Basheer Nafi | 02 November 2017
For some time, I have been grappling with the British reasons behind the Balfour Declaration and what it really meant. Let us start with what we know. In early March 1915, with a sense of [...]
Basheer Nafi | 17 October 2017
The current flare-up between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the central government in Baghdad over the disputed land and oilfields in Kirkuk is nothing new. However, it was the Kurdish referendum for independence held on 25 [...]
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 [...]
Basheer Nafi | 11 September 2017
In one of his more provocative appearances, Devlet Bahceli, chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in Turkey, said recently that the Kurdish Regional Government's referendum plans might be reason enough for Turkey to declare war on [...]
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 [...]
Basheer Nafi | 23 July 2017
The Arab League's silence over the Gulf crisis and inability to keep the GCC from splitting reflects a post-WWI regional order in its final throes If seen as a purely Arab affair, there is no [...]
Mehmet Emin Cengiz | 23 July 2017
It's not likely that the defeat of Daesh in Mosul is going to mean the end of the group itself. So long as the political conditions for radicalism and sympathy for Daesh's ideology exists, territorial [...]
Galip Dalay | 10 July 2017
The Arab Spring barely touched the region's monarchies. But as the Qatari crisis shows, for the region's kings, the era of stability and exceptionalism is coming to an end The Arab Spring was an event [...]
