Sam Harshbarger

My first piece in @foreignpolicy.com was published today. I argue that the recent tensions between Azerbaijan and Turkey run deeper than the hijab-ban protests or Baku's relations with Israel. At their core is the more fundamental issue of sovereignty. foreignpolicy.com/2026/10/23/t...

Learned a lot about the backstory behind Turkish-Azerbaijani tensions from this great piece by @samharshbarger.bsky.social foreignpolicy.com/2026/10/23/t...

Entities to which Erdoğan has appointed trustees: Boğaziçi university, municipalities, the CHP,…the body of Özgür Özel (‽) @heissenstat.bsky.social @samharshbarger.bsky.social

Turkestani (Central Asian) allies of the Ukrainian nationalist Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations visit Istanbul and stand in front of a monument featuring the likenesses of Soviet commanders Frunze and Voroshilov (May 1956).

Imagine if every U.S. state were a member of the U.N.

Things you find reading the Turkestan emigration press—Muammar Gaddafi hosted an Islamic-Christian Dialogue Conference in Tripoli in February 1976.

Fascinating piece on broader Russian and Turkish political identity by @samharshbarger.bsky.social.

My latest for Kültürkampf on how the language of Turkish nationalism has come to resemble its Russian counterpart. kulturkampftr.substack.com/p/russian-or...

New York'ta 31 Mart 2019 olmuş.

Argentina edition of Libertarian bible

Thank you, Mr. President, for your noble solidarity.

A visual analysis shows the U.S. likely bombed a migrant detention center in Yemen on April 28. At least three U.S.-made GBU-39 bombs at the site of the attack, which killed 68 African migrants, according to the Houthis, a militant group that controls northern Yemen.

And now, a note on Bill Owens who, until this past week, was the executive producer of 60 Minutes. We’ll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.

Yet this analytical blunder shaped so much Remainer thinking in UK Brexit debates and is one of several reasons for the failure of a pro-European campaign in Britain that didn't engage with what the EU is becoming

This is how you do it.

The story of this election really is BSW and Linke. When Sahra Wagenknecht finally split off in 2023, the Linke was thought to be dead. In line with every pundit's favorite narrative, the new left-authoritarian version (BSW) would do well, while the left-progressive Linke that remained was doomed 1/

@centuryintl.bsky.social colleague @nicholasdanfort.bsky.social on the challenges that Trump's reelection poses for proponents of a progressive foreign policy, and how an awareness of those constraints should inform their foreign policy advocacy: tcf.org/content/comm...

J. F. C. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

A personal essay of a Syrian in Istanbul observing the fall of the regime:

Thinking today of Elizabeth Tsurkov, whom I never met personally but who wrote for us on several occasions. She was for years a must-read analyst on Syria's civil war and the armed groups fighting it until Kataib Hezbollah took her hostage in Baghdad ~2 yrs ago. I hope her captivity also ends soon.

#Syria: The insurgency announced that its forces have taken the city of Homs in its entirety. President Assad now only controls just a few cities in all of Syria. It comes not long after KSA, Qatar + other Arab FMs met w/Iran, Turkey, and Russian officials in Doha.

Reports that Bashar al-Assad on plane to do Joe Rogan’s podcast in desperate attempt to save his regime

The Russian embassy in Damascus is urging its citizens to leave Syria 👀 tass.ru/politika/225...

Bueno al parecer las balas con las que le dispararon al ceo de United Healthcare, una de las grandes empresas de cobertura médica de EEUU, tenían inscriptas dos palabras: “delay” “deny”

JONI MITCHELL: They took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum / And they charged the people a dollar an' a half just to see 'em TECH BRO: Sounds awesome but can we make it a monthly subscription

AKP, MHP, devlet aklı, nereye gidiyoruz konularında dinlediğim en aklı başında değerlendirme. x.com/HuseyinRasit...

this guy caught himself, better to play it safe

Syria launches counterattacks in an attempt to halt insurgency, as Iran’s top diplomat meets Assad apnews.com/article/syri...

Aoun, Geagea, Frangiyeh—Trump’s in-law Massad Boulos has dabbled in every conceivable Lebanese-Christian political constellation, but was most recently in the pro-Assad camp. Now he seems to be positioning himself as an influence on Trump’s Middle East policy. My latest: tcf.org/content/comm...

Despite all warnings, Pandora opened the comment section.

Somehow stumbled across the concept of "polyphony" in the context of Russian Orthodox theological disputes and I have to say there are a lot of religious disputes that sound just made up to me but apparently were/are taken very seriously. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypho...

Bluesky’s gonna make it

🚨 My latest story: Drug smugglers target Saudi Arabia as social change increases youth’s exposure to prohibited substances. The kingdom is pushing back with “war on drugs” and new private rehab centres.

apnews.com/article/syri...

The competition for "most egregious use of the term 'neoliberal' to describe some random thing I don't like disconnected to anything meaningful" is over. Nobody will ever top this

It’s that time of year again… open.spotify.com/track/4OjKHy...

I was offline for two weeks. When I logged back on, the internet felt very different. X/Twitter felt a little emptier, and BlueSky & Substack felt a little more alive. I started writing a little about it here:

In New Caledonia, mining companies extract nickel for electric car batteries from the soil by razing the forests that evolved on it. Ben Crair writes about how the engines of the so-called green transition could leave Earth’s most verdant corner in tatters.

One of the weirder aspects of current social media driven debate is this widespread belief that echo chambers are a particularly new phenomenon