Defense Secretary James Mattis announced on Oct. 2 that the number of US diplomats in Syria had doubled. No specific number was mentioned, but the move was motivated by the need to intensify the diplomatic effort, with “the military operations becoming less.” Under the label of “Syria,” the secretary was referring to more than a quarter of…
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite being on opposite sides of Middle Eastern divides, are cooperating in Syria to enable youth and women to acquire skills that would either allow them to compete in the job market or turn them into entrepreneurs. The Saudi-funded, Turkish-executed projects potentially highlight a newly found degree of pragmatism and fluidity…
Three recent developments lay bare the fragility of Middle Eastern alliances and a rebalancing of their priorities: the Russian-Turkish compromise on an assault on the rebel-held Syrian region of Idlib, the fate of troubled Abu Dhabi airline Ettihad, and battles over reconstruction of Syria. These developments highlight the fact that competition among Middle Eastern rivals…
While many of this year’s UN General Assembly speeches have been lacklustre compared to last year, some heads of state always deliver when called to the rostrum to offer their verdict on the state of the world and the role their nation ought to play in shaping it. Two such men include Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip…
The onset of the so-called Arab Spring in late 2010 took governments around the world by surprise, and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) government was no exception. Repositioning itself to meet new circumstances, it gradually turned its back on some of the defining principles of its previous policy. Opposed to…
The last couple weeks in the Eastern Mediterranean could remind a casual observer of some sort of a military parade, with members of the US-led coalition bringing an ever increasing number of military assets to the region. The number of warships flying various flags being dispatched as a show of force to the Eastern Mediterranean has…
