10 September 2023 Armenia: Last Round? By Gwynne Dyer The Armenians are a people of great antiquity – the first Armenian kingdom was in the 8th century BC – but they grew up in a tough neighbourhood, and they have been in retreat for a very long time. They lost their independence to the Persians, …
15 May 2023 Syria: The Rehabilitation of Assad By Gwynne Dyer There is no justice. Bashar al-Assad, the murderous Syrian dictator whose membership even the Arab League suspended twelve years ago, is off to Riyadh this week to celebrate his re-admission to the organisation. He will pay no price for his many crimes against humanity: …
10 May 2023 Turkey: A Hundred Years of Culture War By Gwynne Dyer Turkey’s elections are fairly free, and there is going to be one this Sunday (14 May). President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been in power for two decades, and he should really lose by a landslide. Imagine what the United States would be …
20 July 2022 Ukraine Black Sea Corridor By Gwynne Dyer “Not all issues have yet been resolved, but the fact that there is movement is already good,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on Tuesday. “We feel that incrementally, there’s been a little bit more progress made, but there’s nothing to announce at this …
25 November 2020 “The only officials present were American and Saudi,” tweeted the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, but he was lying. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu really did fly in to Saudi Arabia to spend a few hours with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US Secretary of State …
30 August 2020 There are eight Turks for every Greek, so you might think the Greeks have to fold. But Greece has the backing of France, Italy, Israel, Egypt, and practically every other country in the eastern Mediterranean and the Arab world, as well as the entire European Union, so it has just called the …
‘Field Marshal’ Khalifa Haftar’s retreat from Tripoli should not be confused with Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Haftar was foolish to try to capture the Libyan capital – it even surprised his foreign backers – but he probably won’t have to retreat very far. His main force is still intact, and it doesn’t snow much in …
Turkey has opened the floodgates, and soon Europe will be drowning in immigrants. “Hundreds of thousands have crossed,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on television, “and soon it will reach millions.” And it must be true, because you can see it live on your medium of choice. Look at this clip of Greek frontier …
Turkey has not won a war against Russia since the 1600s, although there have been at least half a dozen of them. You would think that even the most aggressive Turkish leader would try to avoid another one, but you would be wrong. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey for the past seventeen …
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not an ‘Islamist’, in the extreme sense of the word. He doesn’t wear a suicide vest, he doesn’t behead people, he doesn’t even go around holding one finger up in the air to signify his hatred of those who fail to acknowledge the One True God. But he certainly …