Short notes built directly from survey data, mostly the World Values Survey and the Arab Barometer, on political interest, trust, and everyday values. These are personal reflections, not institutional statements. The views here are mine alone and do not represent any organization I am affiliated with.
A small tool built on World Bank data for GDP per capita, life expectancy, inequality, and school enrollment across Egypt, Türkiye, and the wider MENA region. Pick an indicator, toggle countries, and the chart redraws. Open Indicators.
September 2026
A companion to the trust piece below, this time using Arab Barometer data across eleven Arab countries. Morocco and Sudan trust the most, Lebanon the least, and Egypt sits almost exactly on the regional average.
September 2026
World Values Survey data on how interested people say they are in politics, how important they say it is to their own lives, and whether they would sign a petition, compared across Turkey and Iran.
July 2026
I wrote once that in Cairo and Istanbul, trust is a practical, everyday mechanism rather than an abstract idea. The World Values Survey let me check what the actual numbers say.
April 2026
Freedom of choice, life satisfaction, and whether obedience belongs on the list of qualities to teach a child, looked at together across Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq.