Galip Dalay | 18 July 2018
How will Turkey's foreign policy change under the new system? On July 9, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was sworn in as Turkey's first elected president with executive powers. His outright victory in the first round of the June [...]
Galip Dalay | 21 May 2018
Ankara is traditionally wary of Tehran’s ambitions in its immediate neighbourhood. But despite experiencing occasional shifts, their relationship has long been relatively stable. Since neither country views the other as posing an existential threat – [...]
Galip Dalay | 21 February 2018
As many experts have pointed out, the Russian-backed Astana process, rather than leading to a reign of peace, presented the opportunity for the Syrian government to redesign and restructure the conflict in its favour. Putting [...]
Galip Dalay | 23 January 2018
On Saturday, Turkish jets bombed the Kurdish-majority province of Afrin in northwestern Syria. Alongside earlier artillery shelling of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) positions, the air bombing was only a prelude to the ground operation which began the following day. With this, Syria's highly complex [...]
Galip Dalay | 17 January 2018
What was previously depicted as a very strong relationship between Turkey and the Kurdistan region seems to have been no more than a fragile, transactional one Turkey's relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan has been a subject [...]
Galip Dalay | 27 December 2017
Haider al-Abadi's victories over Islamic State and the pushback against Kurdish independence have given rise to optimism about the future, but Iraq's leader has yet to begin building a new inclusive country In 2017, Iraq [...]
Galip Dalay | 03 October 2017
In the face of enormous opposition, on Monday Iraqi Kurdistan went ahead with a referendum on independence. Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States were among the major international powers that urged the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to [...]
Galip Dalay | 13 September 2017
Can common concerns about US policies in the Middle East and Kurdish statehood ambitions bring Turkey and Iran together? Turkish-Iranian relations have always defied any general characterisation. The two neighbours have never had a straightforward [...]
Galip Dalay | 06 September 2017
Operating in Exile Has Hindered Their Effectiveness One of the more notable developments from the fight against the Islamic State (or ISIS) has been the emergence of a Kurdish public sphere in the Middle East. Since U.S. coalition [...]
Galip Dalay | 23 August 2017
By adopting a novel approach to fragmentation in the Middle East and North Africa, regional players may see the collapse of state unity as an opportunity for a new interconnected order It is now a [...]
