Writing

Michael is an experienced editor, broadcast journalist and reporter on day-to-day news stories. He is the Foreign & Broadcast Editor of Jewish News, which serves Britain’s Jewish communities, and freelances for BBC News and Euronews. He also writes columns and analytical pieces, particularly on Turkish issues, for a range of publications.

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Originally printed in the Daily Mail on 4 June 2020. Online version here.

Analysis: Revoking the EU refugee deal is one of the few chips Turkish president has left to play

This piece was originally printed in the Daily Telegraph on 17 August 2019. Online version here.


British Steel workers who have been frantically watching their company barrel its way to liquidation have good reason to be relieved this weekend: the company set to take it over is as safe as houses.

That is because Ataer Holding’s parent company is a leviathan pension fund owned by Turkey’s armed forces.

Oyak — an abbreviation of the Turkish for “Military Mutualisation Corporation” — is a well-recognised brand that once appeared everywhere on the Turkish high street, from banks to supermarkets.

Caught between belligerent Americans and frantic Europeans, the UK has few attractive options to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions

The new chief Palestinian diplomat in the UK discusses antisemitism, engagement terms with Hamas and unwittingly reveals some common ground with Likud party members

Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle, Friday 10 May 2019

It was an hour and a half into our interview that Husam Zomlot’s voice cracked, quite suddenly, with emotion, over a memory of his grandfather’s advice about Jews.

“I was raised by a grandfather. His name is Shehada,” he said.

“My grandfather taught me when I was little. He would take me to places to pray.

“He taught me, ‘Husam, Judaism is the closest to Islam.’

“He taught me to look up to Judaism, that if you want to eat, go and eat with a Jew, because they have the same habits and rituals.”

The most senior Palestinian diplomat in the UK is an affable, courteous man. He speaks animatedly, waving his arms and slapping a nearby coffee table as he punctuates his points. This — and the slight quiver to his lip as he remembers the man who raised him — gives his demeanour a strongly Mediterranean quality.

The wait has been long and often excruciating but we

Originally published as a front page splash in the Jewish Chronicle, 5 January 2018

What is remarkable about the unrest in Iran is that, one week on, the protests remain without a leader.

That is in contrast to 2009, the last time there were major protests on this scale, when Iranians were driven onto the streets by allegations of vote rigging in the election that saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win a second term.

Then, the protesters — many of them well-educated, middle-class urbanites — were ushered on by the defeated candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. His movement eventually led Iran’s Supreme Leader to order a partial recount of votes. Mr Ahmadinejad was confirmed the victor.

When it comes to history’s most intractable conflict, Ian Black is not an easy man to pin to an opinion.

The veteran journalist has spent decades reporting on Israel and Palestine, mostly for the Guardian, first as a correspondent in Jerusalem and then as the newspaper’s Middle East editor. He left the paper in July 2016

Over the past four years, he combined the day job — he is now a senior Fellow at the London School of Economics — with work on a book tracing the events of the past century in that narrow strip of land next to the Mediterranean Sea.

The resulting volume, Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, was published this month and focuses “pretty relentlessly” on Israel and the Palestinians, Dr Black says.

Yesterday was the day Turkey shed away the few remaining checks and balances that made it a recognisably Western parliamentary democracy.

By November 2019, the post of prime minister will be abolished and its responsibilities transferred to the president. The holder will have vast powers: to select his party’s MPs, to appoint senior judges, and to rule by decree.

It will be much harder to keep that single office in check. Previously, MPs in parliament could vote to come together to investigate and topple any minister they suspected of wrongdoing. The process took no longer than 18 days.

That same process will take longer for the president under the new system – up to 10 months – and the number of MPs who need to vote for it has increased dramatically.

As you read this, a rapid and turbulent revolution is underway in Turkey. The country’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party is pushing proposals through parliament that would radically alter the system of government.

By abolishing Turkey’s long-established system of collective cabinet government, the AK Party says it will stabilise the country and streamline decision-making. But the proposed law will pool power in the hands of the president and dramatically reduce the top job’s accountability to parliament. In effect, it codifies a system of one-man rule for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

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