... Eastern Mediterranean is no exception, as another power has staked its claim to a share of the region’s resources, a power that had officially received no piece of the gas “pie” that the European states had divided up among themselves. This power is Turkey, which has decided to actively explore the gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean and has also visibly increased its military presence in the region. Over the last few months, Turkish and Greek warships have been involved in several dangerous ...
... done to preserve confidence in rapidly changing circumstances that are often beyond their control and, most importantly, to ensure they do not present each other with an impossible choice, which is something that happened between the United States and Turkey within NATO, and quite recently in the Union State of Russia and Belarus.
Aqeel Saeed Mahfoud:
What Do the Syrian People Expect from Russia?
Metamorphoses of U.S. politics from Clinton to Trump demonstrate how the benefits from allied relations ...
... production is not only Russia’s problem. The drug trade in Central Asia might not be a security issue for Europe in the way it is for Russia, but opium trafficking along the Northern and the Balkan route
also reaches Europe
and the
black sea route
via Turkey is rapidly emerging as a prominent smuggling corridor. In July 2019, Ukraine intercepted
930 kg of Afghan heroin
destined for Western Europe. Europe's role in Central Asia is limited compared to Russia's, and its focus on democracy promotion tends ...
... Russian tensions and dynamics that go beyond the Syrian situation itself. According to some politicians and analysts, this has affected both the nature of war and the future of the Syrian state and society. This includes the country’s relationship with Turkey and how it affects the future of Idlib, relations with the United States and the Kurds and what this means for the territories east of the Euphrates, relations with countries it has signed agreements and treaties with and how this affects the country’s ...
... Moscow to push Tehran to fulfill its obligations because it is difficult to control groups affiliated with Iran in Syria, and unlike Tehran, Russia has managed to build bridges with the Syrian political and armed opposition through Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Four differences
The differences between Russia and Iran (which have not yet reached a crisis level) in Syria appeared in the past few years and can be summarized through four situations. The first was at the beginning of direct Russian intervention ...
Since at least 1955, the Aegean Sea has long been an area of contention between local powers Greece and Turkey on the one hand, and the US-UK-Israeli strategic axis on the other, with the Soviet Union and then Russia defending its interests when necessary, since the Aegean cannot be separated from the Eastern Mediterranean as a strategic whole, nor from ...
... of the Russian State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, to the recent decision of the Turkish authorities to change the status of Hagia Sophia and convert it into a mosque. A rather restrained comment highlighting that the issue is “Turkey's internal affair” (
Teslova
2020) came from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On the contrary, the reaction of the lower house of the Russian Parliament has been less reserved regarding the fate of this cultural and spiritual monument....
Incidents in recent weeks could be a severe blow to Erdogan's Ottoman dream
A powerful alliance against Turkey has been formed to oust it from the Eastern Mediterranean. This happened after a series of incidents in recent weeks that could be a severe blow to Erdogan's rhetoric of an Ottoman dream.
Turkey has been gearing up for combat on a series of fronts ...
... distribution in 2020, $ 3.4 billion is intended to support 9 million Syrians, including internally displaced persons, in need of humanitarian assistance, and $5.2 billion has been earmarked for aid to 6 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt). Since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, according to the EU, its countries and economic agencies have allocated various types of assistance totalling more than 20 billion euros.
The announced figures look ...
... revolution in the country. Yet the Kremlin’s refusal to back any one party to the conflict, its constant manoeuvring and zigzagging on the Libyan field ultimately brought Russia unexpected dividends, as this strategy allowed the country, together with Turkey, to lead the settlement of the Libyan crisis. Significantly, the decisions that the Russian leadership openly calls mistakes today (then President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev refusing to veto UN Security Council
Resolution
1973 about ...
