Russia’s military intervention in Syria is clearly not going well. Last Friday (July 8), another helicopter was reportedly shot down near Palmyra, and the Russian Ministry of Defense, after an initial denial, had to admit that the downed aircraft was not a Syrian Mi-25, but... MORE

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, on July 5, that the June 28 attack at Istanbul’s international airport was carried out by natives of Dagestan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Korrespondent.net, July 5). “Unfortunately, our neighbors from the North Caucasus were involved in the terrorist attack,” Erdoğan... MORE

TURKEY: ISLAMIC STATE SHIFTS TACTICS WITH ISTANBUL ATTACK A suicide attack on Turkey’s Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul on June 28 left at least 41 people dead and more than 230 injured. The attack appears to have been carried out by three suicide bombers who... MORE

The end of the six-year diplomatic stalemate between Israel and Turkey, announced on June 27 (Hurriyet Daily News, June 28), also heralded a shift on another front. Seven months after the start of the crisis in Turkish-Russian relations, a second letter from the Turkish leadership... MORE

Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, Central Asians have featured prominently among the anti-government militants. But until June 2016, as far as Central Asia was concerned, the impact of the war was contained almost entirely to Syria and Iraq and remote parts... MORE

A Note from Jamestown: As Turkish law enforcement officials work to determine who is responsible for this week’s Istanbul airport attack, international news media has focused their attention on one man, Akhmed Chataev. While Turkish media was first to finger Chataev as the one responsible... MORE

Reports emerged in Moscow and Ankara, on June 24, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a letter apparently apologizing for the loss of a Russian Su-24 bomber and the death of its pilot. The Russian jet had been shot... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Newly entrenched on the Crimean peninsula, Russia has appropriated the title to large parts of Ukraine’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ). According to the treaty on Crimea’s accession to Russia (a constitutional act in Russia), “the... MORE

After months of negotiation, the United States finally gave the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - which is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and includes the Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC) – the green light to launch its offensive to take the Syrian... MORE

The periodic escalation of violence in and around the separatist Azerbaijani territory of Karabakh routinely raises concerns about this conflict’s threat to regional energy security and pipeline infrastructure. However, few commentaries analyze this issue’s broader geopolitical implications in any detail. The intense fighting between the... MORE