Month: June 2013
Turkey’s role in Syria
The Middle East Institute held its fourth annual conference on Turkey Friday, as Prime Minister Erdogan sought to bring an end to demonstrations against him through a combination of negotiation and crackdown. An impressive group of speakers and regional experts tackled today’s most pressing issues, including dynamics with Iran and Iraq, the future of Turkish-Kurdish relations, and the ongoing conflict in Syria. Of particular note was a morning panel titled “Crisis in Syria: Can Turkey Rise to the Challenge?”
Prior to the Arab Spring, Turkey favored a “no problems with neighbors policy.” Seeking to avoid costly military entanglements and rivalries, Turkey embraced economic partnerships and pursued mutual interests with regional partners in order to strengthen its geopolitical position. The current protest movement notwithstanding, Turkey is perceived as a model worth emulating that balances democratic institutions with the role of Islam. Its model has been favored by both the West and moderate forces in the greater Middle East. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Peace picks June 17-21
1. The Future of Stability Operations: Lessons from Afghanistan, American Security Project, Monday June 17 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Venue: American Security Project
1100 New York Avenue, NW · Suite 710W, Washington, DC
7th Floor West Tower
Speakers: Sloan Mann, Eythan Sontag, Frank Kearney III, Howard Clark
The international community has learned a great deal about how to conduct stability operations in the last 12 years. This event will be a fact-based discussion with leading experts on stability operations. The panel will discuss key lessons from the experience in Afghanistan and how they can be applied to future conflict environments.
RSVP through email to:
events@americansecurityproject.org Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Shpend responds to Ed
Shpend Ahmeti of “Self-Determination” responds to my SAIS colleague Ed Joseph’s memo, which peacefare.net published last week:
MEMO
To: Edward Joseph
From: Shpend Ahmeti; Prishtina, Kosova
Date: 16 June, 2013
Subject: Five Replies to Edward Joseph from VETEVENDOSJE!
Thank you very much for your letter and your advice. We had a very good visit to the United States where we were able to present our views and program to our diaspora, universities, senate and congress members, State Department and others. The SAIS debate was a very interesting and useful forum to test our ideas. We certainly hope that the debate will be posted online so that more people will be able to watch it.
As a movement, we are open to comments, criticism, and questions. We believe that debate will only help us strengthen our program, our concept and our movement in general. We have been called all kinds of names, but rarely do we see criticism that tries to directly answer our argumentation.
We have duly noted your five points which you more or less argued during the SAIS debate. In my memo, I have tried to summarize our arguments that we also made during the debate. The explanation will hopefully explain why some of the premises you make are unacceptable to us.
For your information, your memo was presented in some of the local media (close to government) in Kosovo as the official position of US government, which they would not say even when members of government would speak. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stunning
Hassan Rouhani’s first-round win in Friday’s Iranian presidential election is stunning. It is no mean feat to reach 50% against five other candidates. The celebrations in Tehran make clear that his constituency included those reformists who voted–though presumably others boycotted. But he must have had a much broader constituency than just the committed reformists. Iranians seem to want to change their country’s relations with the West.
If, like me, you are trying to absorb what this means for Iran, the United States, and the nuclear issues that have plagued the relationship between the two, the best read I’ve seen so far today is from our SAIS dean, Vali Nasr. He notes the that Rouhani will have to convince the Supreme Leader to compromise on nuclear issues and underlines that the US will have to offer serious sanctions relief to get anything like what it wants. The ball, he says, is in Washington’s court. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Who Rouhani isn’t
While the votes are still being counted, early returns suggest that Hassan Rouhani is running far ahead of the other five candidates in Iran’s presidential election. I can’t say I predicted this, but I did tweet several days ago:
#Iran experts: does the 5/1 split give Rowhani a chance to reach the 2nd round?
The latest I’ve seen is that he is polling just over 50%, which would put him within striking distance of winning in the first round. But rural returns normally come in slower than urban ones. And the margin over 50% is small enough so that ballot stuffing (or ballot disappearing) could force him into a second round. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Bouazizi’s lament
Two years into the Arab uprisings, the economic situation in the Middle East remains challenging. This week Adnan Mazarei, Deputy Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), presented the economic outlook for the MENAP region (Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), based on an IMF report released in May. Afshin Molavi, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, moderated the discussion. Leila Hilal, Director of the Middle East Task Force at New America, introduced the speakers.
Molavi started by reminding the audience that when Mohammed Bouazizi’s vegetable cart was confiscated, he did not ask for liberty or the downfall of the regime. Instead, Bouazizi wondered how he was supposed to make a living without his cart. Economics have been vital since the beginning of the Arab uprisings. It is essential to examine the future economic outlook in the region. The IMF report attempts to do just that. Read more
RSS - Posts
