The Catholic Church in China is divided into two branches: one is encompassed within the Communist Party and is largely independent of Rome; the other comes under the Pope’s authority and is tormented by Beijing’s government, which entirely rejects its authority.

The Kurds in Iraq occupy what is practically a state. The Syrian civil war has resulted in the autonomization of the country’s Kurdish population. To Kurdish advantage, the JDP’s (Justice and Development Party – Turkey) ambiguous policy has cleared a new political space in Turkey.

While the peace process between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the Turkish government is at a standstill, the latter is attempting to circumvent Turkey’s Kurdish actors by aligning itself with the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party), which dominates the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.

The emergence of an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, the civil war in Syria, and the electoral ambitions of the JDP (Justice and Development Party) have led to new policy being formed by the Turkish government regarding the Kurdish issue.

Although the Kurdish population in Syria forms a very small and highly divided minority, the Kurds nevertheless have managed, thanks to the civil war, to gain relative autonomy in Northern Syria. 

Since 1991, Kurdish parties have dominated and administered “Iraqi Kurdistan”.

Moscow has every intention of including Ukraine in its Eurasian Union, with one major playing card: the exchange of Kiev’s sovereignty for economic and financial advantages.