Author: Muhittin Ataman
The Baath regime in Syria has ended after a 13-year revolution. After the Syrian opposition forces captured the capital city of Damascus on Dec. 8, Bashar Assad, together with his family, left the country and went to Russia, one of its main supporters. The latest development is a great success for the revolutionary Syrian people, who the regime had oppressed for 61 years. I am quite optimistic about the future of the Syrian state since the Syrian people have a long tradition of peaceful coexistence. Today, I will briefly underline that culture’s history and the Syrian people’s anti-imperialism. The Syrian…
The Middle Eastern developments continue to set the agenda of international politics. The Al-Aqsa Flood has become a turning point for the whole region. The ongoing genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people and the Israeli aggression against the sovereignty of regional countries, directly and indirectly, influence all regional dynamics. Israel’s attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian proxies in Syria have dramatically changed the Syrian context as well. As a result of the shifted regional balance of power, the opposition forces, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA), initiated a military operation against…
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited various countries on different continents in the last month to attend the summits of six regional and global international organizations. Erdoğan attended the BRICS summit in Russia, the 11th summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Kyrgyzstan, the European Political Community (ECC) Summit in Hungary, the Extraordinary Joint Summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League in Saudi Arabia, the World Leaders Climate Summit of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Azerbaijan…
Last week, I discussed the likely and expected direction of American foreign policy during the second Donald Trump term. I compared Trump’s foreign policy with that of the Bush administration, analyzing three key factors that shaped American foreign policy in the first decade of the 21st century. I also explored how these factors may shape United States foreign policy under the next administration. Today, I will examine the remaining three factors that will shape the American foreign policy orientation. Imperialism The first factor is the imperialist policies of the U.S., which the colonial European powers have followed for centuries. The…
The United States has been putting pressure on the Arab states in the Middle East to take adequate measures against anti-Israeli forces, especially Iran and its regional proxies, namely Hezbollah, Ansarullah and Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq. Similar to its stance in the Ukrainian-Russian war, the U.S. government has been representing the most hawkish position toward the current crisis in the Middle East. While the U.S. government has been providing unconditional military, political, diplomatic and economic support to the Israeli government, it has been discouraging and deterring any country that attempts to take anti-Israeli position. Within this context, it has been…