Future of Old Conflicts in Turkey and Syria
The Middle East’s myriad, complex, often overlapping conflicts continue to evolve—particularly in Turkey and Syria. The decades-long conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group may finally have an end in sight. On February 27, Abdullah Ocalan, the longtime PKK leader, issued a remarkable statement from Turkish prison calling for the PKK to adopt a ceasefire with Turkey in exchange for greater political rights. PKK forces in Iraq and Turkey officially heeded Ocalan’s directive, even as Ankara launched strikes over the following week targeting Kurdish forces in western Iraq and northern Syria.
Meanwhile, the situation in Syria itself, where Kurdish fighters have repeatedly clashed with Turkish-backed actors since the Assad regime’s collapse, continues its unpredictable evolution. On March 10, the Syrian transition government announced a breakthrough deal to integrate Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the interim government by the end of the year. In recent days, sectarian violence has erupted, with Assad loyalists from the country’s Alawite minority attacking police forces of the Turkish-linked and Sunni extremist-led interim government, with government forces responding by killing hundreds of Alawite civilians.
To discuss the unfolding developments in Turkey and Syria, JINSA will be hosting a discussion with leading subject matter experts, including JINSA Distinguished Scholar and former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Amb. Eric Edelman, JINSA Policy Advisor and Director of the Central-Asia Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Svante Cornell, and JINSA’s Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow John Hannah. The discussion will be moderated by JINSA’s Vice President for Policy, Blaise Misztal.
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Thursday, March 13 | 3:30PM ET |
This webinar is open exclusively to JINSA RSVPs must be received via the button Once your registration is confirmed, you will |
Svante E. Cornell Svante E. Cornell is a JINSA Scholar, the Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. His main areas of expertise are security issues, state-building, and transnational crime in Southwest and Central Asia, with a specific focus on the Caucasus and Turkey. He is the Editor of CACI’s Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and Turkey Analyst, the Center’s electronic publications, and of its Silk Road Papers series of occasional papers. |
Amb. Eric Edelman Amb. Eric Edelman is a Distinguished Scholar at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy and the Co-Chair of its Iran Policy Project and Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project. Amb. Edelman served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House and served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from August 2005 to January 2009. Amb. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was principal deputy assistant to the vice president for national security affairs. |
John Hannah John Hannah is the Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy. Hannah served in senior foreign policy positions for both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor from 2005-2009 and as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East from 2001-2005. Previously, he also served as a senior advisor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during the Bill Clinton administration, and as a senior member of Secretary of State James A. Baker’s Policy Planning Staff during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. |
Blaise Misztal Blaise Misztal is the Vice President for Policy at JINSA. His research interests include Iran and its nuclear program, U.S.-Turkey relations, countering extremism, and strategic competition. Misztal served as the Executive Director of the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, a congressionally mandated project convened by the U.S. Institute of Peace, and Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Program. He has testified before Congress and published widely—including op-eds in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, and Roll Call. Misztal holds an M.Phil. in political science from Yale and an A.B. with honors from the University of Chicago. |