Latest Tariq Ali Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Tariq Ali

  Country, Political, Politician

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The West and its media have barely covered the recent wave of repression in Turkey. The reason is simple. They are paying billions to Ankara to control and take back the refugees of the Syrian war. They are fearful that if they offend Tayyip Erdogan he will use the refugees as a political weapon. So they keep quiet.

  Tariq Ali

  War, Simple, Political

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Tayyip Erdogan wants to go beyond George W. Bush by making critical journalism and critics in the academy illegal. What will be the difference between him and a military government? Very little. I read his remarks on the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Well, yes. But then the AKP would have to ban all other political parties, close down all critical newspapers, burn the books critical of the regime and gas the Kurds to death...the final solution of the Kurdish 'problem.' Somehow I don't think he is about to do that.

  Tariq Ali

  Military, Party, Book

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• As for ISIS, we know where they come from. We know who has used them in the past. We know their sectarianism leads to killings. Here the Turkish state, like its NATO bosses, has helped to create a monster that it now claims to oppose.

  Tariq Ali

  Past, Boss, Killing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The situation in Turkey is extremely troubling. A panic-stricken regime, desperate to divide the Kurdish population from non-Kurds because it feared the rise of the HDP, has helped to create a huge crisis in the country. Can it be ended while Tayyip Erdogan remains in power? I don't think so. Erdogan may not be a "joker," but he is definitely a political plagiarist.

  Tariq Ali

  Country, Thinking, Political

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Terror breeds terror. I am completely opposed to both state terror and those who respond in a similar way. There is no justification for any group that associates itself with the Left to kill innocents and encourage suicide bombings.

  Tariq Ali

  Suicide, Terror, Justification

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.

  Tariq Ali

  Technology, Thinking, World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The judgement makes no sense at all. It exposes the country, Turkey, to ridicule. It would have been so much better if Ahmet Davotgulu had behaved like a medieval jester, but no such luck for poor Turkey. Its Prime Minister is not taken seriously by too many people.

  Tariq Ali

  Country, Taken, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I've called David Cameron worse things than joker....and a former Prime Minister Tony Blair is widely referred to as a war criminal.

  Tariq Ali

  War

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• If there is a Greek exit from the Eurozone, I think the German elite will be quite pleased that they can then use that to restructure the Eurozone and make it a zone where only strong countries are allowed in. There would then be two tiers within the European Union, which is in fact already happening. But you cannot simply get rid of German control by raising the specter of the Third Reich. That's ahistorical.

  Tariq Ali

  Country, Strong, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The current Eurozone is obviously dysfunctional. And serious people within Germany and elsewhere know this to be the case and know things cannot function this way forever.

  Tariq Ali

  People, Forever, Way

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• There are huge political problems in Germany, but German economic power is something which was bound to happen. The way out of this situation is through the further democratization of the European Union and a changing of its structures.

  Tariq Ali

  Political, Unions, Way

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• At the time of German Reunification, it was no secret that Germany would soon become the strongest political entity in the European Union. And that has happened.

  Tariq Ali

  Political, Secret, Unions

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The real problem is the total capitulation of German social democracy to capitalism, reflected and symbolized by actual extreme center coalition governments in Germany, which have been in power for a long time and still are even as we speak. That is the real problem: that there is no serious opposition in Germany at all. And the Left party is divided.

  Tariq Ali

  Real, Party, Government

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The EU is an alliance that the Americans control, in which the EU of course has a great deal of autonomy, but in which it still is very dependent on the United States, especially militarily, but not only in that respect. So to blame the Germans for everything is an easy way out for some of those suffering in Europe today.

  Tariq Ali

  Europe, Suffering, Alliances

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• One cannot discuss Europe without understanding US imperial hegemony, both globally and certainly in Europe as it stands.

  Tariq Ali

  Europe, Understanding, Hegemony

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think to compare Germany to the Third Reich is utterly ludicrous.

  Tariq Ali

  Thinking, Germany, Compare

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Germany is a capitalist state nurtured carefully and brought back to prosperity by the United States, and it is very loyal to the United States. I don't even think the Germans enjoy full sovereignty. There are some things which they cannot do if the United States doesn't wish them to do it.

  Tariq Ali

  Thinking, Wish, Germany

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think another crisis, which is being predicted now and which will be worse than what we saw in 2008, could bring the European Union down unless there are huge reforms from within to democratize, to give more power to the regions, etc. If this doesn't happen, the European Union will fall.

  Tariq Ali

  Fall, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• 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.

  Tariq Ali

  Running, Thinking, Europe

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The European Union has lost virtually all of its credibility amongst large swaths of the European population.

  Tariq Ali

  Population, Unions, Lost

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Effectively, the EU is a very powerful bureaucracy, dominated now by the German elite, which is backed by the rest of the European Union members.

  Tariq Ali

  Powerful, Unions, Members

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic; decisions are not made by parliament; the European Parliament is not sovereign.

  Tariq Ali

  Decision, Political, Ease

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The European Union is a union of the extreme center. It's a banker's union. You see how they operate in country after country, appointing technocrats to take over and run countries for long periods. They did it in Greece; they did it in Italy; they considered it in other parts of Europe.

  Tariq Ali

  Running, Country, Europe

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think Syriza and Podemos are very, very different from Sinn Féin in many ways, and so I wouldn't put all three together. I would say that Syriza and Podemos are movements which have come out of mass struggles. In the case of Podemos, directly out of tariqaliextremehuge mass movements in Spain, which started with the occupation of the square. In Greece, as a response to what the EU was doing there, punishing it endlessly, for the sins of its ruling elite.

  Tariq Ali

  Struggle, Thinking, Squares

  Source: www.counterpunch.org