Category: Foreign Policy

The Road to Germany : $2400

JAN/FEB 2016

Each of the millions of Syrian refugees who have fled their brutalized, unrecognizable homeland did so for uniquely personal reasons — the regime bombarding cities, the Islamic State threatening a return to the dark ages, the loss of jobs in a crumbling economy. Yet their quests cohered around one purpose: They all wanted better lives.

Some set out on a complicated journey to Europe with a crude graphic — a flowchart of the route from Turkey to Germany — as a guide. In its rudimentary geometry, refugees saw an impossible dream. In its illustrated stick figures, kicking their heels upon reaching the final destination, they saw themselves. They allowed an image, powerful and meditative in its simplicity, to shape their personal stories.

FP has done the same. In the following story, the odyssey of several refugees — men, women, and children — is presented in the form of a nonfiction comic. Each panel is based on firsthand reporting gathered by journalist Alia Malek:   [full story]

The Hills of Alawistan

MAY 27, 2013

TARTOUS, Syria — Above the Syrian coastal town of Tartous, groups of Alawite men and boys were amassing at different landings along a road that winds higher and higher, away from the Mediterranean and into the hills. We saw them assembling as we traveled the same path, taking advantage of a day off to get out of the city.

On this new spring Sunday, they were waiting for the corpses of Alawite soldiers — conscripts in the Syrian Army — to arrive from below. A funeral procession was building, one motorcycle at a time, one open-cabbed truck at a time, each laden with several passengers. The mothers and wives were recognizable in their black clothes with sheer white scarves draped around their necks, which have become public uniform once a family has been anointed with loss.   [full story]

Turkey’s War on Journalists

DECEMBER 22, 2011

ISTANBUL —When the terrorism trial of jailed Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener began in Istanbul on Nov. 22, only a handful of their colleagues — far fewer than expected — gathered in protest outside the courthouse that will decide their fate.

A mosaic of the smiling photographs of many of Turkey’s detained journalists was laid out on the ground at the foot of a swarm of TV tripods, their cameras aiming for a glimpse of the defendants. Sik and Sener’s case is perhaps the most high-profile example of what critics see as the Turkish government’s crackdown on critical voices, which has transformed it into one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists.

[full story]