ISTANBUL – Conflict in the Middle East threatens not only the security of many of its states, but also their continued existence. Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and others, now gripped by sectarian fighting, risk fragmenting into ethnic sub-states, transforming a region whose political geography was drawn nearly a century ago. Surveying the regional scene, Turkish Prime [...]

On November 3 2012, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) (Justice and Development Party – JDP) celebrated the 10th anniversary of its landslide victory in the 2002 Turkish general election. Founded a year earlier, the AKP won 363 out of 550 seats in the Grand National Assembly.Ankara’s new administration immediately set about reforming. And arguably [...]

NEW DELHI – There is something about the number five in Sino-Indian relations. Asia’s two giants have long defined their relationship in terms of the famous Pancha Sheela: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence. Now China’s new [...]

KUWAIT CITY – When the consequences of the United States-led invasion of Iraq ten years ago are fully assessed, the importance of the subsequent rise of political Islam there – and throughout the wider Middle East – may well pale in comparison to that of a geostrategic shift that no one foresaw at the time. [...]

On February 9, 2013, 200 armed Filipinos belonging to the so-called Royal Sulu Army occupied parts of Lahad Datu in Sabah (North Borneo) and declared ownership of the whole territory in the name of the Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III. Sabah has been part of the Malaysian Federation since 1963. In response, the Sulu Sultanate has continued to assert [...]