Comment archive

Monday, 17 Aug 2015
The “Sunnification” of Turkey´s Foreign Policy

Two months is a long time in politics – even more so in Turkish politics. At the beginning of June, the Turkish election brought a wave of hope across the country with results that broke the majoritarian (and authoritarian) rule of the reigning Justice and Development Party (AKP). The pro-Kurdish ...

Monday, 24 Nov 2014
An Independent Iraqi Kurdistan?

A change of prime minister will not resolve Iraq’s structural problems, and while a dysfunctional Iraqi state is reeling from onslaughts by Islamic extremists, the Iraqi Kurds in the north of the country have never been stronger. Even so, we are very unlikely to see an independent Iraqi Kurdistan in ...

Saturday, 15 Nov 2014
Can Iraq be Fixed?

Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, faces the enormous task of uniting the country. But whatever the outcome, Iraq cannot be restored to how it was before the summer. There is broad agreement that the former Iraqi prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, was a part of the problem, and that his ...

Wednesday, 29 Oct 2014
Nationalism under Pressure: Islamic State, Iraq and Kurdistan

Has the Iraqi Kurds’ sense of national identity been strengthened by the emergence of the so-called Islamic State? Not necessarily. If anything, mounting socio-economic and political tensions inside northern Iraq have been tearing at Kurdish nationalism for the last decade. The so-called Islamic State (IS) continues to pose a serious ...