From MESH Admin Walter Laqueur contributes a new paper to MESH’s Middle East Papers series, on Russia’s Muslim strategy. That strategy, barely coherent, is riddled with contradictions, as Russia vacillates between resentment of the American-led world order and fear of an ascendant Islam. For now, it’s the resentment against the West that dominates the Russian […]
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Posted in Announcements, Mark T. Clark on Oct 27th, 2009 Comments Off on ASMEA meets again
From Mark T. Clark On October 22-24, 2009, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) held its second annual conference, entitled “The Middle East and Africa: Historic Connections and Strategic Bridges.” At the welcoming reception on the first night, Vice President Peter Pham announced the creation of the new, refereed […]
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Posted in Geopolitics, Soner Cagaptay, Turkey on Oct 26th, 2009 Comments Off on AKP reshuffles Turkey’s neighbors
From Soner Cagaptay Turkey’s ties with its neighbors have been transformed since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power almost seven years ago in November 2002. Some analysts have described the AKP’s foreign policy as a “zero problems with neighbors” approach. Under the AKP, Ankara has indeed eliminated problems and built good ties […]
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Posted in Announcements, Books, Robert Satloff on Oct 25th, 2009 Comments Off on Books take prizes
From Robert Satloff On Saturday, October 17, at The Washington Institute’s annual Weinberg Founders Conference at Lansdowne, I was privileged to serve as master of ceremonies for the announcement of our second annual Book Prize for outstanding books on the Middle East published in the previous year. This is a major literary award, one of […]
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Posted in Israel, Michael Reynolds, Syria, Turkey on Oct 14th, 2009 Comments Off on Turkey’s foreign policy flip
From Michael Reynolds The past several days have witnessed not one but two momentous, even stunning, developments in Turkish foreign policy that are reverberating through the region. Both are the work of Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former university professor who became Turkish foreign minister last year. Before that, Davutoğlu (shown on far right with his Syrian […]
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Posted in Iraq, J. Scott Carpenter on Oct 14th, 2009 Comments Off on Iraq’s elections in peril?
From J. Scott Carpenter The Obama administration has finally woken up to the fact that Iraqi parliamentary elections scheduled for January 16 are in real danger of not taking place as scheduled. The realization has been lamentably slow in coming and, with just two days to go before an Iraqi government-imposed deadline expires, may have […]
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From Matthew Levitt The Washington Post reports that some in the administration see the Lebanese Hezbollah as a possible model for transformation of the Taliban. Describing the Taliban as a movement “deeply rooted” in Afghanistan, much like Hezbollah is in Lebanon, proponents of a Hezbollah model for the Taliban see a scenario in which the […]
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