The Syrian Civil war presents a challenge to conventional theories and practices of statecraft in the region. The resolution of the civil war requires a radical re-thinking of what was previously considered to be permanent features of the region. A re-imagining of a regional order is necessary. The two countries best equipped to carry out such a re-imagining are Turkey and Iran. Such a project would require building of sustained deep bilateral relations that lead to a convergence of interests. The obstacles to such a bilateral co-ordination are many, but not insurmountable. The region needs a new vision of the future.

Since the July 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s first-ever freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s military-backed government has cracked down on political opposition, and, in the process, committed numerous transgressions against basic human rights. Egypt’s recent rights record is, by nearly all measures, poor. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights Monitor, the International Federation for Human Rights, Freedom House, and other regional and international rights groups, as well as numerous independent academic experts and foreign governments, have condemned what they consider to be a series of gross human rights violations committed by the Egyptian government. The list of violations includes the banning of political opposition parties, the shutting down of opposition media and charities, mass killings, mass arrests, widespread torture, forced disappearances, and the largest mass death sentences in modern world history, among other listed transgressions. Human Rights Watch has written that Egypt’s current human rights crisis is “the most serious in the country’s modern history.

Political developments after the July 3rd coup in Egypt must be evaluated by taking into account the new character of coups d’état in the post-Cold War period. As a ‘network’ coup, carried out with the active participation of civilians from different sectors in the process, the coup annulled the possibility of the ‘engagement’ and ‘withdrawal’ of the Egyptian military from the system. Without the withdrawal of this entire network, which will be an utterly onerous task, the Egyptian system may only replicate what was once Turkey’s fate, a tutelary democracy, and that only in the long haul. In the meantime, Egyptian President Sisi will have to walk a tightrope to satisfy the demands of three parties: external pressures for economic liberalization and stability, the Egyptian military-as-institution, and his domestic constituency. The logic of the coup as a politicizing, destabilizing, and paranoia-breeding act, however, may defy all these purposes.

Russia is working to expand its footprint in the Middle East, pursuing both diplomatic and commercial advantages. What Moscow is also aiming at is the diversification of relations beyond long-standing partners such as Iran and the Syrian regime. Building up its military presence in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad, it has also reached out to the Gulf countries. The Middle East is key to Russia’s bid to gain recognition as one of the pillars of a new multi-polar order, balance the US and assert power in its neighbourhood. But such ambitions are still a long way from attainment, while risks originating from the region, from the rise of jihadist militancy to collapsing oil prices, are all too real.