 All right. Good morning. Thank you for coming. I know it's a little bit early, but you can think of where the kids going to school even at an earlier hour, so that can be a relief if you want to find excuse for your being here this hour. Well, as I said in the previous session on Tuesday we will be meeting for several weeks for four hours a week, two plus two on Tuesdays and Fridays, so in order to be able to make up for the possible loss of classes because of my participation in some of the conferences. One that will be taking place in Cairo, specific on Middle East security issues and that will be followed by another meeting in London, right after Cairo, and I will be participating in an important program, so to speak, in Israel for about a week, where I will most possibly be meeting with statesmen, politicians, community leaders, and this is a special program arranged for a number of experts on Middle East issues. So we will be missing several hours and therefore in order to make up for this losses that will be taking place toward the end of the semester, now we are going to meet for four hours, so sort of for any convenience this may cause you, but in my absence you can take your time to read some other stuff and maybe if you are sort of waking up early on Fridays these weeks you may not have to do so. Last week I distributed syllabus, is there anybody here right now who was not in the class on Tuesday and who is now here and therefore would like to have a syllabus? Well we can get copies after the class if you like or I can pass a couple of copies for those who are not here, please take one and we had a brief introduction, by the way, which one of these, is this okay? This screen should come. Well I'm not going to go into the substance today and at least at least for this first hour because I want to make sure all of you got it right, what I expect from you in terms of all paid writing and also the simulation sessions that will be held at the end of the semester. OPED is one of your assignments and simulation will be again, will constitute part of your grade, approximately one-fourth of your grade will come from your participation and performance during the simulation in terms of teams and you will be making up teams like Iraq, Iran, Syria and US, Russia, US, etc. Countries that will be taking part in the simulation and also OPED will be making approximately one-fourth of your grade, overall grade, together with your participation, of course midterm exam and final exam, plus there is this 5.5% additional bonus if you are willing to review the chapter by Faso Saj in his book Learning with Music. Well I wonder if any one of you just for some reason had a curiosity to get to know what exactly OPED is. Did you Google what OPED means? Where does this OPED thing come from? Anybody? Well this is something a little bit debated and then there is this debate some people don't even accept that there's a debate and they say no, OPED doesn't mean opinion editorial and this abbreviation comes from according to their explanation actually something interesting opposite editorial. Opposite editorial means the page opposite to the page where there are editorials in newspapers. Well editorial is something actually these are opinion pieces of course which reflect the opinion of one or more people who work in this particular in any newspaper which could be written by one or more people and they do not necessarily carry any name at the end. I mean it is kind of anonymous. Therefore the author is not known for sure and these kind of editorials are written at times of important developments. There might be some sort of economic crisis or political debate whereby the newspaper columnist or the authors in the newspaper may individually or in group may wish to express a certain opinion in order to have an impact on the public opinion. I mean we have seen such editorials in many newspapers are brought in Turkey but OPEDs carry a name and you know who is the author unless this is a fake name and in most cases newspapers do not allow people to use fake names and they want their real names to be used and to be put at the end of the article as a signature. So the explanation as to where this OPED abbreviation the shorthand notation of this comes from you know goes back to several decades and when people really wanted to know as to where this does come from and they made a search and they figured out that at some point in 1920s someone who first of all leaves some space or left some space for this kind of opinion pieces in his newspaper as the editor of the paper and therefore that person says well when I wanted several people or certain people to have their opinions I left the page opposite the editorial page of the newspaper for this kind of pieces articles or short opinion pieces and of course the other sort of explanation is as you use opinion editorial well both make sense what matters to us actually is not where this comes from but what makes sense for us is that you should understand what exactly an OPED is and you should of course toward the end of the semester you should be able to write one because as I said this will constitute more or less one-fourth of your overall grade and this is something important yes please. Well actually what I would like you to do is at the beginning I mean when you decide on its subject on a topic I would like you to consult with me because I want OPED subjects OPED topics that you will be writing be compatible with the purpose of this course I mean we should write I mean you should be writing something which was within the confines within the sort of boundaries of this course middle-aged security so I'm sure you will all understand as to what middle middle-aged security means and you will not come up with topics that will be irrelevant but this is the first step that I would like you to suggest and in order to decide on the subject of course you should not only have a certain degree of interest but of course after sometime throughout the semester as we go you should be able to accumulate some knowledge because OPEDs cannot be written without any knowledge and as I said and I will explain again in detail OPEDs are different than term papers require a different type of research as well as writing skills and therefore this is important but and in due course if you believe at some certain point you would like to consult with me as to how you proceed I mean what it what you write down sort of full physical requirements of an OPED you're always welcome I mean during my office hours and also we can just drop an email you can attach the draft OPED that you have done already and I can just have a look at it and say well that will be better if you did this and that or maybe if you've already done a good job then I can congratulate you so this is important OPED writing is something in some sense pretty simple but for those who know a certain subject very well because it requires people to express their opinion in a in a rather relatively less number of words the ideal sort of number of words will be as I try to explain last time is somewhere in between 700 to a thousand words well something a little less more than this or a little less than that it's still okay but as you go to the far right end of this spectrum let's say that means you have difficulty in explaining yourselves in in rather short sort of space this is important because one thing that is essential in OPED is that you have an opinion you have you have a view you have a certain argument and you express it in such a way to make it sort of a or in some sense you express your opinion by way of arguing something you you have you you endorse something you are of course debating something you are either against or for something you may be criticizing something maybe promoting something but yet what is important is that you have a clear idea you write something to the point it is not where you can elaborate at length extensively some subject by way of introducing a certain dimensions to it and then taking up another part well this is this is something that you can do and you have time and space for research papers term papers this is something else but in OPED you have a quick opinion short precise and you deliver this to the other side to the reader in in a very concise manner right you go to the heart of the matter and you explain your opinion and in order to capture the minds of the people I mean especially if you are writing an OPED in a newspaper you want it to be read by as many people as possible and therefore you should attract the attention of the reader at first you should introduce the subject as to what you exactly are going to talk about and what you are arguing this piece at the very beginning and of course you express your opinion it is something that allows you to somehow defend something this is this is necessary it's not just wavering between two ends of an idea and whether this is the writing or whether this is wrong to know you say well here in this case here is my point and here are the reasons why and if necessary and it is necessary in most cases here are my sort of solution or you know other sort of propositions as to have to overcome if there's any difficulty for instance a political trouble problem economic crisis situation etc you present your idea as well as a solution so this is important and what what matters here is that you express your views in as sort of a few number of words as possible this is necessary of course there's not one specific guideline to follow for OPEDs I mean depending on different schools of thought all pets might be written in different ways I mean but of course having some common denominator some common alphas but on the other hand there are also some fundamental principles that you should need you should follow and of course as students you may find it difficult and this assignment might be somewhat a difficult assignment for you when compared to term paper I don't know which one is more difficult or which because I'm not going to assign term papers and you can compare and contrast if other professors assign term papers this semester as to which one would be more difficult but this is something not at all easy for even professors like us I mean even if we teach the subject and even if you're supposed to be experts on a particular issue when it comes to writing an OPED I can tell you that this not a very easy thing either and I was just trying to figure out if there was anything that I could suggest for you to follow I just I mean you can find it find this yourself as well let me just try to find this again here oops that might be no this is I'm trying to figure here an email which I sent to myself yes no not yet again I'm going to show these pictures in a moment anyway there we go tips for OPED writing this link look this an interesting link Duke University is one of world's best universities as you probably know and I was just looking for whether there was any specific sort of guideline for OPED writers and Duke University for their own faculty members they prepare a kind of program or just a package and they also of course want their faculty members to be in consultation with the communications office you don't have to take note because I will send this by email and as you can go and see here for instance there are certain specific there are certain specific suggestions here such as well this is something that doesn't apply to you because you're not going to wait for something to break out and take advantage of this in order to be able to promote something that you want to publish well because this this suggestion actually for the faculty members to when is the best time to write the newspapers in order to have higher chances for whatever OPED and they may write to be published but starting from here first of all the Duke University people even make pretty much the same suggestions limit yourself to 750 words of course all pets are not only published in daily papers well maybe the origin might be coming from newspaper publications but now there are specific websites which sort of solicit I mean ask from authors experts scholars and other people to write all pets and as I will show you in a moment and there are examples of all pets that are not necessarily newspaper articles newspaper pieces but they are published on websites and in this respect they may be a little bit longer because our readers in a sense are ready to sort of read anything that is supply there but in daily papers the maybe the reason behind as to why all pets are sort of suggested to be limited maybe up to seven seven hundred and fifty words is because in readers of daily papers may not be willing to ring longer read longer articles so therefore this is a suggestion again that maybe you should not bother yourself and of course at your level we can tell tolerate a little bit more number of words like a thousand or twelve hundred well this past summer school I asked from my students to write all pets well of course because all pets require a certain time for getting yourself familiarized with a subject reading accumulating knowledge and then digesting that knowledge and then you become capable of writing this thing then of course the summer school period was not perfectly suitable for op-ed writing and therefore I did not set my expectation pretty high so I lower my expectation but some of my students I would say I guess 29 or 30 students during the summer school some 25 of them were willing to write an op-ed and I would say one third of them were quite good I mean they could be published anywhere because they had followed my instructions and sort of made concise research but again as I said in your case I can tolerate a little bit more number of words like a thousand or twelve hundred provided that you are not sort of walking around the subject but go to the heart of the matter this is important this is something that I kept saying my students in last summer and also on Tuesday as you will remember you should make a single point I mean an op-ed is not a piece where you can discuss or debate more than a number you know two or three issues and it is better if you could just confine yourself to one particular issue and promote one single thing and or discuss one one issue properly what is important here as I will show some examples from my own op-eds again you are centering your piece you're writing around a certain specific point here this is again more less for newspaper op-eds and if you follow the same principle it's good even for our op-eds here but it is not that sort of indispensable and put your main point on top I mean because newspaper readers I mean people when they just pick up newspaper in the morning or whenever they just have a chance to read and when they just look at the newspaper articles items etc they should be attracted to your piece the title is one way of making it attractive attractive and also the first couple of sentences again they are very important in order for the reader to follow suit I mean to go on reading it so unless you make yourself clear so what you're going to talk about in the paper and if the reader is confused or doesn't get the point he or she may very well drop your article and then your sort of op-ed might not be read by as many people as you would like to be read again this is something that is in connection with the previous point as to why people should read when for instance my students who are writing MA I'm a master thesis a PhD dissertation the introduction is very very important because I mean you should tell me as to why I should sit and read your 300 pages as a PhD doctoral I mean doctoral dissertation or 100 pages of master thesis so the introductory part is in any writing in any piece of written material is extremely important you should definitely make the reader sort of aware of what he or she is going to read so this is again important then as I mentioned at the beginning this is not a piece of written material where you can just debate certain things without making specific recommendations it is necessary that you make recommendation here unless you do so the purpose of op-ed will not be fulfilled this is important well again there are some tips for making op-ed more attractive such as using short sentences this is always important in any type of writing unless you write a novel or a play script whatever depending on the style things may differ what is important here is in my opinion this point here I mean this is something that that is suggested to the faculty members by the university administration is to have to you know write an op-ed but to me an op-ed is not an op-ed without carrying your personal view personal opinion and that's why people might sort of say it's opinion editorial instead of opposite editorial which is possibly the truth origin of this op-ed abbreviation anyway but what is essential here is that you have an opinion you defend a view you have to defend certain view you should not just leave things in limbo I mean you should not say okay this is right this is also right so here is the middle ground no you are defending something again from examples that I will show you with this from my own you can sort of see how it should be well again this is something that is applicable for people like us I mean faculty members avoid jargon jargon is something is a shorthand notation for certain things that may be understood only by those people who may be knowledgeable about the subject and others may not at all understand and sometimes they may create confusion so therefore for simple readers I mean those who do not know the subject it is recommended that the op-ed should avoid jargon but again this is for newspaper articles and newspaper op-eds and other stuff so I will send this email this link for your perusal I mean just and you can also make your own personal research let me let me sort of here let me show you something you may be worrying so what I'm writing here bitter lemons why is that oops sorry well this is this a website which is read by millions of people around the world every year they have more than a hundred thousand subscribers and well bitter lemons international.org it is as far as I know it is a website maintained by an Israeli and a Palestinian intellectual and the main idea is to promote Arab Israeli peace and they invite people to contribute with their op-eds with their short opinion pieces which I would qualify as op-ed and every time I mean depends on the frequency of events or the sort of a necessity they invite people the last one was published pretty much a month ago and since then this sort of a set of op-eds stay there sometimes they stay at least a week and sometimes they may be staying as long as a month as you can see here well for those interested you can go here search by water and if you write a name familiar to you which is my name well I must have written quite a bit well this is excuse me there are some they do not belong to me some yeah okay let's drop Mustafa part and just search with Qibar I don't think there's another Qubar all in the Middle East who write on these security issues at this for the time being all right here is well this one for instance I mean where you sort of a promote a specific idea you defend it it is an assertion it is an argument and you of course substantiate with certain if possible facts figures and also with some substantiating argument well let me just give you some preliminary information before we discuss this particular one and whenever you want to sort of read these and others you can go to the bitter lemons international.org website and read as many op-eds as possible and of course this is not only something that will help you figure or not as to what you should be writing about but also how to write things and additionally you will have learned many things about the Middle East as part of this course because this website which I pretty follow pretty closely and so far I have not seen anything published there which did not appeal to me or which I found unnecessary I mean all of them are quite relevant pieces and those who maintain the website ask from people you do not send pieces there they ask from you to contribute if you are willing to do so and in most cases they send these request one or two days before the deadline and so you are kind of under the pressure of time where you have to express your opinion in a very short sort of space and concise manner. Well for those who may not have followed by Dennis to what was going on after the integration of US President Barack Obama and prior to that actually when most people were almost certain that Barack Obama would win the race the presidential race in the United States and from his close entourage people from his among his advisors there were some information leaking to the press that if and when Obama won the race and became the US president in a very short time after his integration he would pay a visit to a country in the Islamic world and he would appeal to the Islamic world and people were sort of even had started to bet as to which country that would be a people some people suggested it will be Malaysia some others said in Asia some others suggested Egypt and when he decided to come to Turkey only after some 70 or so days 70 plus days after his inauguration which in my opinion was an unprecedented event I mean no American president so far had paid a visit to Turkey after some two months following his inauguration well of course Turkey is a very important country and its importance has heightened over the last several years because of the developments in this part of the world in the world especially in the aftermath of 9-11 and the Iraq war so these developments have elevated Turkey's profile to a very high level but yet again it is customary for the US presidents to pay their first visit which he did actually as if I'm not mistaken to Canada well this is kind of tradition in the US politics form policy implementation they have a special relationship and also pretty much to countries like United Kingdom and Israel which are known as United States strategic partners the term strategic partners truly applies to this kind of relationship I mean the one between United States and Israel and also United States and United Kingdom but Turkey has not been on the list of countries at least so far which would be visited in the at least first couple of years of the US presidents after becoming president but this time after some 7 or 5 or so days following his integration he paid visit to Turkey and I said and as I also argued in this short piece that was the visit that was mentioned before by his advisors and then something and information information that leaked to the press from his entourage that you know where he would appeal to the Islamic world well of course we are very sensitive I mean Turks are very sensitive with respect to not being categorized as an Islamic country yes an overwhelming majority of our population is Muslim this is correct we believe in Islam by way of faith but on the other hand Turkey politicians intellectuals men in the street and many people should at least display the sensitivity as to not to be categorized but of course there are people who like to see Turkey categorized as such well after all this is something that is open to everyone's own assessment but anyway what there I said that was the visit or that would be the sort of occasion for the US president to appeal to the Islamic world and he came to Turkey for this very specific purpose because he wanted the Islamic world countries in the Islamic sort of realm in the Islamic part of the world to adopt certain principles that are embedded in Turkish republics sort of way of life so to speak and in this article as you can go ahead and read if you are interested I discuss here in a rather few sentences I don't know how many words but it was approximately thousand words or so and as you can see here I say here explain the reasons why he did this I paid this visit at this early stage of his presidential sort of job here so there are also a couple of other examples that I can show you for instance let's take this one these are also available on my personal website I don't know if anyone so far had a chance to visit my website I don't charge anybody it's for free and it is specifically designed for you let me just go from here and feminize yourselves help this me of course not this is something that comes with the best website I didn't have any choice well this is my office for those they've not visited already you're welcome the door is open here are the articles that might be of interest to you and these are some of them are chapters some of them are articles and etc here some of my op-eds are uploaded to my website and for for you to read for instance after this incident tragic incident in the estimated training the Israeli matrix attack on mavi marmarship you know what happened and the actually in my opinion the Turkish Israel relations have hit the bottom and as a as a scholar who pays attention to the well-being of this relationship not only between Turkey and Israel but of course between Turkey and all of its neighbors and as many countries as possible I make some recommendations as to how to sort of resuscitate or revitalize these relationships this is important and the question actually op-eds request Omar the person's name Omar Karmie is sending emails Omar sends me it's a very short topic says a serve would you be willing to write on this particular issue deadline is Wednesday afternoon and he writes this email most possibly on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning so you have only a few hours to think about it and just sit and write well again this is some that increase your adrenaline level and then maybe you're writing a better piece maybe this is the tactic that they follow but the the subject here was whether Turkish Israel relations could be saved from the point where they were at the moment and that was right after and if you just look at here June 10th this is only 10 days after the incident 31st of May and then so and that was when the Turkish as well as of course and more specifically Israeli politicians from the highest levels were making such bitter statements that would not really leave any room for even thinking of any possibility to sort of recover from the level where the Turkish Israeli relations had hit as I said the bottom here and again there is a certain argument here which I sort of base my sort of arguments on certain specific issues and make some recommendations so here are some examples as I mentioned here and by the way please familiarize yourselves with this website and I'm not as I said promoting for any reason because it is something that might be essential and some of your readings which belong to me will be available on this website so you don't have to go to the library and check to reserve or make photocopies these are already available here so I hope this point is well understood because op ed as I said will be constituting one significant proportion of your overall grade I wonder if you have any questions so far if there's anything that I may have missed or not clear or something that requires further explanation any points any comments or are you satisfied with all these explanations or do you feel like ready to at least think about writing an op ed because in the next hour after this break like 10 minutes I'll be talking about simulation which is another requirement well and I want to talk about all this before going into the heart of the matter which will be starting with this most possible on Tuesday next week I want to all know about the requirements of this course because this is not a mass course this an elective course you have become my students voluntarily nobody forces you to do so but since you have taken the decision you should be ready to follow the instructions in terms of how to be successful how to get good grades and by the time of the end of the day 27th I guess Monday this the end of the ad drop days you should be able to know what is awaiting you in the future throughout the semester all right so let's give a break and come back in like 10 minutes