Middle East / North Africa

The revolutionary forces that shook the Arab world in 2011 were fighting for more just societies. Justice, however, is difficult to bring about in post-dictatorship transitional phases.

Many Israelis and Palestinians contest the ‘two-state solution’.

FOCUS China: A New Diplomacy?

In 2013, Barak Obama and John Kerry managed, not without difficulty, to steer Israeli and Palestinian leaders back to peace negotiations. At the same time, Washington re-established dialogue with Tehran in talks aimed at finding a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.

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...

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”.

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.

The First World War had tragic consequences for the Middle-East. It led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the balkanization of the region.