Research & Commentary Results

The 1,667-strong contingent of U.S. and international forces that make up the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO) in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is in a tough spot. The ongoing failure of the Egyptian government’s war against the ISIS-led rebellion there has shredded the MFO’s mandate to monitor Egyptian and Israeli adherence to their peace treaty. Sinai’s descent into anarchy also puts outnumbered and outgunned U.S. troops in the only location other than Iraq that confronts ISIS in an active theater of war.

The ironies of modern Turkey’s history seem to be emerging in sharper relief. On Sunday, August 30, Turkey will celebrate its signal victory of 1922, which capped the struggle of Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founding father, to secure the country’s freedom. From the beginning of that war of liberation until final victory, Ataturk worked tirelessly to gain the support of all Turks for the fight for independence. That victory of 1922 was a military triumph, but it also reflected the power of a united people to bring a dream to reality.

Read the full piece at The National Interest.

After months of hesitation to take action against the Islamic State (ISIS) and almost two years of quiet since a 2013 truce with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkey decided to pick a fight with both. It has been pounding Islamic State targets in Syria and PKK positions in northern Iraq.

Egyptian diplomats rarely have a good word to say about U.S. policies these days. In contrast, they are enthusiastic in their praise of the close relations between Cairo and Jerusalem—centered on counterterror security and intelligence cooperation in Sinai—and effusive in their acknowledgement of Israel’s response to the bloody insurgency there, led by Egypt’s ISIS affiliate in the “Sinai Province,” Ansar Beit al-Maqdis.

“Relations with Israel are great,” observed an Egyptian official recently.[1]

Salafi discourse has made considerable inroads in Turkey over the past 30 years, making contributions to sectarianism in ways that have yet to be fully studied and understood.

For Egypt’s low-income majority, weddings are the prime source of group entertainment, celebrated like block parties in cramped streets decorated with arabesque tapestries and drenched in colored lights and sound. You won’t hear romantic crooning at these gatherings; in Cairo’s densely-inhabited popular quarters, wedding parties are more akin to raves. The music is raw synthetic beat embroidered with syncopated tabla (Egyptian drum) samples and queasy electronic loops.

June 8, 2015 – Gonul Tol, director of the Center for Turkish Studies at The Middle East Institute, discusses the reactions to Turkey’s June 7 elections, and what the setback for the ruling AK party and President Erdogan means for Turkey’s domestic policy agenda and its relations with the United States.

On June 7, Turks will choose a new parliament. This decision will be the most important one for Turkey in 70 years, since the advent of multi-party elections in 1945. The election at heart is about religion, as it brings Turkey to the brink of becoming a republic dominated by the religious convictions of its current leadership. If the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wins a 60 percent majority of parliamentary seats, democratic choice will likely yield to the dogma of faith.

Turkish citizens are going to the polls on June 7 to elect the next government that will rule the country until 2019. With an ongoing peace process with the Kurds, a stumbling democracy, an economic recession on the horizon, the prospect of constitutional reform, a stalled EU accession process, tension in Turkey-U.S. relations, and a region engulfed in chaos, the stakes have not been higher.

In the year since being elected to the presidency, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has consolidated a ruling coalition, restored economic growth, and brought back considerable stability to the country after four years of turmoil. But this has come with a harsh crackdown on dissent, a decline in freedoms and human rights, and abuses by the police and judiciary. In the short term, the combination of nationalism, modest economic growth, and highlighting the war on terror is politically sustainable among a broad cross section of the population frustrated by years of uncertainty and economic decline.

Inaugurated in 1987, Cairo’s Metro was Africa’s first inner-city underground and the embodiment of Hosni Mubarak’s promise to modernize Egypt’s infrastructure. It is hard to think of a Mubarak-era project that was better planned, more efficiently executed, or has had such a functional impact on so many people’s lives. Serving four million passengers daily, the Metro is the fastest, cheapest means of navigating the traffic-congested urban behemoth.

The literature on democratic transitions from the last 50 years has emphasized the process of transforming an authoritarian state into a democracy. Much has been written about negotiations between ancien regimes and democratic forces, particularly the bridges that must be made between elements of old and new regimes. Most studies on democratic transitions also examine the competency or democratic nature of such countries’ institutions.

With an ongoing peace process with the Kurds and a stumbling democracy, the stakes for Turkey’s parliamentary elections next month have not been higher. The opposition parties—the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the Republican People’s Party (CHP), and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—need all the help they can get to deny an outright victory to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has ruled Turkey since 2002. The growing popularity of the pro-Kurdish HDP, along with signs of declining support for the AKP, point to the possibility of a significant shift in Turkish politics.