middle east news

Aug. 15 marks the 39th anniversary of the launch of the armed campaign by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party against the Turkish state. The group has evolved over the years, shedding its demands for Kurdish independence. Yet however much it rejects the nationalist label, many Kurds continue to join the group in the hope of forcing Turkey to grant its long-repressed Kurdish minority autonomy at the very least. Failing to resolve the Kurdish issue remains one of the biggest obstacles to democracy in Turkey, says Dutch author Frederike Geerdink.

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Tunisia's descent into autocracy under President Cais Saied is continuing full throttle. The Islamist Ennahda which shared power in successive governments since Tunisia's 2011 Jasmine Revolution is the main target of Saied's ire. Dozens of its members including party leader Rached Ghannouchi are behind bars on flimsily documented charges. Many are being held in life threatening conditions.Their children are mobilizing across the globe to draw attention to their plight. 

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Several top US senators say Turkey's acquisition of US F-16 fighter jets hinges on its ratification of Sweden's membership in NATO. Turkey wants guarantees from Congress that it will sign off on the deal before securing parliamentary approval for Sweden's membership. However, Endy Zemenides, executive director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council, an influential body focusing on US-Greek relations, insists however that it will take more for Congress to approve the sale. 

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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has decided to tell the Turkish parliament to greenlight Sweden's NATO membership, prompting a flood of praise from alliance leaders. US President Joe Biden, who met with Erdogan for more than an hour, hailed him for what he termed Erdogan's courage. At the same time, Erdogan angered the Kremlin with a series of moves in support of Ukraine including backing its membership of NATO. Is Erdogan turning away from Russia in favor of America and Europe? Analyst Nicholas Danforth says such conclusions are premature.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's victory in the May presidential and parliamentary polls ushers in a new and irreversible era in Turkish politics, cementing one man rule

and reducing parliament to more of a rubber stamp. The sole threat to Erdogan's grip over power is Turkey's floundering economy but it looks like Turkey's longest serving ruler will muddle through — at least till nationwide local elections next spring. 

For more on Turkey's descent into autocracy read Yavuz Baydar's piece.

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The legacy of Qassem Soleimani, the legendary commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al Quds Force, continues to reverberate across the region, says his biographer Arash Azizi. He has left a vacuum that has yet to be filled.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was just re-elected president even though pollsters predicted that his rival would win.

Turkey scholar Howard Eissenstat says that Erdogan, the country's most skilled politician in modern times, is a master at reading the nation's pulse. But can he sustain his rule in the midst of a failing economy and prevail in critical local elections that are to be held next year?

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The co-chair of the main party governing Kurdish-led northeast Syria believes Arab engagement with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria may help secure a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict, provided that there are conditions attached.

These include granting ethnic and religious minorities equal rights. However, Muslim says "the miserable" League has delivered little if anything on other Arab conflicts.

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Turkey's Kurds are poised to swing the outcome of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing the biggest challenge in his 20 years in uninterrupted power. Kurdish parliamentary candidate Ceylan Akca says that despite his government's attempts to intimidate Kurdish voters, the opposition will prevail.

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Turkey and Iraq have been mired in a legal dispute over the export of Iraqi Kurdish oil through Turkish export terminals. Baghdad says the deal struck between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds to sell oil is illegal. The International Chamber of Commerce's international arbitration fined Turkey for breach of contract. Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurds have since agreed to resume exports on new terms that gives the central government a greater say. However, Ankara has not allowed the exports to resume. Bilal Wahab, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, believes Turkey wants pledges from Baghdad that it won't seek further compensation for periods uncovered by the arbitration case. The standoff is leading to a huge loss of revenue for the Iraqi Kurds. 

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Turkey’s watershed elections on which the future of its crippled democracy hangs are due to be held on May 14. Opinion polls continue to point to a tight race making the outcome of the presidential and parliamentary polls difficult to call . Election security remains a big concern and there is little doubt that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will stop at little to win. The largest pro-Kurdish bloc however dealt him something of a blow this week declaring it would not field its own candidate for the presidential race. POMED's Merve Tahiroglu says the Kurds will do their best to help the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu win in a first round. 

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks losing power for the first time in 20 years in elections that are to be held on May 14. He has turned to Huda par, an Islamist Kurdish party that has roots in Hizbullah, a violent group that waged a bloody war against the PKK and its sympathizers in the 1990s. London-based academic Mashuq Kurt is the author of a widely acclaimed book on Turkey's Hizbullah. He says violence between Huda Par and PKK supporters could be reignited should the election results be contested. 

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Turkey will hold parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14. The outcome will determine whether Turkey can return to a more democratic path or plunge into full blown autocracy, or worse dictatorship, some say. For the first time the opposition appears to have a chance of winning, despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's tight grip over the media, the judiciary and the country's Supreme Electoral Board. Turkish commentator Cengiz Candar argues that Turkey's recent earthquakes have not only wrecked an area the size of Portugal, but Erdogan's career with it. 

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Tunisia's autocratic President Kais Saied, since his dramatic power grab in 2021, has increased the volume of repression in the north African nation, arresting scores of opposition figures as well as civil activists and journalists. The country's fledgling democracy is on life support. Yet Western governments are supporting Saied, believing that his iron grip can stave off a fresh exodus of illegal migrants from Europe and that financial assistance will hold Russia and China at bay. 

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Cooperation between Iran and Russia has been growing since Russian forces intervened in Syria to help rescue Iran's top regional ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015. Military ties between the two countries have now expanded to Ukraine, where Russian forces are using drones supplied by Tehran. The deepening alliance is disrupting regional balances and causing worry among Gulf monarchies and Israel. 

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Public anger is mounting over the Turkish government's slow response to the massive earthquakes that shook the country's southern regions on Feb. 6. The death toll is rapidly climbing as an unknown number of people remain trapped under the rubble in freezing temperatures in Turkey and Syria alike. Many blame the high number of deaths on the Turkish government's lack of preparedness and lax safety standards. Others say the fact that power is concentrated in the hands of a single person, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made things worse.

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Tensions are escalating in the South Caucasus again, as Armenia and Azerbaijan remain locked in a bitter standoff over access to Nagorno-Karabakh. As an emboldened Azerbaijan eyes further gains — including a land corridor to Turkey that would cut off Iran’s access to Armenia — relations between Baku and Teheran are growing more hostile by the day.  

 https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/01/turkey-rises-russia-fades-iran-and-azerbaijan-clash-over-armenia

 https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/caucasus/nagorno-karabakh-conflict/266-averting-new-war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan

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Turkey is headed for watershed elections on May 14 that could, depending on its outcome, deal the final blow to its wobbly democracy.

The odds are fully stacked in favor of the country's autocratic president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Economist magazine last week caused a furore when it published a special report on "Erdogan's Empire" 

bearing the title "Turkey's Looming Dictatorship" on its cover. As the report's author, Piotr Zalewski noted, things are really bad in Turkey with the economy in shambles and the rule of law in free fall. Yet, Turkey is not on the level of full blown dictatorships like Russia or Belarus and may yet reverse course.

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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants to meet his longtime nemesis Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Many see Ankara's recent efforts to fix relations with Damascus as part of Erdogan's election strategy, amid promises to send back millions of unwanted Syrian refugees. Others say it's part of an effort to crush the Syrian Kurds' autonomous entity. Either way, normalizing Assad without holding him to account for his crimes will hurt the Syrian people and those countries which engage with him, warns the UK's Syria envoy Jonathan Hargreaves.

For more on Turkey's courtship of the Assad regime tune in to last week's episode of On The Middle East:

https://www.al-monitor.com/podcasts/syrian-commentator-ibrahim-hamidi-says-kurds-have-surpassed-jihadis-assad-regimes-greatest

and read the United States' Peace Institute's Middle East expert Mona Yacoubian's latest for War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2023/01/ukraines-consequences-are-finally-spreading-to-syria/

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