Subterms
On Friday, the media reported that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), had arrested two powerful members of the royal family, Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, the sole remaining full brother of King Salman, and the former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef. Al Jazeera describes the arrests as “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s […] More
On February 28, Turkey opened its borders with the European Union in the wake of the death of 34 Turkish soldiers in Syria. In response, Greece and Bulgaria stepped their border protections, insisting that they would not admit any Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war. In the meantime, the EU called on Ankara to uphold […] More
Recent developments in Turkish politics have left many baffled. More and more Kurdish parents in southeast Turkey are now rising up against the secessionist the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its political wing, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), to reclaim their children the PKK forcibly enlisted. At the same time, the main opposition, the secular […] More
Two important facts emerged from the Iran elections on 21 February. The first is that the country actually held elections — a rarity in that region. The second is that the outcome was almost wholly negative for the regime. The candidate list had been purged of anyone not loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his uncompromising authoritarian […] More
On February 21, yet another nominal election will take place in Iran, coming on the heels of widespread protests in over 100 cities at the end of last year. It was the third time that the Iranian government faced protests in the last decade and the biggest since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. According to various […] More
There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of Turkish troops placing their boots on non-Turkish soil was almost unthinkable. Turkey might bomb Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions in Iraq, Turkish aircraft might skirmish occasionally with Greek counterparts, but no one got their boots muddy. All that has changed. The Turkish Republic […] More
To the extent that people know anything about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), they reasonably assume that they have something to do with the economy (development), and with the environment (sustainability). They’re only partly right. The bigger challenge, especially for countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, is governance. The 17 SDGs were […] More
As the entire world knows, Jared Kushner has been working very hard over the past two and a half years at crafting a deal with so much cash in it ($50 billion) that no reasonable Palestinian could refuse. To his deepest consternation, when he finally revealed its contents to the public at the beginning of […] More
