For some reason – most likely because the Kurds have consistently resisted Turkish authority – the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is unwilling to intervene in the ISIS assault on the northern Kurdish-Syrian town of Kobane. The Turkish troops are stationed right there at the Syrian border, but all they do is fire tear gas at their own citizens – large groups of protesting Kurds who are compelled to simply stand by and watch a major Kurdish town fall to well-armed ISIS forces.
What does this have to do with the event? What can this possibly have to do with the event that concerns me? The attack on Kobane is not after all an event that I participate in. However, it is an event that I follow. Arguably it is a very distinct event. Yet inasmuch as my doubly distant vantage (watching Turkish Kurds watch an assault that is absolutely close and distant from them) occurs within the contours of my own event then the two event spaces are unavoidably drawn into limited correspondence.
But can I really refer to an event space in the case of my own event? Nothing much has happened. Nothing seems even very likely to happen.