Policy Brief #47 / 2023
Policy Brief #47 / 2023
The Middle East has been clearly showing signs that is it changing. It would not be an overstatement to say that a lot of what is happening now would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago.
The greatest of these changes is the China-mediated rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Given that these countries are regional “centers of power”, their new and improved relations may help reduce regional...
... especially important for Turkey, given that it is on the eve of its presidential and parliamentary elections, which are to be held in June this year.
Interestingly, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to solve the problem posed by Syrian Kurds by combining force with the possibility of normalizing relations with Syria. Back in December of last year, he proposed to hold a meeting between the presidents of Russia, Turkey, and Syria. According to Erdogan, this meeting should be after negotiations ...
... launched air strikes on parts of northern Syria with Operation Claw-Sword. The November 13
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terrorist attack in Istanbul was a major reason for the start of the operation. Turkey carried out air strikes on areas dominated by mostly Syrians and Iraqi Kurds. More than 50 aircraft and 20 drones took part in the air operation, with the support of Turkey’s artillery.
Afterwards, Recep Erdogan stated that the air strikes were only the beginning of Turkey’s plans, and Turkish troops would start ground ...
... operations in Syria against the Kurdish left-wing groups, Russia tried primarily to protect the interests of its ally in Damascus and to prevent new violations of Syria’s sovereignty by offering the Assad regime various forms of relations with the Syrian Kurds and their integration into the Syrian state structures. However, this process has never advanced.
After the Istanbul attack, it will probably be much more difficult for Moscow, as well as Washington, to keep Ankara from another invasion of northeastern ...
RIAC and IRAS Working Paper #59/2020
RIAC and the Institute for Iran-Eurasia Studies Working Paper #59/2020
This paper aims to analyze the pivotal points of the Middle Eastern crises and to which extent the interests of Moscow and Tehran overlap or contradict each other. Some of the key issues of the political situation in the region were assessed, such as the situation in Idlib, the prospects for a political process in Syria, Israel’s role in the region’s future, the path to Syria’s reconstruction...
Confusion and lack of definition have made US relations with the Kurds a challenge to perceive and discuss
International relations have been undergoing a gradual but sustained transformation over the last few decades. For example, the 2014-2017
peshmerga
-Islamic State (IS) war, while a case of a small, asymmetric ...
... 1991, the latter of which led to a change in the domestic policy of President of Iraq Saddam Hussein and thus brought about new dynamics in the relations between the Iraqi government and the country’s ethnoreligious groups (mainly the Shiites and the Kurds). Iraq was under an embargo imposed by the United Nations at the time, which limited access to resource distribution for a part of the elite and, combined with the government’s practices that marginalized a part of the population, led many to ...
... consequences. For the first time, the Sunnis found themselves in a position of the ethnic-denominational minority. They felt the growing inferiority of their situation, which prompted many of them to join ISIS terrorist camps. The same situation motivated the Kurds to steer a course for independence. The overall terrorist threat during the expansion of ISIS rallied the Shiites and the Kurds to fight the pseudo-caliphate together. Yet, after ISIS was defeated, the Kurds held a referendum on independence. As ...
... Iraq and Syria, as well as the energy policy of Russia in the Arab Mashreq region. The authors also analyze Iraq’s oil prospects in the post-war period under sanctions against Iran. Special attention is paid to the Kurdish factor and the role the Kurds play in the future of energy in the region, the possibility of subregional integration in the Arab Mashreq and the increasing influence of Russian energy companies in regards to gas projects located in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Russia’s Interests ...
... entity that does not have any demographic or geographical components within the territories of the Syrian Republic? In fact, the Kurdish population in Syria does not exceed six percent. The UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura revealed that Kurds represent only five percent of the Syrian population. Besides, Kurds live in geographical areas that are not interconnected and do not constitute a majority in their places of residence. It is the so-called “war against ISIS” that granted them ...
