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Kurdish Assassinations in Paris Put Spotlight on Turkey-PKK Talks
TIME – French justice authorities scrambled for clues Thursday into the assassination of three women in a Kurdish institute in Paris — a crime that appeared to have clear political overtones. Two of the victims were shot in the head, in what Interior Minister Manuel Valls said was “no doubt an execution.” One of them was Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has waged an often violent Kurdish separatist struggle against Turkey and which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the E.U…
Iraqi Foreign Policy: Actors and Processes
Chatham House – This session discussed the key individuals and government institutions that are critical to foreign relations and policy-making in Iraq. Article 110 of the Iraqi Constitution outlines the exclusive authority the central government has over Iraqi foreign policy. Individuals within the central government have been critical in the execution of Iraqi foreign relations, and significant contributors to Iraq’s incoherent foreign policy….
Foreign Policy – At first, it sounded like a horror story torn from the pages of American tabloids: the corpses of three women were found on the second floor office of an apartment building on Jan. 10. Two of the women had bullets holes in the back of their heads, the third was shot in the stomach and the forehead…
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Someone told me that Israel and Western countries are now worried about the fate of 50 metric tons of uranium secretly stashed away in Syria. Reflecting for a couple of minutes, I strongly suspected that I was not the sole recipient of that message from certain quarters, and, sure enough, 24 hours later, my intuition proved to be spot on…