Worldwide Recognition

Since my blog post this week may be a little long, I thought I would do it in a few parts. First, I have some exciting news to share with everyone. I attended a conference in New York City this past weekend where I was able to meet a lot of people who work with media productions and publications. One of the people I met was a journalist in Turkey, Baris Mumyakmaz, who works for Bianet magazine, which focuses on human rights. I shared the information about our blog, and was able to get a few ideas about potential new posts, formatting, and tagging. I also think it is a tremendous accomplishment that our student-run blog in small town Elmira is now noticed by an actual news organization in a country we will be visiting!!

Also, as a side note, I have noticed from the stats about the site that we have been picking up a lot of views around the world as well. Germany, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, France, Finland, Nigeria, Mexico, and Ireland are the most popular sources (outside of the US, of course). Something else I think is really exciting. 

For the current events section this week, I thought I would better clarify the three main stories that affect Turkish relations to provide a context for the news updates that I post. Greece’s current environment can basically be explained by the resulting sanctions and policies implemented by the European Union following a financial downfall as the root cause. However, Turkey has a much greater variety of issues. I will be posting more information about this soon.