Valdai Club

Andrey Skriba

Vladimir Sazhin

Robert Smigielski

Andrew Small

Alexander Stukalin

Jonathan Steele

Lev Sokolshik

Felix Stanevsky

Walid Salem

Aaron Stein

USA

Director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Materials

Can Idlib Ruin the Turkey-Russia Entente?

Despite the tensions, Turkey and Russia still have an incentive to talk. Ankara depends on Russia to ensure its place at the table to draft a new Syrian constitution, presumably written in a way to minimize Turkish concerns about the Syrian Kurds. Moscow, most probably, still wants Turkey to arrange for the surrender of the proxies it supports.

The Great Firewall: Ankara, NATO, and Tensions with the United States

The American presence in Turkey has never been popular, but the leadership in Ankara understood that, as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey benefited from strong and close ties with the United States. These ties, however, did not always ensure close bilateral relations.

Temporary and Transactional: The Syrian Regime and SDF Alliance

Turkey has created a regime-Kurdish alliance of convenience, but once Ankara is removed from the equation, the basic tension between the Syrian regime and the SDF will re-emerge and conflict could ensue.