Turkey

If Biden wants to create additional leverage before attempting difficult negotiations with Russia, he will need to display strategic patience by partnering with allies on ten preliminary issues.

Challengers to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are proliferating, with two breakaway parties drawing particular notice. In December 2019, Ahmet Davutoglu, who served under Erdogan as foreign minister and then prime minister, formed Gelecek (Future) in an attempt to resurrect a gentler version of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)

Doing so means finding the right mix of hard and soft power, creating new mechanisms with democratic allies, and answering hard questions about various countries and conflicts in the Middle East.

Experts from the Gulf, Egypt, Turkey, and Israel respond to the initial voting results and discuss factors that may help or hinder the next administration.

The EU has repeatedly gotten its policy toward Ankara wrong, inadvertently helping Erdogan at key points during the rise of his illiberal movement while creating preventable tensions over various regional and domestic issues.

Recent gestures, which have included reconciliation talks with Hamas, could strengthen the PA’s Gaza-based rival, further strain relations with its traditional Arab allies, and spur elections with destabilizing results.

New hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan are forcing Tehran to balance domestic demographic concerns and its desire to expand military ties with Yerevan.

Given their sharply diverging views on conflict zones, secularism, and regional spheres of influence, the two states are swiftly becoming NATO’s next diplomatic hotspot.

The current flare-up centers on differing interpretations of international law—a situation that should be employing lawyers but is instead deploying navies.