Guney Yildiz ContributorLeadership Strategy This ‘cultural war’ between Turkey and France is not about culture. It is about politics. Taking his cue from President Emmanuel Macron’s speech on Islam where the president described Islam as a religion “in crisis” worldwide President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started lending his support for a sweeping boycott of French goods. …
Forbes
By: Guney Yildiz The Kurdish movement in Turkey has three stated objectives: to achieve a resolution of the Kurdish issue, to democratize Turkey and to establish a decentralized political system formulated as Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[1]Although the PKK is at the heart of the Kurdish movement—a term that refers…
Merip.org
Guney Yildiz – 1 June 2020 The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic did not stop Turkey from doubling down on its engagement with Libya, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Its support has already resulted in changes in the balance of forces on the ground. It could also lead to two rival factions coming under stronger control of their…
ISPIonline.it
Guney Yildiz – 4 May 2020 Washington has increased its efforts to push for unity among Kurdish factions in northeast Syria. A U.S. State Department delegation led by William Roebuck, deputy special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, reportedly met with rival political umbrella groups: the left-wing coalition of the Movement for a…
MEI
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” E.O. Wilson
January 17, 2020 Guney Yildiz The Berlin Conference on Libya will be a crucial test of whether Europe can act on its ambitions. The conflict in oil-rich Libya has escalated in the last few weeks in tandem with an intensification of diplomacy by external stakeholders. By organizing a mini-summit in Moscow between the two sides of the…
MEI
Russia and Turkey agreed to a cease-fire in Syria’s war-torn Idlib Province between the Ankara-supported rebels and Moscow-supported regime forces. The truce came into force on Jan. 12 at 12:01 AM local time. At exactly the same time, another cease-fire, this time in Libya, came into effect as well. The one in Libya was also…
MEI
Ankara enjoys a strong partnership with both Washington and Moscow and uses each of these relations as leverage against the other. The US, however, has a strong arsenal of potential punishment against Turkey, writes Valdai Club expert Güney Yıldız. At the top of the list of penalties come possible economic sanctions against Turkey as well as…
The Turkish offensive into Kurdish-led northern Syria began on October 9 and ended with a deal brokered by Russia on October 22. Following the deal, the supporters of the Kurdish-led decentralization and democratic autonomy movement in Syria realized that their political dreams had collapsed. The ceasefire states that Syrian government and Russian observers will monitor the…
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice, there is. Practice won’t let you forget anything or leave anything out.
Nearly a week on, the Russian-Turkish deal for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to withdraw from the Turkey-Syria border is holding. After raising objections to some of the articles of the agreement, the SDF coalition agreed to implement the Russian initiative. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hailed the agreement, reached on Oct. 22,…
Despite the fiery rhetoric, the long-time conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has mostly been a controlled fight following tacit rules. But recent events, including Turkey’s increased efforts to assassinate PKK leaders and the targeted killing of a Turkish consulate official in the Iraqi Kurdish capital on July 17, risk overturning the…
Guney Yildiz If you’ve read the Turkish media in the past week, you might conclude that a cross-border incursion by the Turkish military into the northeastern Syrian territory controlled by U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is imminent. You will also have learned about specific military planning details that generally need to be kept a…
Guney Yildiz It is harder for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to recover from a double election defeat in Istanbul. By rejecting the Justice and Development (AK) Party candidate in Istanbul, the Turkish electorate has sent three clear messages to President Erdogan. The first one is that a significant portion of the electorate in Istanbul didn’t…
Guney Yildiz Can the Kurds, the largest ethnicity in the Middle East without their own nation, overcome their internal disunity and find ways to exist as an independent state or as autonomous regions? The traditional view of the Kurds in the Middle East—living as they do in the mountains and valleys of southeastern Turkey, northwestern…
