Having lost control of Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon to Iran by turning on the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring revolutions, Saudi Arabia now seeks to regain its influence over the Middle East.

Bullying Turkey through the proxy of regime forces and PYD militants won't make Ankara adopt an isolationist stance either. Integrating 3 million Sunni Arabs, after all, will only strengthen Turkey's ties with the Middle East.

Although Ankara highlights the significance of not being a part of a sectarian war to avoid increasing ideological polarization in the Middle East, it stands closer to Riyadh than Tehran.

Iran's sectarian expansionist policy forces the Turkish government to back the Saudi government. However, Turkey, as the only country able to prevent the power struggle between the two countries, is aware of the dangers of a possible sectarian war and thus calls the two countries to reconcile.

Qatar and Turkey are mutually dependent on one other in stabilizing their domestic politics and normalizing the region.

It might be a quite saddening but crystal clear truth that democratic values, principles and institutions that claim to be universal do not apply to Western perceptions of political development in Turkey or the Middle East in general.

Painters, gardeners, designers, administrative faculty and students have been working feverishly. A new “cover look” is being prepared for the University of Cairo. Today, everything is expected to look better, brighter, happier. 

One often gets this question from academics and experts: What will be the framework of international relations in the 21st century? Will it be determined by "hard instruments" such as energy, security and population?

There is much talk about political Islam and its future these days. The ascendancy of political movements with clear Islamic agendas is being watched closely from Egypt and Lebanon to North Africa.

All attention in the region is on Iran again. The new incentive package proposed by the European Union does not seem to have persuaded Tehran.

Perhaps the most consequential and drastic decision in Turkish foreign policy in recent months was to engage in direct negotiations with Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. This is significant because, since the onset of Iraq War in 2003, Turkey has sought to ignore or marginalize Iraqi Kurds, and has refrained from all acts that could be viewed as concessions or de facto recognition. Although the Iraqi Kurdish leadership has received red-carpet ceremony in Ankara in the1990s, Turkish foreign policy toward northern Iraq, since the war, has been stymied by anxiety and emotional rhetoric. Indeed, the fear of Iraq’s disintegration and the rise of an independent Kurdish enclave in the north, inspiring or even assisting separatist sentiments in Turkey, have appeared to cloud the possibility of rational evaluation of the pros and cons of policy alternatives. As a result, the policy of projecting illegitimacy to the Kurdish Regional Government has cost Turkey a significant loss of clout not only in northern Iraq but also in the wider Iraqi political affairs, as Kurds have come to occupy significant positions in the central government as well.

Everybody is asking if America is in decline. The new big question from the journal Foreign Affairs is whether the American era is over. Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek, answers with a book, his new release "The Post-American World," in which he proposes a number of ideas and strategies for the US power to survive the "rise of the rest."

This is the question everybody is seeking an answer for. The Bush administration thinks it knows what the power is for and Mr. Bush believes he is putting it to good use in Iraq, Afghanistan, potentially in Iran and elsewhere. But the hard realities of war and what is happening in the real world belie this false sense of confidence.

The picture was clear and symbolic: on the EU’s 50th birthday German Chancellor Angela Merkel presented as a gift to French President Jacques Chirac a cup with a depiction of Napoleon’s invasion of Alexandria in 1798. Never mind that Turkey, as a candidate country, has not been invited to the party. Never mind either the fact that the current EU president, Merkel, has nothing to hide in her opposition to EU’s membership.

We see shocking pictures from Iraq every day. Hundreds of people, old and young, men and women, lose their lives while those who are lucky to survive are destined to live with physical injuries and psychological trauma.Iraq is going through turbulent times despite high expectations from the other side. The removal of Saddam, who was a brutal dictator, was a welcome development for the people of Iraq but unfolding events after the American military invasion brought chaos and carnage. The future of Iraq doesn’t look promising as far as the nature of current events and their costs are concerned. Iraq is located in a volatile region and has strategic significance with enormous oil reserves.

1-2 July, 2006 Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel, Istanbul / TURKEY