Western Europe/Mediterranean

Numerous foreign nationals with ties to ISIS have come to Türkiye since the group’s defeat in Iraq and Syria. This population presents officials with complex questions, one of which is what threat individuals might still pose. The predicament calls for a multi-pronged strategy.

This week on War & Peace, Elissa Jobson is joined by Berkay Mandıracı, Crisis Group’s Senior analyst for Türkiye, to discuss the latest escalation in Türkiye’s PKK conflict, its development in recent years and how it relates to Türkyie’s domestic politics.

Six months of contacts between Türkiye and Armenia have brought an agreement to move toward opening their shared border and launching direct trade. But Ankara and Yerevan are far apart on many issues. The road ahead will be long.

This week on Hold Your Fire! Richard Atwood talks with former Finnish Prime Minister and Crisis Group trustee Alexander Stubb about Finland’s decision to apply for NATO membership, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the war’s global repercussions.

Ankara has blocked the bids of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, to the dismay of Western capitals who see the enlargement as strengthening the alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With all sides seeing key principles at stake, the impasse is unlikely to end soon.

This week on Hold Your Fire! Richard Atwood talks to Crisis Group Trustee and distinguished French diplomat Gérard Araud about European security, transatlantic politics, the West’s relations with Moscow and France’s election, as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters a new phase. 

In this episode of Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk with Sahel experts Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim and Richard Moncrieff about France’s announcement it will pull troops from Mali, and what the withdrawal means for the fighting against jihadist insurgents.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope talk to expert Eleonora Tafuro, a research fellow at ISPI, to make sense of the complicated relationship between Russia and Turkey that has veered from collaborative to adversarial, often landing somewhere in between.

Turkey is increasingly relying on airpower in its fight against the PKK. New parties have been drawn into the conflict as it spreads to new theatres in Iraq and Syria, which, for now at least, complicates potential efforts to settle things down.