President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan went to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. His official visit was significant because it was the first time in 59 years that a Turkish president has gone to the Vatican.

Insight Turkey, one of the leading academic journals in Turkey and the region, in its first issue for 2018 brings to its readers valuable articles that focus mainly on China’s foreign policy. “Persistent Rise of China: Global Challenges and Regional Dynamics” assesses China’s growing influence in international and regional politics and experts in this field provide different perspectives regarding China’s global challenges and the regional dynamics.

The Syrian National Dialogue Congress met in Sochi on Jan. 30. The congress took shorter than planned, and some opposition groups that were expected to join refused to participate in the meetings at the last minute.

The Syrian crisis was ignited by the popular protests against Bashar Assad's despotic regime in March 2011.

Washington needs to understand the legitimate reasons why Turkey launched its anti-terrorism operation against the YPG in northern Syria

What does the U.S. really want in Syria?

Turkey's plan to build a wall on the Syrian border ruins the YPG's plans, and that is why it is trying to do its best to prevent the construction of the wall by killing workers

Operation Olive Branch is a more difficult operation in comparison to Operation Euphrates Shield because both Daesh and the YPG are terrorist organizations, but Daesh seemed to be a more legitimate target for the international community, whereas there is difference of opinion concerning the status of the PYD, even among Turkey's NATO allies

If Egypt is really making an axis shift from its historic ally U.S. to Russia, then Pence's upcoming visit to Cairo will be very important for the future of Washington's Middle East strategies

Washington's risky game with the YPG and Turkey's severe military response to this organization has a potential to bring the strategic cooperation between these two countries to the brink of collapse.

It is high time for Turkey and the EU to start a new era in bilateral relations, but this time it needs to be based on both sides' interests not only the EU's as it was in the past years

The end of the Cold War made these realities a little more complicated.

Political analyst, Nebi Miş, said the AK Party and MHP's possible election alliance is a necessary tactical move with the new presidential system, while the main opposition CHP has failed to create a long-term policy to challenge the other bloc

The rise of institutional economics brought the quality of participatory social and economic institutions to the fore as a crucial prerequisite for sustainable development, as well as an alleviation of income disparities.

Emerging trends in the European political context, including the rise of nativist nationalism and the emergence of hostile public discourses on immigration, have brought ideas traditionally attributed to the far-right into mainstream discussion, in the process popularising and in some cases ‘normalising’ them in the eyes of particular audiences. Especially since the turn of the new millennium, the discussion on the dynamics of, and threats from, violent radicalisation has received considerable fresh attention since a series of recent terrorist attacks testified to its highly disruptive and destructive potential. Taken together with the appreciable rise in instances of hate speech and in violent incidents against vulnerable groups (Muslim, Jewish, Roma communities; immigrants and refugees, etc.), it is now feared that we may be witnessing a much broader and profound ‘reverse wave’ towards more intolerance, exclusion, and normalisation of violent extremism in contemporary societies.

Trump could not get what he wanted from the Iranian protests and took another wrong step in the Middle East

The policy-makers in the White House have not been able to agree on how to take position on the protests going on in the U.S.'s long-time rival Iran