Turkey

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.

In October 2019, the U.S. troop withdrawal and subsequent Turkish invasion of northern Syria upended Kurdish plans in the region. But a year later, the major Syrian Kurdish rivals—the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdish National Council (KNC)—are coming together after a lengthy estrangement. This past June, representatives from the

Israel’s normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates may enable Gulf oil to make up for any break in Azerbaijani supplies, though this option could harm its ties with Baku and Turkey.

Much of the commentary surrounding the deal has focused on what it portends for the Palestinian issue and other Israeli relationships, but it may say just as much about the four rival factions that have crystallized in the region since 2011.

Publicly committing to a ceasefire is a positive development, but many details still need to be resolved with active U.S. support, especially security arrangements in central Libya and the speedy resumption of oil exports.

Putin set a trap for Erdogan long ago, and because the Turkish leader woke up too late to his predicament, he now has little leverage in the unequal bilateral relationship.