... up the possibility of Russia withdrawing from the presumed areas of Turkey’s future operation and the U.S. wants to be on the safe side.
Four scenarios
Ankara’s strategic goal is to establish a safe zone stretching from Idlib to the border with Iraq. Alongside the tasks of protecting Turkey from attacks of the PKK and its branches, the “buffer”, if and once created, could serve as a safe haven for Syria’s IDPs, who fled from al-Assad’s government; they should not be allowed to enter Turkey. Additionally, plans
involve
bringing ...
The impeachment process of US President Donald Trump and the US role in the MENA region would determine the future of conflicts in many countries starting from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and the future government in Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria, Turkey and Iran
“When I thought I had already reached the bottom,
they knocked from below.”
— Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
This quote of the polish aphorist and poet of the 20
th
century, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, serves as a perfect epigraph to this in-depth ...
... rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Can Turkey and other states help mediate the Syrian conflict while ultimately bringing the Syrians, Iranians and Saudis into a peace accord?
How should the U.S., Russia, and Europeans deal with the conflict between Turkey, Syria and the Kurds, and between Iraq and the Kurds, given Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi option to the possibility that the Kurds might use the Syrian conflict to achieve independence in differing regions? Can a loose Kurdish confederation — that does not challenge existing borders — ...
To understand Russia’s foreign policy today, its relations with Turkey and the West, one needs to look at the past.
Today, we have vast nuclear arsenals and the number of countries with nuclear ... ... of such actions.
Of course, the world faces serious problems today: terror group Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant), the war in Syria and Iraq, the migrant crisis, slow growth. But these are issues civilised nations are capable ...
... — who maintains close ties with Ankara and recently made an appreciative remark toward the Turkish government (“Turkey assisted the [Kurdish] autonomy in its war against the Islamic State”) — also made a statement published Dec.... ... “Kurdistan’s independence is a continuing process; it is our right and it is up to Kurdistan’s people.” Of course, he meant Iraqi Kurdistan, yet all the other Kurdish political forces cannot but keep in mind the situation prevailing there.
Demirtas, ...
By Zhyldyz Oskonbaeva (RIEAS Senior Advisor & Eurasian Liaison)
On a number of levels, the situation between the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the ethnic Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey is creating a power shift that no one is discussing. In this article, I will explain why: 1) The Kurds have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve a political homeland; 2) Tehran's strategy of expanding Shia influence over the Sunnis is ...
... positions of his friends, and alienate all neutrals while he was gradually winning the war, and at a time when UN chemical inspectors were in Damascus? The sceptic observer cannot help but remember the false intelligence on which the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was founded; Saddam Hussein did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction. The parallel is inescapable. In May, Carla Del Ponte, leading member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, asserted that there ...