Anti-regime protests in Iran continue to rage across the country on their 40th day. Facing their biggest political challenge in years, Iran’s religious and military leaders singled out and blamed the Iraqi Kurdistan based Iranian Kurdish groups, the US and Israel for organising the unrest. As the protests began, Brigadier-General Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC Deputy Commander…

In the past ten days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)– a radical group whose leaders are former IS and al Qaeda members – has dispatched its fighters from Idlib into the district of Afrin, moved into north capturing towns, border crossings, mostly without a fight. The areas that the HTS captured was under control of the…

Turkiye’s new disinformation law, passed on 13 October, criminalises disseminating untrue information, punishable for up to three years. The legislation, do not describe what exactly would constitute untrue or false information and gives all discretion to courts to decide what is true what is not not only in the legal but also in the epistemological…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin later today at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Erdogan had publicly stated that he hoped to bring Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky together for talks to end the war in Ukraine. Turkish sources say that the…

by Guney Yildiz President Joe Biden’s about-face trip to Saudi Arabia, which marked a negation of his human rights-centered foreign policy promise, came at political costs, but three months later, it doesn’t look like it had much economic gain either. The Saudis went back on their promises to increase oil production and instead slashed output, a clear failure…

SWP-Berlin Comment Russia and Turkey are backing opposing warring parties in three active conflicts. How­ever, this adversarial positioning has not hindered cooperation between Moscow and Ankara. They reign in opposing sides and, in effect, stage-manage their respective theatres of wars. Through multilateral arrangements, Europe is an enabler of Tur­key’s position and could leverage its support to…

Point of View, 18.01.2021 The 5 January agreement between Doha and Riyadh and its allies ends the blockade on Qatar. Given that Qatar is Turkey’s only influential Arab ally in the region, the deal has implications for Ankara. Güney Yildiz examines the prospects. Turkey deepened its cooperation with Qatar when the tiny emirate was most vulnerable and…

Guney Yildiz Three years ago Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member-states Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside non-GCC member Egypt began an air, sea and land blockade of Qatar. Jordan joined later.  The move largely backfired and tilted Middle East balance of power to Iran’s favour. This week at the 41stGCC summit, as…

“IŞİD ideolojik olarak yenilmedi, bir iktidar boşluğunda yeniden ortaya çıkacağını öngörüyorum.”

Guney Yildiz A decade on, the memory of the Arab Spring sparks ambiguous feelings in the Middle East and Europe. The European public excitement concerning the uprisings from Tunisia to Syria is long gone. Along with it the interventionist appetites of the British and French governments.  Today, Europe is open about admitting that it prioritises…

The valid expectation is that when Joe Biden becomes the 46th President of the United States, he will undo most of the damage done by President Trump and will revitalise the institutions of the Western multilateral arrangements. He may do this differently than many allies hope but it will still mean a sharp break up…

Expectations of a thaw between Turkey and Greece in the aftermath of the recent earthquake are misplaced. As Güney Yildiz explains, past disaster diplomacy was contingent on pre-existing rapprochement trends. Today the relationship is in a downward spiral.