Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds himself in a tough spot with Russia as tensions in Syria have escalated dramatically. In a rare direct military confrontation between Turkish and Syrian regime forces, 14 Turkish soldiers and over 100 regime troops were killed in two separate clashes in Idlib over the past 10 days.
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Facing Few Obstacles and Scant Pushback, Russia Keeps Advancing in Africa
By Stephen Blank, Eurasia Daily Monitor: " According to numerous analyses published by think tanks and journals in the United States and Europe, Russia lost its African adventure before it even started."
In January, Russia has gone through a political upheaval initiated by Vladimir Putin: proposal for constitutional reform, resignation of the government, appointment of a new cabinet. The pace and scale of these events led some commentators to call them a “constitutional coup.” However, if one is to follow the logic of the regime, the president’s latest decisions should not come as a surprise.
Ghaith al-Omari writes: All previous U.S. plans envisioned a solution for the Palestinian refugee issue consistent with the idea of two states for two peoples. […]By radically departing from certain key tenets seen in previous initiatives, the Trump administration may have undermined its ability to build an international coalition in support of its plan. This was on clear display at the aforementioned Arab League and OIC meetings, and will probably continue to shape the diplomatic discourse in days to come. – Washington Institute
Kayla Koontz writes: Despite the introduction of a new assembly in 2018, Turkey’s October invasion of northeast Syria provided ample incentives for the launch of new investigations into HDP members protesting the operation. The targeting of the HDP has set new legal and political precedents that could undermine the political capacity of the opposition coalition as a whole and create ideological divisions over the so-called “Kurdish Question.” – Middle East Institute