Research & Commentary Results

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan typically never misses an opportunity to appear in front of the cameras. But after the airstrike last week that killed dozens of Turkish soldiers in Syria’s Idlib Province, he was unusually quiet. The local governor of the south-eastern Turkish province of Hatay, just across the border from Idlib, did the talking instead, providing information to the outraged public about Turkey’s worst day in the Syrian conflict so far. As the death toll rose, so did the public anger.

On March 1, the Iran-backed Houthis took control of the city of al-Hazm, the capital of al-Jawf Province, after weeks of fierce clashes with local tribes and Yemeni government forces. Incompetence, lack of unified leadership, and the absence of a military strategy by the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition have played into the hands of the Houthis.

The scale of Turkey’s intervention will have shaken Moscow and the losses incurred by pro-regime forces are serious and will further strain a Syrian Army that was already overstretched.

Moscow’s restraint suggests that President Putin will accept a Turkish slap to his credibility as an ally to the Syrian government.

Turkey is running out of options in Idlib Province and in Syria. Aggressively taking on a task that is beyond its capabilities, the government in Ankara now is faced with doubling down on a high-risk gamble, hoping someone, somewhere will believe its bluff, or saving Turkey and the area from worse destruction. There are two things the U.S could do, working together with the EU, NATO, and the UN.

The death of at least 33 Turkish soldiers and wounding of 60 more in Syria’s Idlib on Thursday night was a game-changing development. The crisis there and its effects represent an existential threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and for now, it appears likely that Turkey will remain alone in dealing with the crisis. That presents us with two possible scenarios, both bleak. If the world wants to avoid a true nightmare from becoming reality, it needs to wake up and get engaged.

On Feb. 9, 2020, after five years of involvement in Yemen’s civil war as part of the Saudi-led coalition, the UAE’s leadership celebrated the completion of its phased military withdrawal from the country in a ceremony at Zayed Military City. Although the UAE’s withdrawal has provided an exit strategy from the stalemate in Yemen, it neither suspends Abu Dhabi’s role in the coalition nor curtails Emirati influence on the ground.

The main takeaway from the Saudi Aramco IPO in December 2019 is that the Saudi leadership is willing to fully support private investors. 

The eastern Mediterranean has become an increasingly important focus for Turkey’s foreign and security policy, but the interlocking of new issues like energy politics and sovereignty rights with old problems like Cyprus has created significant challenges for Ankara.

Over the past 14 months, there have been moments when it seemed like progress was being made toward de-escalation in Yemen, but there have also been significant setbacks as well. Peace efforts thus far have been largely fragmented and frail, and two primary lessons from the past failures have become clear.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds himself in a tough spot with Russia as tensions in Syria have escalated dramatically. In a rare direct military confrontation between Turkish and Syrian regime forces, 14 Turkish soldiers and over 100 regime troops were killed in two separate clashes in Idlib over the past 10 days.

The Black Sea is a very important region for NATO, and has not received the attention it deserves; a separate focused NATO strategy and support for countries in the Black Sea would send a message that the Alliance takes the region seriously.

Turkey’s blossoming relationship with Russia has not only raised eyebrows in Washington and Western European capitals, it has also caused a great deal of discomfort in countries like Georgia that have borne the brunt of Russian aggression. A few recent scattered signals from Ankara, however, might comfort Turkey’s northeastern neighbor.

With its clash with Syrian forces on Feb. 3, Turkey is being forced to realize that it has very limited leverage over its foreign policy priorities.

In 2016 the Turkish parliament voted to revoke parliamentary immunity and initiated the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) political purge of MPs with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Despite the introduction of a new assembly in 2018, Turkey’s October invasion of northeast Syria provided ample incentives for the launch of new investigations into HDP members protesting the operation. The targeting of the HDP has set new legal and political precedents that could undermine the political capacity of the opposition coalition as a whole and create ideological divisions over the so-called “Kurdish Question.” This report records documented arrests of HDP MPs from June 2016 to January 2018 in order to identify prominent trends and waves of arrests that correspond to political and legal events.