Open Dialogue Research Journal
The formal legal trigger for Ankara’s demarche is an ongoing investigation into the “Global Sumud” humanitarian flotilla, which attempted to break the maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. The interception of these vessels by the Israeli Navy in international waters, along with the detention of activists, triggered a deep historical […]
The emerging Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish defense framework represents one of the most significant attempts in recent years to construct an autonomous security architecture linking the Middle East with South Asia. It is still premature to describe it as an “Islamic NATO,” because it lacks NATO’s permanent command structure, standardized operational doctrine and […]
Eight bombs fell on the runways and hangars of the Abu al-Duhur air base in northern Syria early Tuesday morning, and within hours the incident had done something more consequential than damage a single airstrip: it pulled three of Washington’s closest Middle East partners – Israel, Turkey, and Syria’s new […]
As of August 2026, Syria’s government under President Ahmed Al-Sharaa appears considerably stronger than it did after Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December 2024. Damascus controls most major cities, has recovered important oil and gas fields, secured sanctions relief, joined the international coalition against “Islamic State” and established working relationships with […]
Syria’s war has changed shape, but it has not disappeared. The country is no longer living through the same battlefield map that defined the Assad years, yet the forces that once tore it apart are still active beneath the surface: armed fragmentation, sectarian fear, economic despair, foreign rivalry, and the […]
They’re not the same thing, unlike what many might think, and the difference is important. Reports indicate that Russia has withdrawn from three bases in Northeastern Mali, which the local Tuareg call Azawad, after the offensive by “Azawad Liberation Front” (FLA) Tuareg separatists and al-Qaeda-affiliated “Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin” (JNIM) radical […]
If it wasn’t for the Africa Corps’ valiant defense of their positions throughout the country, Mali probably would have already fallen, but it now has a fighting chance to survive and foil this Western power play. Russia’s Africa Corps played an indispensable role in helping Mali thwart last weekend’s terrorist […]
The solutions are difficult to implement during the crisis, however, but hopefully that’ll happen after (if?) it passes. Saturday’s coordinated attacks across Mali by terrorist-designated Tuareg rebels in the rural north and Islamic terrorists in the urban areas, which were described as “unprecedented” by Al Jazeera and Le Monde, caught the government by surprise. This […]
The growing Israeli-Turkish rivalry might soon expand to Jordan. Turkiye, Syria, and Jordan signed a trilateral MoU in early April on transport cooperation that followed their meeting more than half a year prior last September where they first committed to reviving the Hejaz Railway. This late-Ottoman project connected Istanbul with Medina and Mecca but […]
The Druze seem to be fine with this since they’d prefer being Israel’s junior partner over the risk of being slaughtered by their non-Druze “compatriots” like what happened to the Alawites last spring. Israel announced on Friday that it bombed Syrian military positions “in response to the events yesterday, in which Druze […]
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