Orientul Mijlociu

As the clock ticks down on the repatriation of Islamic State (IS) foreign fighters from Syria, a recent development has added a new sense of urgency to the situation. On June 11, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), the de facto authority in northeast Syria, announced its intention to prosecute approximately 2,000 IS foreign fighters — i.e., those who are not Syrian or Iraqi — in an effort to deliver justice to the victims of the terrorist organization. However, the lack of international recognition for the AANES and its courts renders these trials illegitimate, further complicating future international legal efforts to prosecute these combatants.

Introduction:

Maritime tensions between Greece and Turkey, rendered in opposing mythologies of national sovereignty, are nothing new. The hostility between both states dates back to their founding periods. These conflicts have typically taken the form of a dormant conflict with periodic flare-ups.

Turkish intelligence eliminated Özgür Şoreş, the Türkiye officer of terrorist group PKK/KCK-YPS, codenamed Özgür Alparslan, with an operation in northern Iraq, security sources said Saturday.

Şoreş, responsible for the terrorist group’s activities in Türkiye since 2019, was also the founder of Children of Fire initiative responsible for numerous forest fires and sabotages in Türkiye, and had personally given the order for the forest fires that started in Antalya’s Manavgat on July 28, 2021 and caused the destruction of over 150,000 hectares of forest fields across Muğla, Mersin and Hatay.

The Saudi-Iran Détente surprised the western intelligentsia, as they never expected the reconciliation between the dichotomous Arab-Persian regional powers. Recently, both countries announced that they would mend their diplomatic ties under the auspices of the People’s Republic of China. Although it will definitely impact the geopolitics of the Middle Eastern (ME) Region (such as the Yemen Ceasefire), the most indispensable area will be the geo-economics in the form of China’s energy security. Therefore, this study hypothesizes that China will certainly diversify its oil supply chain following the easing of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran as it seeks to attain energy security.

In the lead-up to his toughest election battle in two decades, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hesitate to bash Western allies and principles, seeking to bolster support from conservative and nationalist voters and distract them from his dismal economic record in recent years.

A U.N.-backed human rights advocate says hundreds of boys — some as young as 11 — held in detention camps run by U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria have been wrongly separated from their mothers on the “unproven” belief that they pose a security risk.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, an independent U.N. rapporteur on the protection of rights while countering terrorism, aired concerns Friday about lingering “mass arbitrary detention” in the infamous al-Hol camp and others like it that she saw during her trip to the region this week — billed as the first visit of its kind by an independent human rights expert, Associated Press reported.

Turkey’s two key appointments are new foreign minister and former intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; and the newly-appointed intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalın, also an Erdoğan confidant.

Both men have interesting and impressive careers. How both of them have become the only two people who make policy and share power with Erdoğan is illuminating, especially where their careers intersected under the president.

Despite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad being welcomed back onto the international stage, all is not well at home.

His country is broken into three parts, which, at best, are in a state of uneasy coexistence and at worst are stuck in a low-intensity active conflict.

In the country’s northwestern Idlib province, Assad’s forces are engaged in near-daily shelling along the frontlines and Russia has recently resumed airstrikes after a long lull.

Syrians who fled President Bashar al-Assad’s rule fear he may soon be able to choke off badly needed aid as his regime acts to establish sway over UN assistance into the rebel-held northwest, the last major bastion of the Syrian opposition.

A tussle at the UN Security Council over the aid operation has played to Assad’s advantage, with his ally Russia vetoing an extension of its mandate this week and paving the way for the regime to approve one itself – but on its terms.