Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, "al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran." And he said, "Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one."

If you go to former Yugoslav states, the Balkan states, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, the situation is dire. Not to mention Bosnia, which is just run like a colony. The way they used to stand up and sing hymns to President Tito, they now salute the EU flag. It's a very strange transition that we're witnessing in most of Europe, and I don't think it's going to work.

American imperialism has always been the imperialism that has been frightened of speaking its name. Now it's beginning to do so. In a way, it's better. We know where we kneel.

I think the United States and its British attack dog are not taken seriously anywhere in the world and can play no role in helping a political solution.

I think the Americans fished out the same condom but found it had too many holes in it.

What we are seeing in Turkey is a non-uniformed authoritarian regime led by a politician, Tayyip Erdogan, who has allowed power to go to his head and is behaving more and more like a despot. Sooner or later this will provoke political uprisings throughout the country as happened after Gezi.