Arab & Islamic Politics

Although the election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came as a shock to many observers, it actually represented the final step in a gradual shift within the country's political mainstream. The conservatives now control all levers of power in the Islamic Republic, with opposing factions effectively neutralized. And while the

On January 24, 2006, Yigit Alpogan, secretary-general of Turkey's National Security Council, addressed The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. Ambassador Alpogan, who assumed his current post in August 2004 as the first civilian head of the Turkish National Security Council, previously served as the Turkish ambassador to Greece and Turkmenistan

When Shiite ministers recently "suspended" their participation in the Lebanese cabinet, though without resigning, it highlighted an increasingly apparent reality in post-Syria Lebanon: Two powerful camps coexist today. One, led by Hizballah, in alliance with the Amal movement, sits atop a Shiite community generally, though not unanimously, supporting their positions

Turkish Edition Now Available Conventional wisdom holds that in the interwar period, Kemalist secularism eliminated religion from the public sphere in Turkey, leaving Turkish national identity devoid of religious content. Yet in his new book, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey, Institute senior fellow Soner Cagaptay reaches an altogether

At the annual summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), held in Abu Dhabi on December 18 and 19, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman avoided confronting Iran directly on its suspected nuclear weapons program. Instead, these member states confronted Israel

Egypt completed the final round of balloting in legislative elections on December 7. The first round of polling took place on November 9; all told 5,414 candidates vied for 444 seats in the lower house of Egypt's parliament, the People's Assembly. The elections were set in three phases to facilitate

After a period of some tolerance under former president Mohammad Khatami, Iran is now experiencing a cultural clampdown. President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is implementing the hardest of hardline ideological tendencies in the cultural arena, consistent with his belief that his administration should prepare the country for the reappearance of the hidden

On November 8, the State Department released the International Religious Freedom Report, its annual survey of religious freedom across the world ( read the report online). Several of the designated "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) are in the Middle East: Iran, Sudan, and embarrassingly, in light of longstanding close diplomatic

November 9 marks the start of legislative elections in Egypt. These are the first elections to be contested after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak pledged to implement political reforms during his presidential campaign in September. The political opposition maintains that the legislative elections will not reflect the true will of the