue remained unresolved, the greater the price peoples of the region, including Turkey, pay. Israelis should decide on what they want." [...] Turkey had made sincere efforts together with Egypt to facilitate a national reconciliation in Palestine between Hamas and Al Fatah, Davutoğlu said, adding that the agreement between the two Palestinian groups needed to be supported.

Turkey has been engaging and sponsoring Hamas repeatedly - even while both the US and the EU recognize Hamas as a terrorist group. Nonetheless, Turkey´s ties with Hamas are getting warmer and warmer.

Turkey should not be considered a model for a democratic Muslim country – as it is commonly referred to in the speeches of politicians and wishful-thinking apologists. Nevertheless, the Islamist tendencies do not form a consistent picture – precisely because Turkey is a modern nation-state with all its economic and political implications. AKP Turkey is merely an experiment to reinvent an Islamic pattern compatible with the country's ambitions for itself in dealing with the world.

This political Islamist ambition to reshape the region is dangerous. Erdogan wants to appear as the strongman in the region, so he uses anti-Israel and anti-Western rhetoric, appealing to the Arab masses. Daniel Pipes thinks Turkey has become “along with Iran, the most dangerous state of the region”. Pipes has a good record of predictions coming true.

Turkey´s problem is a lack of democracy. The symptoms are declining press freedom and the increasing megalomania of the political leadership, not its ideological Islamist labeling per se. The Islamist, Turkish-backed Mavi Marmara boat in the Gaza Flotilla and growing anti-Israel incitement along with dangerous military rhetoric appear to be looked on internally as a bold adventure. Erdogans megalomania is like playing with fire.

Kefaya Punk is a 23-year-old pseudonymous blogger and activist in Egypt. Punk graduated in summer of 2008 in Mass media and communication – Radio & TV major at a private university. He blogs about linguistics and politics and his facebook campaings and dissident opinions online made him a target of censors several times. He is helping build an NGO dealing with issues like diversity, accepting difference and tolerance.

In this interview, Punk tells The Propagandist's Contributing Writer Niklas Anzinger about his political activism and has news about his close friend Maikel Nabil Sanad,  who was arrested by Egyptian military police. (Read our interview with Maikel Nabil Sanad).

Your political activism touches on secularism, democracy, religion and especially about Israel. I noted you take also pro-Israel stances similar to Maikel. What does it mean to take that stance in daily life and given the political circumstances?

Secularism is the only alternative to religiously-shaped civil wars and inequality. Secular statehood is the only guarantee for citizens to be treated equally no matter what their religious beliefs are.

Democracy is significant in ensuring that the authority of the state and politicians won’t corrupt them as well as giving opportunities to serve the good of society.

The Propagandist Magazine Editor Jonathon Narvey calls Osama bin Ladens death is "a major victory for the struggle against the global jihad movement.” Indeed, it is an important measure of counterterrorist strategy to kill the eminent ideological figures. That said, we should not overestimate the operational role of terrorist leaders.

Al-Qaida can be translated as “operational basis” or “foundation”. It also translates as “guideline” or “method”. The organization has very much changed since 9/11 from a monolithic terrorist organization with an identifiable leadership and chain of command into an amorphous “franchise company” (h/t Bruce Hoffmann) of ideologically determined partly autonomous cells.

The news hit me like a hammer: Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested in his home in the Ain Shams neighbourhood if Cairo at about 10pm on 28 March 2011 by military police.

Readers of "The Propagandist" may remember the interview I conducted with Maikel. Ever since then we kept in contact and discussed the Egyptian uprisings.

I was very skeptical of the Islamist character of the revolution. I'd read Barry Rubin and his warning about the strenght and the sharpness of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Maikel just responded "Let Muhammed Badi (The Muslim Brotherhood's leader) die. No one listens to him."

The revolution was his. He was politically active since 2004, aiming to change the status quo in a autocratic police state. His genuine optimism to obtain a liberal democracy and to take the Egyptian people with him sounded naive to me at first. But there was one part of the interview I thought a long time about. He said "revolutions change the beliefs of the people."

"What if he is right?" I thought.

The leaders of political Islamist movements in Egypt and Turkey like to associate themselves with the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP).  Erdogans Islamist party is seen (by outsiders, at least) as a model for democratic Muslim statehood.

However, Turkish reality seems to shatter the dream of supposedly democratic Islamists. The political Islamists seem to have a problem with secularism, independent judiciary and free press.

Ahu Ozyurt writes in the Huffington Post:

One of Turkey's most prominent opposition news websites, ODATV.com, and the homes of its editors were raided by the Turkish police. The site's founder, Soner Yalcin, a columnist for the popular Turkish daily Hurriyet, was detained along with other editors for allegedly having links with an 'underground terrorist organization.' 

The existence of a supposedly conspirational terrorist gang, "Ergenekon“, is not yet proven.

Are we seeing the genesis of a multi-partisan pro-Western political scene in Germany? Contributing Writers Niklas Anzinger and Daniel Fallenstein examine the implications of this promising development.

Writing for The New Republic, Jeffrey Herf recognized the emergence of a mix of conservatives, liberals and leftists with a common vision of indivisible universal human rights in Germany. The demarcation lines are often blurred. Where do they come from and what unites them?

Some of them are genuine libertarians. Some emerged from the anti-fascist Left and radical criticism of regressive tendencies in Leftist mainstream.

The Frankfurt School scholars recognized regressive tendencies in the German Left that are stuck in traditional Marxist thinking. Jean Amery, a Jewish-Austrian intellectual and radical Leftist noticed the German Left´s hostility towards Israel in the aftermath of the Six-Day-War 1967. At that time, German Leftist terrorists seperated Jewish and non-Jewish passengers in the Entebbe hostage taking in 1976.

A Turkish court filed arrest warrants against 162 former and current officers last Friday. The officers are are accused of having participated in a conspiracy against the Turkish government in 2003, formerly known as “Operation Sledgehammer”.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long been working on removing the army´s secular forces in order to replace them with pro-AKP officers. This seems to be part of that effort. The charges against the players in "Operation Sledgehammer" may be trumped up.

In September 2010, the Turkish government, led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), won a national plebiscite on constitutional amendments. It was designed to remove obstacles to consolidating power.

The military and the independent judiciary used to be secular stumbling blocks against Islamist ambitions. But now it seems Turkey's democracy is failing in this objective.

Niklas Anzinger is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

Maradona By Kusturica is a documentary about Argentinean soccer star Diego Maradona, regarded by many as the world's greatest modern player. It's also an homage to socialism and anti-imperialism.

Diego Armando Maradona on the soccer field was an exeptional phenomenon. His outrageous ball technique made him one of the best soccer players in history. Under his team leadership the Argentinians won the World Soccer Championship 1986 in Mexico, thanks to his infamous “hand of God” goal against England in the quarter final.

Maradona off the soccer field made headlines with excessive cocaine parties, alcoholism and his anti-imperialist agenda. This made him kind of a mascot for the protagonists of “socialism of the 21st century” presenting himself side by side with Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and later Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica´s uncritical eye makes this film a glorification of a man who wasn´t made for the world off the soccer field. Kusturica allows Maradona to present himself as the hero he never was. Maradona beat his wife and cheated on her several times. Yet, in this movie he is shown as a revolutionary rebel fighter against the bad imperialists.

Kusturica said about his movie it was “more than my political orientation. It is the common perspective of all Third-World countries”.

Niklas Anzinger is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

US Navy-fighter pilot Dieter Dengler is stationed at the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War 1965. In a top-secret mission with his squadron over Laos he gets hit during the maneuver and falls into the jungle, where he soon finds himself in the hands of the Vietcong.

The story in “Rescue Dawn” is as close as possible to the story of the real Dengler. The hero's ensuing struggle to escape symbolizes a larger fight for freedom. He refuses to sign an anti-US propaganda paper of the North Vietnamese bureau (which would have been worthless in any case). He shouts at the North Vietnamese officer that America made it possible to fulfill his dreams. He would never sign a paper blaming America. It's clear that nothing can stop this character's determination to escape.

Director Werner Herzog is himself an adventurer. In his biography and in the story of the making of his famous movie “Aguirre: The Wrath Of God” and “Fitzcarraldo”, you enter the mind of a man who is willing to die for his art and his profession. In his films, his inner self and his protagonists characters he is interested in are closely related.

Watch the movie and enjoy the journey of a man who wants to be free, fighting brutal repression and the merciless forces of nature far from civilization.

Niklas Anzinger is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist