On Sunday 23 January, Turkish Cypriots will head to the polls in the parliamentary elections, following the resignation of the precarious nationalist right-wing coalition formed by the National Unity Party (Ulusal Birlik Partisi - UBP), Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti - DP) and Rebirth Party (Yeniden Doğuş Partisi - YDP). Turkish Cypriot parliamentary elections are held every five years, since the first election in 1976.
In recent years, Africa has become an arena for international competition in which global balances and hierarchies have been reshuffled. The US’ gradual retrenchment and China’s simultaneous explosive growth have left power vacuums that other players have tried to fill. Among these, Turkey has gained increasing influence. In Africa, the Anatolian country can afford to play a role that exceeds its actual capacity as an emerging mid-level power.
Greco-Turkish maritime disputes, couched in competing narratives of national sovereignties, are nothing new. Plus, it has also long been the case that the two sides cannot agree on a framework within which to address their disputes. In spite of the intermittent flare ups, these disputes have traditionally taken the form of a smouldering yet frozen conflict. Despite the relative respite in the tension since early 2021, this only came after a period of high tension in the Eastern Mediterranean between 2016 and 2020.
This year marked the start of a gradual shift in Turkey’s regional foreign policy. After having played a proactive and assertive role in the broader Mediterranean in recent years, Ankara has adopted a less confrontational stance, as it has turned increasingly aware of the need to break its regional isolation and to make friends again. International, regional, and domestic developments have led Turkey to open new channels of dialogue with its neighbours in an attempt to defuse tensions and repair relations.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has adopted various instruments in order to maintain its regional primacy in the post-Soviet space (PSS). In particular, during the 1990s, a favourable political climate contributed to Russia negotiating all the ceasefire agreements that followed the violent ethno-conflicts that erupted in several states of the post-Soviet Union era.
In its latest iteration, which manifested itself more clearly between 2019 and 2021, Turkey’s foreign policy around Libya has been part of three interlinked policies.
After over a year of tensions, the European Union (EU) has offered an olive branch to reset relations with Turkey and relaunch bilateral cooperation on specific crucial dossiers. Although profound divergences between the two persist, realpolitik seems to have prevailed in Brussels as Turkey remains a strategic player in the enlarged Mediterranean region, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has changed its Syria strategy as frequently as other warring parties have changed their tactics. Nonetheless, after a year of stalemate in Idlib against the Assad regime and several years of inconclusive adversarial policies against the Kurdish-led administration, Ankara faces the pressure of another strategy change. It can come in two ways: either as a shift in attitude towards the Kurdish administration or one towards the regime.
Turkey’s recent diplomatic initiatives to settle outstanding disputes with Egypt and Israel can be seen as a clear indication that Turkey’s ‘precious loneliness’ has already proven too burdensome and costly in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Though U.S.-Turkish strategic bilateral relations date back to the early Cold War era, one cannot describe them as warm today. Many issues divide Ankara and Washington, starting with Turkey’s 2017 purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile-defense system, for which the United States sanctioned Turkey by suspending Ankara’s participation, in July 2019, in NATO’s flagship F-35 fighter plane project. What is more, new U.S.
After several months of tensions with Turkey, EU Member States announced their willingness to renew the expired migration agreement[1] in March 2021, while the EU Commission has already lined up an additional €585 million for a so-called “humanitarian bridge funding” for 2021.