mircea

Turkey’s Generation Z Turns Against Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s online address to students on June 26 was the latest sign that his efforts to shape Turkey’s young generation in his image have failed. Thousands of students joining the YouTube livestream disliked the video and used the comments section to criticize Erdogan and tell him …

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Iran's Military Alliance with China Threatens Middle East Security

Announcing Iran’s intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and “foreign ships”, a reference to …

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Armenia-Azerbaijan

Clashes broke out Sunday along the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border, killing four Armenian and eleven Azerbaijani soldiers, as well as an Azerbaijani civilian. It is the worst and most worrying escalation on this front since 2016, say Crisis Group experts Olesya Vartanyan and Zaur Shiriyev. Along the border, the shooting disrupted …

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Lebanon's New 'Great Satan'

Hezbollah’s financial crisis is the result of US sanctions on its patrons in Iran, which had been supporting the terrorist group annually with about $700 million from oil revenues…. — Fahim al-Hamid, Saudi journalist, okaz.com.sa, March 22, 2020.

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Lessons from the polish opposition

After years of misrule under Poland’s Law and Justice party, a candidate representing the mainstream opposition almost managed to wrest back control of the presidency. In fact, anti-populists everywhere should see Rafal Trzaskowski’s near-miss campaign as a model for their own efforts.Although Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski did not come out …

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Forget Expectations: German EU Presidency no Magic Wand for the Balkans

It is foolhardy to think Germany’s presidency of the EU or the bloc’s revival of Belgrade-Pristina talks signal a radical shift in enthusiasm for enlargement to the Western Balkans. Balkan states themselves must make concrete plans if they are to deepen relations with the bloc.

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Chinese Military Exercises Threaten to Invade Taiwan

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is currently staging a military exercise across from the Taiwan Strait that looks as if it plans to culminate in an amphibious assault on an island in the South China Sea.

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