Discovering MENA and other thoughts

"This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy [...] is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order," Barack Obama said during a 15-minute intervention broadcast live on major American television networks on September 10th. 

On the occasion of the start of the Kurdish new year and before hundred of thousands of feverish supporters, imprisoned PKK (Kurdistan Worker Party, branded by many countries as terrorist organization) leader, Abdullah Ocalan, surprised many by announcing last week both a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all the group's forces (experts reckon they amount to more than 3,000) from Turkey, in what some consider the culmination of years-long efforts from both sides to put an end to a decades-long bloody conflict that has left behind more than 40,000 deaths (a vast majority of them Kurdish), as well as thousands of ravaged families. With this declaration, the group meets one of the conditions PM Erdogan has repeatedly established to set off formal negotiation talks. A similar process was put into motion in 1999, following the capture of Ocalan by Turkish forces, but failed and, as a result, the Turkish army severely attacked the group. The second failed effort reached the 2010 "Os...

Three Kurdish female activists, including a founding member of the Kurdistan's Workers Party militant group (PKK), were mysteriously shot dead in Paris recently. An unsolved assassination (the French authorities are carrying out an in-depth inquiry on the murders) that has sparked rumours throughout Turkey and the region, where the central Government, particularly nationalist figures within it that receive the name of "the deep state" (it wouldn't be the first time this type of accusations have been heard), has been accused of trying to jeopardize the peace process that kicked off weeks ago bearing promises of stability, through disarmament, and greater autonomy as well as the granting of more rights for the Southern Kurdish region. Meanwhile, the Turkish Government is blaming an internal feud, precisely regarding peace negotiations, within the rebel group PKK . Most are already blaming both sides for speaking publicly about the negotiations too soon, thus ali...