Turkey’s Schizophrenic Opposition Unlikely to Defeat Erdogan and Unified AKP

As Turkey prepares for its first direct presidential election, its two main secular opposition parties, the People’s Republican Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have jointly nominated Ekmelledin Ihsanoglu, the former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as their candidate. Ihsanoglu, a religious conservative, will run against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the heavy favorite from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party, a political party with links to the Kurdish-dominated Peace and Democracy Party. Ihsanoglu appears to have been chosen to compete with Erdogan in […]

Kurdish President Massoud Barzani meets with U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr, Irbil, Iraq, Oct. 20, 2015 (U.S. Department of Defense photo).

It is no secret that the survival of Iraq within its current official borders is very much in doubt. The lightning-fast battlefield victories of the extremist Sunni group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—which recently renamed itself the Islamic State and anointed itself as the new caliphate—have revived the old debate about a potential partition of the country. Iraq, a product of European colonial mapmaking, could split into three states: one Sunni, one Shiite and one Kurdish. But as Iraqis fret and international observers debate the country’s future, Israelis across the political spectrum have come forth to declare […]