Summary report from the recent Wilton Park conference: Turkey’s policies for engagement in the contemporary world
 (150 Kb) The timing of this conference could not have been more appropriate, and backdrop relevant. The Arab Spring that has spread across the Middle East and North Africa highlights Turkey’s growing importance in the region and the role it can play in facilitating transition to democratic governance throughout these regions. Turkey is a secular and democratic state, and yet there has been much discussion about Turkey’s renewed ties with its neighbours. It has been viewed, by some, as evidence of Turkey turning away from its traditional alliances with the West. READ MORE
Erdogan’s legacy for Turkey in his final term
Turkey's 17th general election was never an election about who would win; it was a foregone conclusion that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) would do that and that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his final term as the prime minister, would be given not only the mandate to govern but also the moral authority to forge Turkey’s future in the next four years and, arguably, beyond. READ MORE
Five good reasons to be sceptical about the "Arab Spring"
(126 Kb) There is a certain understanding amongst Middle East politics experts that a game breaking event of cataclysmic proportions hits the region once every ten years or so. September of this year will mark the 10th anniversary of the unimaginable acts of terrorism which were perpetrated in New York in September 2001 by Arab suicide bombers.
Creating a Middle East Economic Community: Towards a Marshall Plan for the trouble stricken Middle Eastern region
(238 Kb) Like all revolutionary movements, the Arab Awakening burst upon the world in early 2011 both with breathtaking suddenness and as an overdue response to long-neglected societal tensions. Almost overnight, authoritarian leaders were swept from power on a wave of mass - but notably peaceful - demonstrations calling for change. READ MORE
EGF Turkey File
(85 Kb) Insights into Turkish domestic and international politics during June 2011
Political transition and the rise of Islamist politics in post-revolution Tunisia
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By Naim Ameur, Tunisia embarks upon the process of transition to democracy It is now a well established fact amongst both the general public as well as the specialist of Middle Eastern politics that Tunisia under the almost-quarter century long rule of former President, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was managed by a highly restrictive and rather authoritarian political system. The system empowered key pro-regime political instruments such as the Constitutional Democratic Rally simultaneously to ensuring that opposition political parties remained largely powerless or even being loyal to the regime. Other regime opponents, such as Tunisia’s Islamists, found themselves in exile and for the most part expelled from the country. While this is not surprising, given the dearth of democratic political culture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this likewise ensured that the country remained a “political wasteland” under its former president, who created what some local scholars now refer to as “political desertification”. READ MORE
Court starts hearing «gas case» against Tymoshenko
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Rejecting FTZ will close doors to Ukraine entering the European Union – Experts
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Ukraine and Slovakia in a post-crisis architecture of European energy security
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Ukraine fails again to receive gas discount from Russia
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