Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Hilal Elver

Hilal Elver is a visiting professor of global and international studies at the University of California – Santa Barbara and an editor of the Middle East Report.

MER Article

Suffering from Hunger in a World of Plenty

The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food surveys the catastrophic state of hunger and malnutrition and their man-made causes—war and conflict, climate change, massive displacement and global economic inequality. The paradox of this landscape of desperate need is that the world produces more t

Hilal Elver • 8 min read

MER Article

Turkey's Rivers of Dispute

In the waning years of the twentieth century, it was common to hear predictions that water would be the oil of the twenty-first. A report prepared for the center-right Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, forecast that water, not oil, would be the dominant sourc

Hilal Elver • 13 min read

Current Analysis

Lawfare and Wearfare in Turkey

With war on its eastern borders, and renewed turmoil inside them, Turkey is transfixed by something else entirely: the desire of university-age women to wear the Muslim headscarf on campus, a seemingly innocent sartorial choice that has been forbidden by the courts, off and on, since 1980. At public

Hilal Elver • 18 min read

MER Article

Reluctant Partners

Turkey passed a milestone in its long and arduous journey toward acceptance into the exclusive club of the European Union when the EU gave Turkey a date for the start of accession talks. But major obstacles remain -- chiefly resurgent anti-Muslim feeling in Europe and resurgent ethnic nationalism in

Hilal Elver • 14 min read