Siyaset

Turkey has just had its second round presidental election, and Erdoğan has secured his third term - dashing the hopes of the Turkish opposition. But what does this mean for the deep divisions within Turkish society and how is life likely to look for half the country that didn't vote for the AKP-MHP alliance? To answer these questions, and more, is Selim Koru - a Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). Selim has also recently launched Kulturkampf, a critical resource on modern Turkish politics.

Salafi-Jihadism has had a huge impact on the societies, policies, and security situations in MENA and abroad. But where did modern Jihadist groups come from, what do they look like today, and what impact has the "War on Terror" had on people living in Western states? To tell us about the movement as well as give thoughts on how current events like the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has on the ability of transnational Jihadist organisation to regroup, is Thomas Hegghammer - a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and the author of The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad.

The PKK-Turkish conflict has reached a new phase with Turkey relying more heavily on drones to press the group further and further away from its borders. To talk to us about how Turkey's drone program came to be, where it is going, and how it affects the PKK is Aaron Stein, the Director of Research at the FPRI.

Just how free are journalists in Iraq's Kurdistan Region to report on the facts and what kind of pressure do they face from the ruling KRG authorities? Against the backdrop of a current (15-02-2021) trial against journalists in Dohuk after a demonstration calling for press freedoms, Abdulla Hawez, an independent researcher on Kurds and the KRG, speaks to Siyaset to shed light on some of these issues and how they tie into local governance.

One of the Middle East's better publisised, but least understood political relationships is that of various Kurdish political actors and the state of Israel. To give background as well as insights on Israel-Kurdish relations is Jonathan Spyer, a journalist and analyst on Middle East politics as well as founder of MECRA.

The Assyrians, despite being one of the indigenous communities at the heart of the Middle East as well as being a particularly vulnerable one at that, are poorly understood. A community that used to number at least a million before the 2003 invasion of Iraq now struggles to hang on to survival. On Siyaset to explain some of the reasons why the community is in the position it is as well as how the community relates to the authorities around them is Reine Hanna, an activist as well as director of the Assyrian Policy Institute.

Afrin has been occupied by Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups that have recently (as of 09-2020) been accused of what amount to crimes against humanity in a special UN report on the state of the region including the kidnapping for ransom, sexual abuse and murders of the region's women. To evaluate the content of the report as well as present her own findings on the state of women's rights in Afrin is Meghan Bodette, an independent researcher on women's movements in North and East Syria as well as the founder of Missing Afrin Women Project.

Turkey has used tremendous effort in recent years to increase its hard power through building a burgeoning economy as well as modernising its large military. However, it also has a unique soft power resource with a large and politically active diaspora in Europe. In this episode, Sinem Adar, an associate researcher at the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs explains Turkey's relationship with its diaspora as well as its efforts at cultivating support through the larger Muslim diaspora.

What is the Kurdistan Regional Government? Can we really call it one unified government or are we really looking at the same two KDP and PUK governments from the 90's with a shiny new label? Explaining the way in which the administration seems to work is Megan Connelly, a non-resident fellow at IRIS.

Iranian politics is, like most political cultures of the Middle East, extremely complex - and so is the image of the Iranian political opposition. For this episode, to explain the basics of two of the most often mentioned Iranian opposition groups in exile, our guests are Matthew Petti - an investigative journalist at The National Interest, as well as Seamus Malekafzali - a journalist and writer. They help explain who the Pahlavis and the MEK are as well as how they are potentially linked to the U.S. State Department.

Nagorno-Karabakh isn't in the Middle East or North Africa, but what happensin this Caucasus region both mimics, as well as has repercussions on what happens in the wider region. In this episode, Joshua Kucera of Eurasianet tells us the history of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in addition to explaining how it links to both Russia and Turkey and their relationship to eachother.

Selim Koru, a researcher at TEPAV and a Black Sea Fellow at FPRI joins us in this episode to help explain Turkish foreign policy, how Turkey itself sees its role in the region and helps explain terms like Blue Homeland and Neo-Ottomanism.

In this episode, we are joined by Fanar Haddad - author of 'Undertanding Sectarianism: Sunni-Shi'a Relations in the Modern Arab World' and a prominent researcher on Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units - to tell us about who the PMUs are, what they want and to what extent they are part of the state.

Jalel Harchaoui - a research at the Clingendael institute at The Hague - gives valuable insights into who the main actors are in Libya, what they want and how likely it is that we are going to continue to see an escalation.

In this episode, we are joined by Jake Hanrahan - a conflict reporter and host of the Popular Front podcast - where we talk about Jake's experiences with the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey during the breakdown of the Kurdish peace process (as well as talk for a bit about what happened to Vice and how Popular Front started).

In this episode, Aron Lund explains (as well as anybody can) who runs Syria - who we are talking about when we talk about Damascus - and what prospects look like for governance in Syria going forward.

In this episode, Alexander McKeever - formerly of Bellingcat and now working with Syrians for Truth and Justice - talks about Afrin. We go through the history of the region, why Turkey invaded, and what evidence there is of the groups now in control committing crimes including the destruction of heritage and grave robbery.