A Long Game of Chess
The anti-ISIS campaign has evolved into a chess game, played not only by Washington and Turkish officials, but also other regional actors involving a number of subsequent and contradictory moves.
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Kobani and Turkish-American Relations
After the U.S. decision not to attack the Syrian regime, questions and skepticism started to emerge about the U.S. strategy in Syria.
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The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) non-permanent member elections took place last week and the results of these elections fostered many debates and discussions.
Turkey's presidency of the G20 in 2015 presents a golden opportunity to bring crucial development issues to the global governance agenda and stimulate dynamism of its national economy by forming new diplomatic and commercial linkages.
The international community has to be more sensitive to the issue of Syrian refugees in Turkey and other neighboring countries and more supportive of these countries that now host millions of refugees.
U.S. officials are eager to point their fingers at Turkey and blame Ankara for its inaction in the crisis in Kobani.
Testing Times for Turkey
Turkey is going through challenging times from a number of angles, but fortunately, there is sufficient political and administrative capacity as well as crisis management experience to overcome these challenges.
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Kobani: A City on Fire
The recent clashes around Kobani are once more demonstrating that the military airstrikes by the international coalition will not be sufficient to eradicate the ISIS from the region without a comprehensive strategy to resolve the crisis in Syria and Iraq at the same time.
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The Kurdish political movements in both Syria and Turkey should give up being pragmatists in order to have pragmatic gains. The Kurdish political movements should also give up being opportunists in order to benefit from the opportunities in the region.
Turkey wants regional players to establish a regional order in a peaceful and cooperative manner; it wants governments to reflect the sentiments of their citizens and end the conflicts in the region.
In a post-ISIS region, it is likely new radical groups claiming to wage jihad bent on shattering the Middle East's religious environment will emerge. Such radicalization in Turkey's neighborhood has become a growing threat.
Erdoğan was right when he protested Western media reports associating Turkey with ISIS and the politically motivated decisions of credit rating agencies that contradicted their approach toward similar economies.
Ending sectarian politics and establishing a new inclusive government in Baghdad is essential to diminishing the continuing support for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), foreign policy expert Mehmet Özkan stresses.
First and foremost, the Abadi government will have to accumulate enough power to discourage Sunni tribes from joining ISIS fighters. The main question remains: what will happen once ISIS is defeated?
First of all, it is not clear how ISIS will be destroyed and what the projected timeframe for this operation will be.
The U.S. is seriously considering taking action against ISIS now even though the chaos in Syria and Iraq could have been avoided if the U.S. had taken action in the first place.
Does the civilization discourse of the AK Party, which ended the exclusion of religious Muslims and the Kurds from the public sphere, produce a form of, albeit more inclusive, nationalism?
In this new era of Turkish politics, unsurprisingly there will be significant continuities in many public policy realms. The new government formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will continue most of the policies and projects that were started earlier.
Addressing the problem on both sides of the border would necessitate a more comprehensive strategy. The new strategy should involve actions more than PR campaigns and newspaper headlines.
