Betul Dogan Akkas | 21 July 2023
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan embarked on a 3-day-long Gulf trip to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A wide range of agreements was signed in the three countries encompassing [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas | 18 November 2022
A decade of dedicated work has been poured into Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation, and Social Media by Marc Owen Jones. The book comprises of fifteen chapters, including case studies and theoretical discussions that are in-depth and interdisciplinary. In his preface
Betul Dogan Akkas | 02 August 2022
Biden's fruitless visit to Saudi Arabia and beyond: the elephant in the room remains Last month US President Joe Biden visited the Middle East, including Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia, in [...]
Hazal Muslu El-Berni Betul Dogan Akkas | 14 January 2022 | TR
With the signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2008, Turkey became the first non-Gulf country to engage with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) through a strategic dialogue mechanism
Betul Dogan Akkas | 23 December 2021
In 2018, students and scholars of Gulf Studies were shocked by news stories reporting that a PhD student from Durham University was charged with spying in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to evidence [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas | 01 October 2021
What to know about the upcoming elections in Qatar? Qatar’s long awaited Advisory Council (Majlis-al Shura) elections will be held in Qatar tomorrow, on October 2, 2021. Thirty members of the council, out of [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas | 04 August 2021
Christopher M. Davidson’s From Sheikhs to Sultanism is an outstanding conceptualization of authoritarianism and statecraft in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Like Davidson’s previous publications on the Gulf monarchies, it delivers a detailed analysis [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas | 02 July 2021
Will Qatar Return to a Mediator Role in the Yemen Conflict? Yemen has been devastated by a civil war ongoing since 2014. The atmosphere following the Arab uprisings led to drastic unrest in one [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas | 05 February 2021
What does the breakthrough in the GCC crisis mean for Turkey? At the 41st GCC Summit on January 5, the leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states- Saudi Arabia, the UAE, [...]
Betul Dogan Akkas 
Gilla Camden | 13 April 2020 | TR
Discussions on the political culture of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are centralized around their rentier systems. However, this perspective prevents us from seeing the embedded traditional values and politics which these societies have been managing with under their rulers for decades
