James M Dorsey

Turkey, like much of the Middle East, is discovering that what goes around comes around.

For the better part of a century, the United States could claim the moral high ground despite allegations of hypocrisy because its policies continuously contradicted its proclaimed propagation of democracy and human rights. Under President Donald J Trump the US has lost that moral high ground.

There’s a déjà vu feeling to this year’s wave of protests across the Arab world.

By the law of unintended consequences, US President Donald J Trump’s mix of uncritical and cynical embrace of Saudi Arabia and transactional approach towards relations with the kingdom may be producing results.

Eurasia’s Great Game is anything but simple and straightforward. A burgeoning alliance between China and Russia that at least for now is relegating potential differences between the two powers to the sidelines has sparked a complex geopolitical dance of its own.

A controversial former security official and Abu Dhabi-based political operator, Mohammed Dahlan, has lurked for several years in the shadows of Palestinian politics.

Protest is back on the front burner. Protesters occupy streets in cities ranging from Hong Kong and Moscow to Khartoum and Algiers.

Recent diametrically opposed responses to repression of Muslims by China, India and other Asian countries highlight deep differences among Gulf states that ripple across Asia. The different responses were evident in Gulf reactions to India’s unilateral withdrawal of Kashmir’s autonomy and Qatar’s reversal of its support of China’s clampdown on Turkic Muslims in its troubled, north-western province of Xinjiang.

Russia, backed by China, hoping to exploit mounting doubts in the Gulf about the reliability of the United States as the region’s sole security guarantor, is proposing a radical overhaul of the security architecture in an area that is home to massive oil and gas reserves and some of the world’s most strategic waterways.

A recent ban on a militant, Iranian-backed Shiite group raised the spectre of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry spilling onto Nigerian streets as security forces launched a manhunt to find the alleged Boko Haram operatives who killed 65 people attending a funeral.

Climate change, much like war, could prove to be a geopolitical and commercial gold mine. At least, that is the take of DP World, Dubai’s global port operator, and Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.

An official Turkish visit to the troubled northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang to assess reports of a brutal crackdown on the region’s Turkic Muslims could shape Turkey’s challenge to conservative Gulf

A public apology by a prominent Salafi scholar sheds light on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s version of “moderate Islam”, his effort to shape the Middle East and North Africa in his mould, and the replacement of religion with hyper-nationalism as the source of his legitimacy.

When Turkish vice-president Fuat Oktay and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu became the first high-level foreign government delegation to travel to Christchurch after the attacks on two mosques, they were doing more than expressing solidarity with New Zealand's grieving Muslim community.

Friday's attack on two mosques in New Zealand reflects a paradigm shift: the erosion of liberal values and the rise of 'civilisationalism' at the expense of the nation state.

The United Arab Emirates is projecting itself as a leader of inter-communal and inter-faith harmony with the first ever visit by a Catholic pope to the Gulf and an inter-faith conference that is as much about dialogue as it is about absolute political control.

US President Donald J Trump's threat to devastate Turkey's economy if Turkish troops attack Syrian Kurds allied with the United States in the wake of the announced withdrawal of American forces potentially serves his broader goal of letting regional forces fight for common goals like countering Iranian influence in Syria.

Two attacks in Pakistan, including a brazen assault on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, are likely to complicate Prime Minister Imran Khan's efforts to renegotiate China's massive,

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite being on opposite sides of Middle Eastern divides, are cooperating in Syria to enable youth and women to acquire skills that would either allow them to compete in the job market or turn them into entrepreneurs.

This is a tough time for men and women of the cloth, at least those whose message is one of peace, tolerance, mutual respect, equality and inter-faith dialogue.