Politics
A focus on what drives and determines political power in the region.
on :
Tuesday, 18 Jun, 2013
The strain between Canada and Iran was highlighted again this week, when—in contrast to the majority of other Western states—Canada's foreign minister called the recent Iranian elections "effectively meaningless" and described president-elect Hassan Rouhani as a "puppet" of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, together with the University of Toronto, set up an online monitoring service during the election, which broadcast reports on developm...
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on :
Friday, 14 Jun, 2013
Khalid Azizi is a composed and soft-spoken man; he does not exhibit the fiery rhetoric that would be expected of a man in his position. Azizi is the secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iran, an outlawed group currently based in neighboring Iraq. He lobbies for the improvement of rights for Iran’s Kurdish population, currently numbering close to seven million.
Here, he talks about the changes sweeping the region and how they may affect the course of the Kurdish ...
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on :
Tuesday, 11 Jun, 2013
Iran’s June 14 presidential election is only a few days away, and the six contenders are hard at work trying to win popular support. While it has been argued by many that Iran’...
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on :
Thursday, 30 May, 2013
Once heralded as the inevitable victors of the Syria conflict, the armed opponents of Bashar Al-Assad have recently found themselves pushed unexpectedly onto the defensive. Fought ...
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on :
Wednesday, 22 May, 2013
As the UN’s figures for casualties in Syria tops 80,000 who have died from violence—with several thousands more who have died as a second-order effect of the violence, and many...
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on :
Monday, 13 May, 2013
Since his surprise election victory in 2004, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been something of a boogeyman in the eyes of the US and its allies, mocked and distrusted for...
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Syria’s catastrophe is increasingly leaping over the border of its northern neighbor, Turkey, igniting a whole new set of challenges for the Ankara government and blurring what w...
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on :
Tuesday, 23 Apr, 2013
Out of all the places to meet Zuheir Salem, the number two man of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), a David Brent-style office in Alperton, north London, is probably the least e...
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on :
Saturday, 20 Apr, 2013
Ankara, Asharq Al-Awsat—The Çankaya Köşkü has been the official residence of the president of Turkey since the era of Atatürk, the founder of the modern republic. The presid...
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on :
Thursday, 18 Apr, 2013
Iraq’s eagerly anticipated provincial elections will take place this Saturday, April 20. While the elections for parliament and the post of prime minister will happen next year, ...
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