Erdoğanism Without Erdoğan?
Summary: even if Türkiye’s president loses the upcoming elections, his legacy could long outlast him.
Summary: even if Türkiye’s president loses the upcoming elections, his legacy could long outlast him.
Summary: the fighting may have all but ended in 2022 but that may be the calm before a coming storm as Washington prepares to challenge the Wagner group in Africa and contestation grows over gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Summary: the lingering collapse of Tunisia’s efforts to secure a viable democracy was sped along by the failure to carry out reforms in the security sector.
Summary: the Gulf states are seeing Washington through far different eyes than Washington is seeing them. America is playing from an old playbook, without realising that the game has changed and nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than by Putin’s war against Ukraine.
At number 2 in the all-time top ten is Christopher Davidson’s podcast Putin’s war plays well with MENA authoritarians which aired 1 April, 2022. Chris is an academic and author of several books on the politics and foreign affairs of the Gulf states and a regular contributor to the Arab Digest newsletter. His latest book published by Hurst is titled From Sheikhs to Sultanism.
Summary: although the fundamentals of Saudi relations with the US seemingly remain solid, the energy market’s current dynamics and longer-term prospects mean that Washington can no longer depend on Riyadh to bend to its will on oil output, thereby potentially putting in jeopardy the original cornerstone in relations.
Summary: despite the optics and the apparent climbdown by President Biden amidst claims of a resentful and rupturing partnership, Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam argues that the relationship with Saudi Arabia though strained was never at serious risk.
Summary: the Egyptian president has built a debt-fuelled economic house of cards that Maged Mandour argues is dangerously close to tumbling down.
Summary: the Egyptian president has built a debt-fulled economic house of cards that Maged Mandour argues is dangerously close to tumbling down.
Summary: Italy, Algeria and Tunisia share an energy nexus of interest that has the potential to alter the economic landscape for all three as Europe scrambles to free itself from its dependency on Russian oil and gas.