... parliamentarians have been active in foreign policy. First, they used the new concept of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) in 2011 over Libya. Then, in the case of Syria, their main focus was on reacting to the 2013 use of chemical weapons by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Later still, after several Daesh terrorist...

... that has weakened the insurgency. Finally, it assesses the role that Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah intervention has had in bolstering the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria's jihadist revolt has limited but important parallels to the failed 1982 Muslim Brotherhood insurrection. Even with the regime's...

...Hafizullah Emadi The Baath Party has ruled Syria with an iron fist since the 1960s, curbing civil liberties and imprisoning and executing anyone who dared oppose its rule. A major anti-Baath struggle erupted in the 1980s as Syrians rebelled, trying to topple the repressive regime. The ruling party...

...Ted Galen Carpenter Western news media outlets have paid considerable attention to the civil war in Syria, but much of the coverage is simplistic and melodramatic. Too many accounts portray the conflict as a Manichean struggle between the evil, brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad and noble freedom...

...Ahmet T. Kuru Why did Turkish policies toward Syria and Egypt in 2011–15 largely fail? At the individual level, the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan was plagued by populism in the sense that he uses foreign policy issues for the sake of domestic party politics without pursuing long-term...

...Spyridon Plakoudas By June 2016, the Kurds of Syria (just 12 percent of the country's total population) controlled almost all of the 822-kilometer Turkish-Syrian border and advanced against Manbij and Raqqa — the Islamic State's resupply center and capital, respectively. How did the Syrian Kurds...

...Brent J. Talbot; Heidi Harriman Hezbollah has become a powerful yet destabilizing force in Lebanon, affecting internal stability, allowing Syria and Iran dangerous influence, delaying peace with Israel, and complicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, it forces the United States...

...Aneta Hlavsová; Kristýna Tamchynová; Radka Havlová This essay analyses the role of public opinion in the formation of US and Turkish policy toward the conflict in Syria. The United States and Turkey were chosen because they are key players in the Syrian conflict. In both countries, public opinion...

... by Iraqi regime forces, rebel groups, Kurdish militants, and US-led coalition air strikes. The essay’s concluding observations analyze the parallels and differences between the Armed Islamic Group’s campaign in Algeria in the 1990s and ISIS’s position in Iraq and Syria in 2015. Anthony N. Celso...

... non-oil-producing states struggled to provide better living conditions to their populations. Meanwhile, the war in Syria continued, the Islamic State (ISIS) was extending its efforts to establish a caliphate, and a massive influx of refugees was reaching Central Europe seeking asylum. In this context...

... autocracies and dictatorships across the Arab world, reaching to the Arab and Persian Gulfs. The awakening has been enervated by violent responses from more cohesive and profound dictatorships in Syria and Libya, but the “leaderless” model of the awakening can quickly bring together disparate groups working...

...Evaghoras L. Evaghorou In recent years, the eastern Mediterranean has been characterized by instability and intense competition among states and nonstate actors. This is mainly because of the Syrian crisis, the terrorist activity of the Islamic State in Syria, the competition over energy sources...

... between Israel and Syria. Negotiations had come to a standstill in January 2000, and even President Clinton’s efforts to sway Assad in March 2000 failed to resuscitate the peace process. These two countries again find them- selves where they often have been...

... accompli, on the basis of Syria having had its own way through almost fifteen years of command of Lebanon, blessed by the United States in 1990. In late 2004, the United States and France surprised Damascus by refusing to bend any more to Baathist Syria’s strategic self-importance, and a majority...

...- sels, covering the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Mediterranean Quarterly 28:2  DOI 10.1215/10474552-4164281 Copyright 2017 by Mediterranean Affairs, Inc. Kizilkaya: Identity, War, and Just Cause for War  81 wars,” in which various combinations of state and nonstate...

... East. For Iran there was the end of a regime that had launched a long and costly war against it in 1980. Nevertheless, Iran continued to develop its nuclear capability and its missile systems. Syria lost its Baathist neighbor with which it had a rocky relationship despite sharing a number of policy...

... of Sunni Islam’s influence. Second, the essay describes and analyzes forms, examples, goals, and motives of terrorist attacks on the energy sector and the accompanying criminal activities conducted by the IS in selected MENA countries — mainly Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. On the ontological...

... form something akin to a U.S.- oriented Turkish-Israeli condominium in the region, producing a split in Arab ranks, and forcing pro-U.S. Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt, and perhaps even Syria, to join the new bloc, while isolating more radical actors...

... Israel was willing to sell weapon systems without any conditions. Turkey also intended to utilize its expanded relations with Israel to help limit the threat posed by Syria. The latter at that time was actively supporting the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which sought to create...

... as a result of the US-Iraq arms deal and inclusion into such an alliance would compound the already difficult situation for Egypt. With the fall of the anti-Hashemite Shikshakli regime in Syria and the restoration of stability in Jordan under the new King Hussein, Iraq was well poised to revive its...