The Calculus of Necessity Shapes the Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement By Islam Farag, from Cairo / Egypt In the early hours of last Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had reached the first phase of a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip. As the ceasefire took effect, ending a two-year war, cautious optimism mixed with deep apprehension ...

ASEAN can establish a “Green Coastal Shipping Corridor” project. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Short-sea shipping has been the backbone of maritime Southeast Asia for centuries. From Singapore and Manila ports to Indonesia’s sea lines of the archipelago and the inland water transport network of the Mekong Delta, short-sea shipping is an economic driver and a logistics imperative. Yet even as ...

And recent conflicts in West Asia. By Gökalp Erbaş The proposal of Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is part of the ruling coalition in Türkiye, for a “Türkiye-Russia-China (TRÇ) alliance against the US-Israel evil alliance” has sparked discussions about the possibility and conditions of such an alliance. One wonders how this alliance proposal resonates in ...

Charting a New Course in a Polarized World By Mehmet Enes Beşer The promise of a “New Malaysia” first captured global attention in 2018, when a surprise electoral upset ended sixty-two unbroken years of Barisan Nasional coalition government. Pakatan Harapan coalition win—and return to politics of veteran politician Mahathir Mohamad—was welcomed as a democratic victory, a harbinger that Malaysia was ...

For ASEAN, the question is not whether to participate or not in global finance and trade—it does so already. The question is how to use that role for people and planet’s benefit, and not just profits. By Mehmet Enes Beşer ASEAN’s transformation into one of the globe’s most dynamic economic blocks has been spurred as much by domestic reform as ...

Domestic crisis, militarization, tensions with Germany and Russia. France is struck in a deep political and social crisis. Prime Ministers are resigning, losing votes of confidence, while the population is engaged in protests on the streets. We asked Rodrigo Arenas, French member of parliament from the France Insoumise (France Unbowed) on what’s going on. Arenas had indicated that the government ...

Elections and Results By Gökalp Erbaş “If the opposition is suppressed and intimidated through police methods, and PAS and its allies secure high vote shares in the elections, an inevitable outcome will be approaching. In this scenario, Russia will eventually be provoked from this front.” I concluded my Moldova analysis in July with these lines, and now, three months later, ...

Beyond Surveillance By Mehmet Enes Beşer The Malaysian CVE experience has attracted regional and global attention both as a pioneering legislation and because of its complex security, political, and religious dynamics. Malaysia has utilized a multidimensional toolkit of hard and soft power responses from the Malayan Emergency insurgency during the 20th century up to the current threat from transnational Islamist ...

How does Trump’s plan actually serve Trump and Netanyahu’s occupation and ‘Riviera’ plan rather than Palestine? By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist / Author Shortly after announcing its recognition of Palestine as a state, Britain deployed former Prime Minister Tony Blair to thwart Palestine’s self-determination in line with US President Trump’s so-called ‘Peace Deal’. This move once again exposed the historical ...

A summary of rising tensions world wide. By Onur Sinan Güzaltan The phrases in the title of this article belong to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. The threat of a global war isn’t just on Vučić’s mind. But on everyone who’s been following world affairs even a little. Is World War III an unavoidable threat? To better understand Vučić’s remarks, it’s ...