Siyaset Ariz Kader

Turkey has just had its second round presidental election, and Erdoğan has secured his third term - dashing the hopes of the Turkish opposition. But what does this mean for the deep divisions within Turkish society and how is life likely to look for half the country that didn't vote for the AKP-MHP alliance? To answer these questions, and more, is Selim Koru - a Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). Selim has also recently launched Kulturkampf, a critical resource on modern Turkish politics.

Salafi-Jihadism has had a huge impact on the societies, policies, and security situations in MENA and abroad. But where did modern Jihadist groups come from, what do they look like today, and what impact has the "War on Terror" had on people living in Western states? To tell us about the movement as well as give thoughts on how current events like the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has on the ability of transnational Jihadist organisation to regroup, is Thomas Hegghammer - a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and the author of The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad.

The PKK-Turkish conflict has reached a new phase with Turkey relying more heavily on drones to press the group further and further away from its borders. To talk to us about how Turkey's drone program came to be, where it is going, and how it affects the PKK is Aaron Stein, the Director of Research at the FPRI.

Just how free are journalists in Iraq's Kurdistan Region to report on the facts and what kind of pressure do they face from the ruling KRG authorities? Against the backdrop of a current (15-02-2021) trial against journalists in Dohuk after a demonstration calling for press freedoms, Abdulla Hawez, an independent researcher on Kurds and the KRG, speaks to Siyaset to shed light on some of these issues and how they tie into local governance.

One of the Middle East's better publisised, but least understood political relationships is that of various Kurdish political actors and the state of Israel. To give background as well as insights on Israel-Kurdish relations is Jonathan Spyer, a journalist and analyst on Middle East politics as well as founder of MECRA.

The Assyrians, despite being one of the indigenous communities at the heart of the Middle East as well as being a particularly vulnerable one at that, are poorly understood. A community that used to number at least a million before the 2003 invasion of Iraq now struggles to hang on to survival. On Siyaset to explain some of the reasons why the community is in the position it is as well as how the community relates to the authorities around them is Reine Hanna, an activist as well as director of the Assyrian Policy Institute.