Zeitgeist Turkey | Episode 15: Remembering human faces of the Syrian war
In this week's episode, Duvar English Editor-in-chief Cansu Çamlıbel hosts American political scientist Wendy Pearlman to talk about her latest book "We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria," which was recently published in Turkish. Pearlman spoke to hundreds of Syrian refugees, collecting human stories from one of recent history's biggest humanitarian crises.
Editor: Azra Ceylan
In this week's episode, Duvar English’s editor-in-chief Cansu Çamlıbel hosts American political scientist and Middle East expert Wendy Pearlman to look back at the start of the Syrian war and the human stories that were created in the years, which both agree have been forgotten in the depths of Turkish politics.
After getting involved with protesters the Arab Spring, Professor Pearlman traveled through the Middle East, visiting Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and of course, Turkey, to talk to Syrian refugees who had been forced to flee their homes, releasing three books, the most recent of which, "Bir Köprüden Geçtik: Suriyeli Direnişçiler Anlatıyor," was recently published by Bilgi Yayınevi in Turkish.
Pearlman noted that most Syrian revolutionaries told her that the opposition's taking up arms was an organic and almost seamless process that ended up beyond what any of the groups involved imagined.
Meanwhile, the international community's interventions were not helpful, and almost detrimental to the Syrian internal conflict, Pearlman said foreign powers failed to moderate between parties when they should have, instead funding military undertakings that fueled the conflict.
This podcast was prepared with support from Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Turkey Representation.