Eurasian Heartland Rises to Challenge the West

Pepe Escobar President Xi Jinping telling President Putin at the end of their summit last March in Moscow that we’re now facing “great changes not seen in a century” directly applies to the new spirit reigning across the Heartland. Cue to the China-Central Asia summit last week in Xian, the former imperial capital, where Xi…

Elections in Türkiye: Challenges Facing Erdogan

Yoselina Guevara López On May 14, Türkiye will hold presidential and parliamentary elections in which citizens will elect the new president of the country and the 600 deputies of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. The head of state will be elected in the first round only if he/she reaches 50%+1 of the votes; otherwise, the…

Bold Gambits on the West Asian Chessboard

Pepe Escobar In the Great Power competition, everything is connected: Uncertain negotiations between Russia and NATO over Ukraine may be impacted by Turkiye’s post-election pivot and Syria’s return to the Arab League West Asia is a region that is currently experiencing a great deal of geopolitical activity. Recent diplomatic efforts, initiated by Russia and overseen…

Will SCO Become New United Nations for Non-Western World?

Ekaterina Blinova The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security bloc founded in 2001, has great potential to become a United Nations for the non-Western world, according to Robinder Sachdev, geopolitical and economic diplomacy analyst and founder president of the Imagindia Institute. The two-day summit of the SCO foreign ministers kicked off…

Conflict in Sudan: International Implications

Yoselina Guevara López Violence in Sudan continues to rage and is unlikely to abate. Since April 13, the country has become a battlefield between rival armed factions; on the one hand the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and on the other the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group led by…

US Sees in Finland’s NATO Accession the Encirclement of Russia

M. K. Bhadrakumar Foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (L) hands over Finland’s NATO accession document to US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, as secretary-general Stoltenberg looks on, Brussels, 4 Apr 2023 The national flag of Finland was raised for the first time at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels on Tuesday, which…

The Turkish Move: Finland in Exchange for F-16s?

Alexandr Svaranc Finland and Sweden are reported to have applied to join NATO in May 2022, ostensibly because they fear a military danger from Russia as Russian-Ukrainian military-political relations deteriorate. Yet in truth, neither then nor now, has Russia been a military danger to the Scandinavian nations. However, in case they join the alliance, Russia…

Turkey Continues to Be a Tool of NATO

Alexandr Svaranc Turkey has been a part of NATO since February of 1952. And it took more than two years for this country to join the North Atlantic military alliance, which it was allowed to do only after meeting the US political requirements, which included rejecting Atatürk’s one-party political system in favor of democratizing the…

Ukraine: Erdoğan Does Not Want to Lose the Status of a Mediator

Alexandr Svaranc Any conflict and fighting will eventually end in peace, on conditions which will depend on the outcome and the balance of forces on the battlefield. From the very beginning of the Russian SMO in Ukraine, Turkey began to assume the role of an active mediator in the peaceful settlement of the conflict, the…

Turkey’s Relations with Sweden: The Puzzle of NATO’s Expansion

Hasan Selim Özertem The process of Sweden and Finland acceding to NATO membership is not over yet. But recent developments show that a delay is inevitable due to tense relations between Turkey and Sweden, writes Hasan Selim Özertem, Ankara-based political analyst. On January 21, far-right extremist politician Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Quran outside…

Everywhere Kazdağlari: Gold Extractivism in Turkey and Resistance

Bilge Emine Arslan “Aranyani: The forest as the feminine principle. The Goddess of the forest. The primary source of life and fertility. Forest as a community has been viewed as a model for societal and civilizational evolution.” —Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, 1988 Her Yer Kazdağlari (Everywhere Kazdağlari) Forest defense…

Operation “Gladio” as a New Form of Confrontation Between F. Gülen and R. Erdogan

Alexandr Svaranc Over the past 20 years of the new century, for various reasons, relations within the NATO alliance have undergone certain transformations. It should be acknowledged that after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, for some time the threat of nuclear confrontation between the leading powers was lessened. However, this state…

Libya: Ankara Dispatches Head of Intelligence to Tripoli to Protect Turkish Interests

Hakan Fidan meets with Dbaiba and Khaled Al-Mishri in an effort to explore understandings on the roadmap and the holding of Elections announced by the presidents of the House of Representatives and the Supreme Council of the state. The visit of the head of the Turkish intelligence service Hakan Fidan to Tripoli on Tuesday just…

What are the Goals of the Ukrainian-US Project “Turan”?

Valery Kulikov Against the backdrop of the sheer failure of the West’s hybrid war against Russia, including in the formation of a “second anti-Russian front” in Central Asia, the propaganda activities of Ukraine and several Western media outlets began to be clearly manifested by way of promoting the “valor” of the recently created by the…

Turkic Nationalist Battalion Forms in Ukraine to “Destroy the Regime” in Russia

Ahmed Adel Pan-Turkic/Turan Nationalist militants from Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan have formed a new battalion in Ukraine. The new militant group has the aim of destroying “the regime” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, and to recruit members from various Turkic-speaking countries to foment inter-ethnic and inter-religious issues…

Grain at the Center of the Global Geopolitical Dispute

Yoselina Guevara López Turkish President Erdogan informed this November 2 that at 12 Moscow time, grain exports from Ukraine through the humanitarian sea corridor were resumed. The restoration of naval transit was possible thanks to the intervention of the Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, who contacted his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, to urge him…

The Libyan Knot and a Dangerous Conflict Brewing in the Mediterranean

Viktor Mikhin How Turkey and Europe will divide up Libya’s oil remains to be seen… In early October, Turkey and the outgoing government in Tripoli, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, signed an agreement allowing Ankara to explore energy resources in the Mediterranean. According to general opinion in the Arab press and among political scientists, this…

No Pain, No Grain: Putin’s Black Sea Comeback

Pepe Escobar After the western military attack on Sevastopol briefly halted Russian grain transports, Moscow is back in business with a stronger hand and more favorable terms. So, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan picks up the phone and calls his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: let’s talk about the “grain deal.” Putin, cool, calm and collected, explains…