Aylık arşivler: Aralık 2024

Türkiye at an Inflection Point

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December 19, 2024

The history of Türkiye-West relations over the last fifteen years has been characterized by a lack of meaningful dialogue, unfriendly rhetoric, and confrontation despite a promising beginning.

In April 2009 President Obama came to Ankara on his first bilateral visit to Europe as president. He started his address to the Turkish parliament with the following:

“This morning I had the great privilege of visiting the tomb of your extraordinary founder of your republic. And I was deeply impressed by this beautiful memorial to a man who did so much to shape the course of history. But it is also clear that the greatest monument to Atatürk’s life is not something that can be cast in stone and marble. His greatest legacy is Turkey’s strong, vibrant, secular democracy, and that is the work this assembly carries on today…”

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The Year 2024 in Review

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December 16, 2024

People aspire to democracy.  Regardless of their respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, and the rule of law, all regimes claim to be democratic in some form because it remains the ultimate source of legitimacy to govern. Sadly, the year 2024 was not an inspiring year for democracy.

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The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Blitzkrieg

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December 9, 2024

After thirteen years of internal fighting, loss of life, and devastation, the five-decade-long Assad regime was swept away in barely two weeks. President Hafez al-Assad, the father, was the President of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He was Türkiye’s one and only regional enemy for years. For a decade, President Bashar al-Assad had the opportunity to transform Syria. Unfortunately, he was forced by the Syrian deep state to press ahead with his father’s autocratic rule, failed to moderate the regime, got Syria engulfed in the tremors of the Arab Spring, and caused much suffering. After all, democracy is not part of the Middle East’s political culture, but authoritarianism is. Nonetheless, he deserves credit for putting relations with Ankara on the right track in close cooperation with the AKP government.

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Türkiye’s Thirteen Years of Trouble in Syria

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December 4, 2024

The recent “rebel” offensive in northern Syria has brought multiple security challenges once again along our 911-kilometer border with our southern neighbor. The confusion it has caused is understandable because there are not only countries but many “rebel groups” with different interests. Relationships are intriguing and conflictual. As usual, attention is now focused on battlefield developments and the diplomatic flurry among the principal players. Nonetheless, how we got here is a lesson we, the people of Türkiye, should never forget as I have repetitiously underlined in earlier posts regarding Syria.

The following, with several minor grammatical corrections, is a blog post I published more than four years ago.

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The Race Toward January 20th

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December 2, 2024

The year 2024 was largely dominated by the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon, and in mid-summer attention started to shift toward the US presidential election.

President Biden was determined to run for a second term. A growing number of Democratic leaders urged him to leave the race.  He fought them bitterly until he finally concluded that he had no other option than quitting. But that came too late. Thus, the Democratic Party not only lost the presidential election but the Republicans won the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Then a race started among the actors in the two conflict areas for better bargaining positions before Mr. Trump assumed office.

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