Middle Orient

Incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu are wrapping up their campaigns; Russia became an issue in Friday’s rallies. With less than 40 hours to go until Turkey’s closest elections in its modern history, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his top rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu are …

On April 19 and 20 Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, visited two of Iran’s close neighbors in central Asia. Facing each other across the Caspian Sea are Azerbaijan, which borders north-western Iran, and Turkmenistan, which borders its north-east. Both were among the fifteen republics once swallowed up by the USSR, …

Two French nationals that were imprisoned in Iran have been released on humanitarian grounds, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced on Friday. In a statement on Friday, Nasser Kanaani confirmed reports on the release of two French citizens from prison in Iran. He said the two French citizens, …

Fighting between the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad and Israeli forces continued for a fourth day on Friday, with no signs of an imminent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. For the first time since the start of the current round of fighting, Islamic Jihad fired shells toward Jerusalem. They were …

Turkish presidential election Sunday goes down to the wires From a geopolitical perspective, the Turkish presidential election on Sunday may appear to be one of the most crucial non-violent political events of this year. But appearances can be deceptive in Turkish politics. In the surcharged polarisation of “West versus Rest” …

Middle Eastern battlegrounds are alive and kicking even though rivals seek to balance contentious relations. Take efforts by the United Arab Emirates, and more recently Saudi Arabia, to bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in from the cold in a bid to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran and address …

The Arab League’s decision to readmit Syria rewards brutality and betrays victims. It also confirms the marginalization of the United States and the irrelevance of Europe in the region. A collection of Arab countries grouped in the Arab League has brought President Bashar al-Assad back into its fold. The twenty-two-member-strong …

On March 18, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mavlut Cavusoglu paid the first visit of its kind to Cairo in a decade. This move reciprocates a recent visit by his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukri, to the Turkish city of Mersin on February 27, which was in response to the devastating earthquake that …

Türkiye is raising the heat on the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, denouncing its ties with the Syrian Democratic Forces. After a helicopter carrying Syrian Kurdish fighters crashed in Duhok on March 26, Türkiye imposed a ban on all flights to and from Sulaimaniyah through its airspace. It did so because …

Turkey has still yet to restart oil flows from northern Iraq following a controversial court ruling despite efforts by Iraqi and Kurdish authorities. The stoppage is threatening the Kurdistan Region’s oil sector. Iraq’s state oil company has officially asked Turkey to restart its oil pipeline with the Kurdistan Region, Kurdish …