Russia's close relation with the PYD concerns both Ankara and Washington. While Ankara is concerned about weapons that the PKK could obtain, the U.S. does not want the PYD to be included under Russia's influence in the region.

Israel has emerged unchallenged despite the level of its impunity this year. This evasion speaks to the international pattern where state officials' voice outrage against its impunity but do not follow up with concrete sanctions.

In Jordan and Lebanon, Syrian women often experience intense exploitation, particularly if they represent a vulnerable sector of society – whether a widow, single woman or an undocumented resident.

It is becoming increasingly clear with every international crisis that the world order is moving towards a more balanced and multipolar structure in which a multiplicity of actors are holding numerous instruments of influence against each other.

The “Assad-Sisi axis” has become one of the paradigms explaining very well the global crisis that we have gone through as far as its actors and global repercussions are concerned.

Whatever happens, relations between the two countries cannot and will not reach the high level of cooperation between Turkey’s pro-coup elites and Israel in the late 1990s.

As long as the U.S. insists on the old order of the Middle East via its support for Israel, it will soon no longer possess the necessary political software to deal with the new Middle East.

By creating restricted political openings, as was the case in the early 1990s, the king intended to coopt some opposition parties, which had been previously excluded from the political system.

A country which really wants to engage in a war would not have carried out an active diplomacy with Syria for six months and with international community for thirteen months.

The Arab world is going through fundamental social and political transformation. By the end of 2010, Arab states were stagnant and paralyzed.

The final leg of support for the Syrian Ba’ath regime’s geopolitical comfort zone was the political climate generated by the other dictatorships in the area.

Despite a historical affinity between Israelis, Turks, strong interaction between people, NGOs, think-tanks was never established, that’s exactly what we need.

Turkey’s mediation efforts in the most recent political crisis in Lebanon in January 2011 are driven by the assessment that a possible conflict would directly threaten Turkey’s interests.

The 2009 Gaza massacre is not the first incident where Israel has killed, pillaged and destroyed Palestinian lives. In 1982 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) under Ariel Sharon allowed the killing of more than 2,000 Palestinians in two Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila.  

The "A Common Word Between Us and You" initiative was the subject of a major conference at the Yale Divinity School last week.

Turkish policymakers exhibit a high degree of self-confidence and willingness to pursue intensive diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East. Turkey pursues a multi-dimensional policy line to foster peace and stability in the region, and has already enjoyed some degree of success. Turkish policymakers seek to utilize Turkey’s good relations with Syria and Israel to wield an influence on these countries to facilitate Israeli-Syrian negotiations. The increasing level of trust to Turkey’s new image of civil-economic power in the Middle East and the U.S. support for Turkey’s potential contribution to chronic problems of the region have made Turkey a potential mediator in the decades-long Syrian-Israeli conflict.

Iraq is like a miniature of the Middle East with its population structure and social characteristics. Each domestic actor in Iraq has relations with ethnic and religious groups in the neighboring countries.