Obama's Confused Iran Policy

In The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin, one of the masterpieces of modern Turkish verse, Nazim Hikmet tells the story of a failed uprising led by a Sufi mystic and warlord against the fifteenth-century Ottoman sultan Mehmed I. Commanding a ragtag band of rebellious peasants and merchants fed up with high taxes, Sheikh Bedreddin battles the sultan’s troops all along the Aegean coast. But the rebels soon end up cornered on the Karaburun Peninsula, where most are slaughtered and Bedreddin is captured. In his poem, Hikmet imagines the last remnants of the rebel army camped outside the gates of the fortress city of Seljuk when a young warrior appears. Moved by the justice of the cause, he offers to storm the gates of Seljuk and raze the fortress all by himself.