Russia wouldn't want to lose face in Tehran despite having bowed to Israeli pressures to limit their support for Bashar Assad and Hezbollah. Willing to do anything to weaken the Assad regime and Iran, Israel openly supports a federal solution.

At the regional level, Iran will continue to aggressively pursue opportunities to increase its influence, at least until Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are distressed by U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy, are no longer troubled U.S. allies.

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.

Muhittin Ataman: “Turkey is trying to recover and restructure its priorities in the Syrian crisis. For the first two years, it was the fall of the Asad regime, but now it is to prevent PYD from controlling the entire Turkish-Syrian border. This is a red line for Turkey.”

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.

Over the next decade, Turkey will have no choice but to deal with the consequences of the PYD's potential rise to power in northern Syria. As such, it is simply unrealistic to expect Turkey to negotiate with the PKK at this time.

Being implemented from founding of the Republic, the Kemalist understanding of modernization ran counter to the social practices of the majority of the population and, since the beginning of the 2000s, has begun to lose its influence.

The U.S.'s failed strategy to fight DAESH, which shares outrageous similarities with al-Qaeda, despite the differences between those times and today, showing the state is taking no lesson from former experiences.

Who lost the Syrian civil war to Russia? Who rolled out the red carpet leading to the Middle East to the Kremlin?

The Bamako hotel attack claimed to be carried out by Al-Mourabitoun in cooperation with al-Qaida shows that terror unfortunately continues in the name of Islam, but regardless of the religion's peace doctrine.

DAESH has taken the glorification of violence to the next level by targeting public squares and ordinary people in Ankara and Paris, making nobody anywhere safe anymore.

American administration does not want a serious role in Iraq anymore, at least not under Obama's leadership. The next president should volunteer to make serious political investments and be a sponsor for the political rapprochement in Iraq. Without a rapprochement in Iraq and Syria, the chaos will continue and ISIS will make use of it to last longer.

In his latest interview with Obama on ‘60 Minutes', asking questions about fighting ISIS, the train-and-equip program and Russia's military involvement in Syria, Steve Kroft tried to drive the president into a corner

In a rather unprecedented cry of outrage, Prince Turki al-Faisal, one of the most prominent figures of the Saudi state, put it bluntly: If the US under the new Obama administration does not change its policy toward Israel and Palestine, the Saudis will no longer maintain their “special relationship” with the US (“Saudi Arabia’s patience is running out,” Financial Times, Jan. 23, 2009). Quoting from the Saudi king that his peace plan, called “the Arab peace initiative,” is still on the table, the prince added that “it would not remain there for long.”