In recent weeks, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has significantly escalated his assaults on democracy and human rights in Turkey. As Turkish authorities unjustly imprisoned a prominent member of parliament from the second-largest opposition party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the government initiated a process to ban the HDP entirely. Erdoğan also suddenly withdrew Turkey from the Istanbul Convention, a major international treaty designed to combat violence against women. Earlier this winter, Turkish police cracked down on peaceful student protestors at Istanbul’s prestigious Boğaziçi University and government officials attacked them with homophobic hate speech online. Collectively, these repressive moves constitute what Human Rights Watch has called a crackdown on “a scale unprecedented in the 18 years that [Erdoğan] has been in office.”

Please join us for a panel discussion on why Erdoğan is cranking up repression, what the impact on the ground is, and how the United States and Europe should respond.

• Event Highlights

Featuring:

• Emma Sinclair-Webb
  Turkey Director, Human Rights Watch
• Gönül Tol
  Turkey Program Director, Middle East Institute
• Amberin Zaman
  Senior Correspondent for the Middle East and North Africa, Al-Monitor

Moderator:

• Merve Tahiroğlu
  Turkey Program Coordinator, POMED

Speaker Bios:

Emma Sinclair-Webb is a senior Turkey researcher with the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. She has worked on issues including police violence, accountability for enforced disappearances and killings by state perpetrators, the misuse of terrorism laws, and arbitrary detention. Ms. Sinclair-Webb was a researcher on Turkey for Amnesty International from 2003 to 2007, and previously worked in publishing as a commissioning editor on books on history, culture, and politics in the Middle East and southeast Europe. She has degrees from Cambridge University and Birkbeck College, London, and speaks Turkish.

Gönül Tol is the founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and a senior fellow with the Institute’s Frontier Europe Initiative. She is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies. She previously has been an adjunct professor at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, where she taught courses on Turkey, world politics, and the Middle East. Dr. Tol has written extensively on Turkey-U.S. relations, Turkish domestic politics, and the Kurdish issue.

Amberin Zaman is a senior correspondent reporting from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe exclusively for Al-Monitor. Zaman has been a columnist for Al-Monitor for the past five years, examining the politics of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria and writing the daily Briefly Turkey newsletter. Prior to Al-Monitor, Zaman covered Turkey, the Kurds, and conflicts in the region for the Washington Post, Daily Telegraph, Los Angeles Times and Voice of America. Ms. Zaman served as the Economist‘s Turkey correspondent between 1999 and 2016 and has worked as a columnist for several Turkish language outlets.

Merve Tahiroğlu (moderator) is POMED’s Turkey Program Coordinator. Prior to joining POMED in 2019, Merve was a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she focused on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and relationship with Washington. She has authored several monographs and published articles in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Politico, and HuffPost.

Photo Credit: Oguz Kaan Cagatay Kilinc / Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Facebook page

On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets for unprecedented protests against the three-decade dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak, stunning the government, the country, and the wider region. In the ensuing 18 days, the protests grew into a national popular uprising centered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, demanding Mubarak’s ouster and “bread, freedom, and social justice.” On February 11, 2011, Mubarak resigned and the Egyptian military assumed power, promising to oversee a democratic transition. The January 25 Revolution brought widespread elation in Egypt and helped inspire the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings against regimes in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere.

What followed in Egypt was a tumultuous two and a half years of political and social ferment and partial democratization—brought to an end by the July 3, 2013 military coup led by now-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In the years since, al-Sisi has reimposed a military-backed dictatorship and led the most repressive period in Egypt’s modern history. Yet some observers believe his regime is far from stable and that aftershocks from the political earthquake of January 25, 2011, will reverberate for years to come.

Please join us for a special event, “Ten Years Since Tahrir Square: Egypt Then and Now,” with an outstanding group of Egypt experts. With a decade of hindsight, what can we see more clearly about the Uprising? Why did the attempted democratic transition fail? What are the lasting effects of January 25 on politics and society? How does al-Sisi’s regime differ from Mubarak’s? What are the main sources of instability in Egypt today, and what might a future popular uprising look like?

• Event Highlights
• Event Transcript

Panel 1: Looking Back at 2011

10:00 – 11:00 AM

Panelists:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash
  Freelance Journalist and Researcher
• Sahar Aziz
  Professor of Law, Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar,
  Rutgers University Law School
• Michael Hanna
  Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
• Salma El Hosseiny
  Program Manager, Human Rights Council,
  International Service for Human Rights

Moderator:

• Stephen McInerney
  Executive Director,
  Project on Middle East Democracy

Panel 2: Looking at Egypt Today

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Panelists:

• Michele Dunne
  Director and Senior Fellow, Middle East Program,
  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Ezzedine C. Fishere
  Novelist and Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College
• Nancy Okail
  Scholar, Human Rights and Democracy Advocate
• Robert Springborg
  Professor of National Security Affairs (ret), Naval Postgraduate School

Moderator:

• Amy Hawthorne (moderator)
  Deputy Director for Research, POMED

Speaker Bios:

Panel 1: Looking Back at 2011

Abdelrahman Ayyash is an Egyptian researcher, translator, and journalist based in Washington, DC. He holds a master’s in global affairs from Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey. His research focuses on Islamic movements in the Middle East, human rights, and civilian-military relations. He is the author of a recent report for the Century Foundation ittled “The Turkish Future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.”

Sahar Aziz is Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University Law School. Her research investigates the relationship between authoritarianism, terrorism, and rule of law in Egypt and elsewhere. She is the founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights. Professor Aziz is an editor for the Arab Law Quarterly and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Her forthcoming book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom (2021) examines how religious bigotry racializes immigrant Muslims through a historical and comparative approach.

Michael Wahid Hanna is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Hanna works on issues of international security, international law, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia and is a prominent expert on Egypt. He is the co-author of numerous publications on Egypt and of several Century Foundation studies, including Hybrid Actors: Armed Groups and State Fragmentation in the Middle East (2019) and Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East (2019). He served as a consultant for Human Rights Watch in Baghdad in 2008. Prior to joining The Century Foundation, Hanna was a senior fellow at the International Human Rights Law Institute. Fluent in Arabic, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Cairo University. He received a JD from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review.

Salma El Hosseiny is a program manager at the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR),  where she leads strategic engagement and advocacy at the Human Rights Council. She holds a master’s degree in International Human Rights Law and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Prior to joining ISHR, Salma worked for international and national human rights organisations in the Middle East and North Africa region. Her work focused on the protection of human rights defenders, civil and political rights and women’s rights.

Stephen McInerney (moderator) is the executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). Prior to joining POMED in 2007, he had spent six years living, working, and studying in the Middle East and North Africa—two years each in Egypt, Lebanon, and Qatar. He spent two years in a master’s degree program in the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut, one year on a fellowship at the Center for Arab Study Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo, and three years teaching at Cairo American College and the American School of Doha. He received a Master’s degree from Stanford University and is fluent in Arabic.

 

Panel 2: Looking at Egypt Today

 

Michele Dunne is the director of and a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries, particularly Egypt, as well as U.S. policy in the Middle East. She was the founding director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council from 2011 to 2013 and was a senior associate and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2006 to 2011. Dunne was a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Department of State from 1986 to 2003, where she served in assignments that included the National Security Council, the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She also served as a visiting professor of Arabic language and Arab studies at Georgetown from 2003 to 2006.

Ezzedine C. Fishere is a senior lecturer at Dartmouth College, where he has taught courses on Middle East politics and culture since 2016. Fishere was the Washington Post’s second Jamal Khashoggi fellow and contributes regular commentary on Egypt and the broader region to the paper’s Global Opinions section. He previously taught in the Political Science department of the American University in Cairo. Fishere previously served as an advisor to pro-democracy movements and political candidates including Mohamed Elbaradei, from 2011 to 2013, and Hamdeen Sabahi, in 2014. He worked for the Egyptian Foreign Service and United Nations missions in the Middle East. He directed the Arab-Israeli project at the International Crisis Group from 2007 to 2008, and worked as a counselor to the Egyptian foreign minister from 2005 to 2007. He has also served as a political adviser at the United Nations Missions in Sudan and the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) in Jerusalem. Fishere has published seven novels in Arabic, two of which were translated into English—including, most recently, The Egyptian Assassin: A Novel (2019).

Nancy Okail is the President of 4AChange, a newly founded organization focusing on accountability on the global level. Okail started 4AChange during her appointment in 2020 as a visiting scholar at the Center for Development, Democracy, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Okail has over 20 years of experience working on issues of democracy, rule of law, human rights, governance, and security in the Middle East and North Africa region with recognized expertise on Egypt. She previously served as the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) from its foundation in 2013 until 2019. Okail also previously served as the director of Freedom House’s Egypt program. She has also worked with the Egyptian government as a senior evaluation officer of foreign aid and managed programs for several international organizations. Okail was one of the 43 nongovernmental organization workers convicted and sentenced to prison in a widely publicized 2012 case for allegedly using foreign funds to foment unrest in Egypt. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in the UK; her doctoral research focused on the power relations of foreign aid.

Robert Springborg is one of the world’s most prominent experts on Egypt. He is an adjunct professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University and a non-resident research fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs. Until October 2013, he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and Program Manager for the Middle East for the Center for Civil-Military Relations. He is the author of numerous books on Egypt, including Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa (Polity Press, 2020), Egypt (Polity Press, 2018), Family, Power and Politics in Egypt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order (Westview, 1989), and several other works on Middle Eastern politics and economies. His next book is The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner, 2021), which he edited alongside Hicham Alaoui and which comes out in March of this year. He has worked as a consultant on Middle East governance and politics for USAID, the U.S. State Department, the UNDP, and various UK government departments.

Amy Hawthorne (moderator) is POMED’s Deputy Director for Research and an expert on Middle East politics and U.S. policy. Before joining POMED five years ago, Ms. Hawthorne was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Egypt Coordinator at the Department of State during the Arab Uprisings. Her previous positions include executive director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and senior program officer for the Middle East at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Amy studied at Yale University and the University of Michigan and has lived and traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey.

Photo Credit: Courtney Radsch on Flickr

Thank you for joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) for a webinar on:

Ten Years Later:

Tunisia’s Revolution and Democratic Transition

Thursday, January 14, 2021
10:00 am – 11:45 am ET
Via Zoom

Read the event highlights here.

Read the full event transcript here.

Or, stream the event on Facebook or Twitter.

On January 14, 2011, in the face of peaceful mass demonstrations, Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country and his dictatorship crumbled. Tunisia then embarked on a transition to democracy, a complex process that is still unfolding. Tunisia stands today as the only democracy in the Arab world. But the ongoing transition continues to face numerous challenges, and the revolution’s demands for dignity and socioeconomic justice remain unfulfilled.

Please join us for a special tenth anniversary event looking back at the revolution, reflecting on the last decade, and discussing where Tunisia is today.

10:00 am Panel Discussion

Panelists:

Achref Aouadi

Activist and Founder, I-Watch

Amna Guellali

Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Amnesty International 

Saida Ounissi

Member of Tunisian Parliament (France Nord)

Moderator:

Sarah Yerkes

Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 

11:00 am Fireside Chat 

Gordon Gray

U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, 2009-2012

in conversation with

Amy Hawthorne

Deputy Director for Research, POMED

REGISTER HERE

Speaker Bios

Panel Discussion

Achref Aouadi is a Tunisian activist and the founder of IWatch, a watchdog anti-corruption organization founded after the 2011 revolution. IWatch works to organize and advocate for increased government transparency and fights against corruption. Mr. Aouadi was chosen to represent the Tunisian civil society at the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and also serves as an Ashoka fellow. In 2019, he was awarded POMED’s Leaders for Democracy Award.

Amna Guellali is Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. Previously, she was a Senior Tunisia and Algeria researcher at Human Rights Watch, where she investigated human rights abuses in both countries. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Guellali worked as an analyst at the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague and as Senior Researcher at the department of international law at the Asser Institute. She has also served as legal officer at the regional delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tunis. Guellali holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. In 2017, she was awarded POMED’s Leaders for Democracy Award.

Saida Ounissi is a member of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People in the Ennahdha party and former Minister of Vocational Training and Employment. She represents the constituency of France Nord, an overseas constituency for members of the Tunisian diaspora in France. She was the youngest Ennahda candidate and became one of the youngest members of parliament. She sat on the Committees of Finance, Planning and Development and of Martyrs and Wounded of the Revolution. Previously, Ounissi worked as an intern at the African Development Bank. She was a researcher at the Research Institute on Contemporary Maghreb from 2012 to 2014. She was also active in a public policy analysis centre called the Jasmine Foundation. She served as Vice President of the European NGO Young Muslims of Europe.

Sarah Yerkes (moderator) is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on Tunisia’s political, economic, and security developments as well as state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa. She has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and has taught in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. Yerkes is a former member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, where she focused on North Africa. Previously, she was a foreign affairs officer in the State’s Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian affairs. Yerkes also served as a geopolitical research analyst for the U.S. military’s Joint Staff Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) at the Pentagon.

Fireside Chat

Ambassador Gordon Gray is the Chief Operating Officer at the Center for American Progress.  Prior to his retirement from the U.S. government after 35 years of public service, he was the Deputy Commandant at the National War College. Ambassador Gray was the U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia from 2009 until 2012, witnessing the start of the Arab Spring and directing the U.S. response in support of Tunisia’s transition. He served in Iraq as Senior Advisor to the Ambassador from 2008 to 2009 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2005 to 2008. Ambassador Gray’s other foreign assignments include Egypt, Canada, Jordan, Pakistan, and Morocco, where he began his career in government as a Peace Corps volunteer. He holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from Columbia, as well as an honorary M.S. from the National Defense University.

Amy Hawthorne (moderator) is POMED’s Deputy Director for Research and an expert on Middle East politics and U.S. policy. Before joining POMED in October 2015, Ms. Hawthorne was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. In 2011-12, she served as Egypt Coordinator and as Senior Advisor in the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau at the Department of State. Her previous positions include executive director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and senior program officer for the Middle East at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. She earned a BA in History from Yale University in History and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.  She has lived and traveled extensively in the Arab world, including as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt, as well as in Turkey.

Photo Credit: Crethi Plethi on Flickr

Washington is witnessing a strong push to elevate human rights in U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. Most notably, President-elect Joe Biden has said that the United States should “reassess” ties with the kingdom and hold Saudi Arabia accountable for human rights violations. 

This POMED conference, which follows the October 2020 conference event “Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia: A Critical Look,” convened leading experts to make the case for why the United States should prioritize promoting human rights and countering authoritarianism in its relations with Saudi Arabia; on what issues the Biden administration should focus; and how the U.S. government, civil society, and private sector can stand up against Saudi repression.

Read the full event transcript here.

Read the event highlights here.

To view a recording of the full event, watch the recording on Facebook, Twitter, or on YouTube below:

Panel 1 – Making the Case: Why the U.S.-Saudi Relationship Needs to Change

10:00 am – 11:00 am ET

Panelists:

• Safa Al Ahmad
  Acting Director, ALQST; Freelance Journalist and Filmmaker
• Aaron David Miller
  Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Sarah Leah Whitson
  Executive Director, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)

Moderator:

• Deborah Amos
  International Correspondent, NPR

Panel 2 – The Path Forward: Priorities and Policies

11:00 am – 12:00 pm ET

Panelists:

• Rob Berschinski
  Senior Vice President, Policy, Human Rights First
• Stephen McInerney
  Executive Director, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)
• Annie Shiel
  Senior Advisor for U.S. Policy and Advocacy, Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC)

Moderator:

• Tamara Cofman Wittes
  Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution

Fireside Chat – A View from the Hill

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm ET

A conversation with:

• Matt Duss
  Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Elizabeth Hagedorn
  Washington Correspondent, Al-Monitor

Speaker Bios

Panel 1

Safa Al Ahmad is the acting director of ALQST. She is a Saudi journalist and filmmaker who has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC. She is the winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, the El Mundo award for journalism for her body of work in 2015, the 2015 Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) International Press Freedom Award and the Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) Best International Investigation for her film Saudi’s Secret Uprising in 2014. Her documentary ‘Yemen Under Siege’ won two News and Documentary Emmys. Read her full bio here.

Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a global affairs analyst for CNN. Previously, he served at the State Department, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process. He also formerly served as resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has written five books, including his most recent, The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President (Palgrave, 2014). Read his full bio here. 

Sarah Leah Whitson is the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). She served as executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division from 2004 to 2020, overseeing the work of the division in 19 countries, with staff located in 10 countries. She led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and human rights. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the boards of the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Freedom Forward, and ALQST. Read her full bio here.

Deborah Amos (moderator) covers the Middle East for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR’s award-winning Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She has reported overseas as the London bureau chief and as a foreign correspondent based in Amman, Jordan. In 2010, Amos was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award by Washington State University. She was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of Iraq. Amos is also the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2010) and Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Amos is a Ferris Professor at Princeton, where she teaches migration reporting. Read her full bio here.

Panel 2

Rob Berschinski is the senior vice president of policy at Human Rights First. Previously, he served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. He also served under Ambassador Samantha Power as Deputy Director of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations’ office in Washington, D.C.; special assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter; and spent three years as Director for Security and Human Rights Policy at the White House National Security Council. From 2008 to 2010 he served on the staff of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy as a Presidential Management Fellow, and worked as a defense fellow on the professional staff of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. He began his career as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and is an Iraq War veteran. Read his full bio here.

Stephen McInerney is the executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). Prior to joining POMED in 2007, he had spent six years living, working, and studying in the Middle East and North Africa—two years each in Egypt, Lebanon, and Qatar. He spent two years in a master’s degree program in the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut, one year on a fellowship at the Center for Arab Study Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo, and three years teaching at Cairo American College and the American School of Doha. He received a Master’s degree from Stanford University and is fluent in Arabic. Read his full bio here. 

Annie Shiel is the senior advisor for U.S. policy and advocacy with the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC)’s U.S. Program, where she conducts policy research and advocacy around the civilian harm implications of U.S. military operations and security sector assistance. She is also a research program manager with Stanford University, where she leads research on the second- and third-order effects of conflict on civilians. Prior to working with CIVIC and Stanford, Annie spent three years at the State Department, where she worked on human rights, civilian protection, and security sector reform as a founding member of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor’s Office of Security and Human Rights. Read her full bio here.

Tamara Cofman Wittes (moderator) is a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, where she focuses on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Previously, Wittes served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from November of 2009 to January 2012, coordinating U.S. policy on democracy and human rights in the Middle East during the Arab uprisings. She also previously served as a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace and director of programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Wittes is the author of Freedom’s Unsteady March: America’s Role in Building Arab Democracy (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). She is a founder of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Read her full bio here.

Fireside Chat

Matt Duss is the foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. He served as an advisor to the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and from 2014 to 2017 was the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He also previously worked as a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and director of the Center’s Middle East Progress program, where he focused on the Middle East and U.S. national security. Read his full bio here.

Elizabeth Hagedorn is a correspondent based in Washington for Al-Monitor covering Middle East policymaking and breaking news. She previously reported on the region as a freelance journalist in Turkey and Iraq with a focus on migration and human rights. Her work has appeared in publications including Middle East Eye, the National, the Guardian, Public Radio International, and the Defense Post. Read her full bio here.

Photo Credit: Graphic made from image of Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore and image of Mohammed bin Salman by Ron Przysucha.

[Détails en Français ci-dessous]

[يتبع بالعربي]

Successive post-revolution governments in Tunisia have failed to implement policies capable of effectively addressing the country’s economic and social crises. With a traditional political elite unable to meet citizens’ expectations, populist currents are emerging all over the world, and Tunisia is no exception.

The 2019 presidential and legislative elections in Tunisia saw the rise of what many describe as “populist” parties and political figures who did not present a concrete platform but who did present themselves as “anti-regime.”

This panel discussion will explore the modern history and specificities of Tunisian populism, its central figures, and its discourse. It will also explore how populism has affected Tunisia’s political transition and the dangers it represents for the country’s democratic aspirations.

Panelists

Sophie Bessis
Historian and writer specializing in sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, Tunisia, and the status of women in the Arab world.

Asma Nouira
Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tunis-El Manar, specializing in the relationship between the state and Islam.

Mohamed Sahbi Khalfaoui
Lecturer at the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Management Sciences in Jendouba and a member of the Tunisian Observatory of Democratic Transition.

Moderator

Ichraq Ghdiri
Coordinator of the State of Law Department at Solidar-Tunisie and a researcher at the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Tunis and former student activist at the General Union of Tunisian Students.

Le Projet sur la démocratie au Moyen-Orient (POMED) a le plaisir de vous inviter à participer au webinaire : 

Le populisme, une menace pour la démocratie:
Conclusions préliminaires de la Tunisie

(L’événement se tiendra en langue Arabe)

le Jeudi 12 Novembre

18h30 à 20h (GMT +1)

Via Zoom

Si vous avez des difficultés à accéder au webinaire Zoom, ou si vous ne vous êtes pas préinscrit, regardez le livestream Facebook.

Inscrivez-vous ici

Pour soumettre des questions aux intervenants, veuillez utiliser la fonction “Questions et réponses” de Zoom ou les envoyer par courriel à ons.mhimdi@pomed.org.

Les Intervenants

Sophie Bessis 

Historienne et écrivaine; elle est spécialiste de l’Afrique subsaharienne, du Maghreb, de la Tunisie, et de la condition des femmes dans le monde arabe.

Asma Nouira

Professeur et directrice du département de sciences politiques à la faculté de droit et de sciences politiques de l’université de Tunis-El Manar. Elle est spécialiste des relations entre l’État et l’Islam. 

Mohamed Sahbi Khalfaoui 

Politiste, enseignant à la faculté des Sciences juridiques, économiques et de Gestion de Jendouba, membre de l’Observatoire tunisien de la transition démocratique.

Modération

Ichraq Ghdiri 

Coordinatrice du département État de droit de Solidar-Tunisie et chercheuse à la faculté de droit et de sciences politiques de Tunisie. Elle est une ancienne militante étudiante de l’Union Générale des Etudiants Tunisiens.

Contexte

Les gouvernements tunisiens de la période post-révolutionnaire ont échoué, les uns après les autres, à mettre en œuvre des politiques capables de faire face aux crises économiques et sociales du pays. Avec une élite politique traditionnelle incapable de répondre aux attentes des citoyens, des courants populistes se développent partout dans le monde, et la Tunisie ne fait pas exception. 

Les élections présidentielles et législatives de 2019 en Tunisie ont vu la montée de ce que beaucoup décrivent comme des partis et des personnalités politiques “populistes”, qui n’avaient pas de programme électoral concret mais qui se présentaient comme “anti-système”.

Ce webinaire explorera l’histoire moderne et les spécificités du populisme tunisien, ses principaux courants et son discours. Il examinera également comment le populisme a affecté la transition politique de la Tunisie et les dangers qu’il représente pour les aspirations démocratiques du pays.

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الشعبوية كتهديد للديمقراطية:

استنتاجات مبكرة من تونس

الخميس 12 نوفمبر 2020

من الساعة 6:30 مساءا بتوقيت تونس

عبر تطبيق زوم

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ons.mhimdi@pomed.org

المتحدثون

صوفي بيسيس

مؤرخة وكاتبة، متخصصة في تونس والمغرب العربي وإفريقيا جنوب الصحراء، ووضع المرأة في العالم العربي

أسماء نويرة

أستاذة ورئيسة قسم العلوم السياسية بكلية الحقوق والعلوم السياسية بجامعة تونس المنار. وهي متخصصة في العلاقة بين الدولة والإسلام

محمد الصحبي الخلفاوي

مدرّس-باحث بكليّة العلوم القانونيّة والاقتصادية والتصرّف بجندوبة، تونس، وباحث بالمرصد التونسي للانتقال الديمقراطي

الميسرة

إشراق الغديري

منسقة قسم دولة القانون في سوليدار – تونس وباحثة في كلية الحقوق والعلوم السياسية بتونس. ناشطة طلابية سابقة في الاتحاد العام لطلبة تونس

السياق

فشلت حكومات ما بعد الثورة في تونس، الواحدة تلو الأخرى، في تنفيذ سياسات قادرة على التعامل مع الأزمات الاقتصادية والاجتماعية في البلاد. مع وجود نخبة سياسية كلاسيكية غير قادرة على تلبية توقعات المواطنين، اصبحت التيارات الشعبوية في صعود في جميع أنحاء العالم، وتونس ليست استثناء.ل

شهدت الانتخابات الرئاسية والتشريعية لعام 2019 في تونس صعود ما يصفه الكثيرون بالأحزاب والشخصيات السياسية “الشعبوية”، الذين لم يكن لديهم برنامج انتخابي ملموس ولكنهم قدموا أنفسهم على أنهم “ضد النظام”.ل

تستعرض حلقة النقاش التاريخ الحديث وخصوصيات الشعبوية التونسية ؛ تياراتها الرئيسية وخطابها. كما تناقش أثرها على الانتقال السياسي في تونس والمخاطر التي تمثلها على التطلعات الديمقراطية للبلاد.ل

Ankara’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy is destabilizing its neighborhood. Turkey is embroiled in a tug-of-war with Greece, Cyprus, and France over natural gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean; is stoking the flare-up of violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and remains deeply engaged in military conflicts in Syria and Libya. Turkey has contentious relations with several governments in the Middle East and North Africa and is edging towards a diplomatic fallout with the European Union. Although Turkish officials contend that an assertive, nationalistic foreign policy is needed to defend the country’s security, their pugnacious approach only seems to exacerbate Turkey’s regional disputes and deepen its isolation. 

For many Turkish observers, this foreign policy does not reflect a national consensus. Rather, it is a product of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s consolidation of power, sidelining of institutions and of the diplomatic process, and turn to populist nationalism to manufacture public support amidst mounting economic challenges at home. This panel discussion explored how Turkey’s democratic backsliding has contributed to its foreign policy crises.

Panelists:

• Sinem Adar
  Associate, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin
• Alan Makovsky
  Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC
• İlke Toygür
  Analyst, Real Instituto Elcano, Madrid

Moderator:

• Merve Tahiroğlu
  Turkey Program Coordinator, POMED

Speaker Bios:

Sinem Adar is an associate at the Center for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS), based at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP, the German Institute for International and Security Studies) in Berlin. Sinem holds a PhD in Sociology from Brown University and has held postdoctoral research positions in Germany and the United States. Her research interests include nation- and state-building in Turkey, migration, populism, and diaspora politics. Sinem’s research has appeared in peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes. She has also contributed writing to Open Democracy, Jadaliyya, ReSetDoc, Bianet, and other outlets.

Alan Makovsky is a senior fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. Alan has worked on Turkey and the Middle East in several capacities, including as a senior professional staff member on the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives; at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

İlke Toygür is an analyst of European affairs at the Elcano Royal Institute, a CATS Fellow at SWP, and a fellow of the Transatlantic Relations Initiative at the Instituto de Empresa University. İlke holds a PhD in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Her main research areas include European integration, Euroscepticism, geopolitics of Europe and transatlantic relations, and Turkish politics and foreign policy. İlke has previously been a Visiting Researcher at the European University Institute, the University of Mannheim, and the Brookings Institution.

Merve Tahiroğlu (moderator) is POMED’s Turkey Program Coordinator. Prior to joining POMED in September 2019, Merve was a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she focused on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and relationship with Washington. She has authored several monographs and published articles in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Politico, and Huffington Post.

Photo Credit: Naval Forces of the Republic of Turkey

As the second anniversary of the Saudi government’s horrific October 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi approaches and as Saudi Arabia prepares to host the G20 Summit in November, the world’s eyes will once again be on the kingdom’s controversial day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The crown prince has cultivated an image as a modernizer and reformer, and his controversial tenure has included some economic and social reforms but also shocking levels of repression and impunity at home and reckless actions abroad. His missteps and abuses have raised questions about the kingdom’s long-term stability and suitability as an international partner of the United States. Please join POMED and an outstanding lineup of experts for a critical look at Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia.

Or, watch the event on Facebook here.

Panel 1: 9:00 am – 10:30 am EST
Repression Under the Crown Prince: Surveillance, Abductions, and Hit Squads

Panelists

Hala Aldosari
Women’s rights activist and scholar from Saudi Arabia;
Washington Post‘s inaugural Jamal Khashoggi Fellow

Yahya Assiri
Human rights defender from Saudi Arabia;
Founder, ALQST;
Former member of the Saudi Royal Air Force

Iyad el-Baghdadi
Writer, entrepreneur, human rights activist;
President, Kawaakibi Foundation

Moderator

Stephen McInerney
Executive Director, POMED

Featuring remarks from:

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA)

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA)

Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)

Rep. David Trone (D-MD)

Plus:

Watch the trailer for Kingdom of Silence here.

Panel 2: 10:30 am – 11:30 am EST
Inside the Kingdom: Examining Social, Economic, and Religious Reforms

Panelists

Ben Hubbard
Beirut Bureau Chief, New York Times;
Author of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman

Madawi Al-Rasheed
Visiting Professor, Middle East Center,
London School of Economics and Political Science;
Fellow of the British Academy

Karen E. Young
Resident Scholar,
American Enterprise Institute

Moderator

Amy Hawthorne
Deputy Director for Research, POMED

Panel 3: 11:30 am – 12:30 pm EST
The Crown Prince’s Foreign Policy: Assessing Saudi Arabia’s Shifting Role Abroad

Panelists

Yasmine Farouk
Visiting Fellow, Middle East Program,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Ambassador Robert W. Jordan
U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia 2001–2003;
Diplomat in Residence & adjunct professor of political science,
Southern Methodist University

Ali Soufan
Author and former FBI Special Agent;
Chairman & CEO, The Soufan Group

Moderator

Jackie Northam
International Affairs Correspondent, NPR

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Speaker Bios

Panel 1

Hala Aldosari is an award-winning activist and scholar from Saudi Arabia. Dr. Aldosari participated in protests against the women’s driving ban and has done important work to counter Saudi Arabia’s restrictive male guardianship laws. She has served as a board member for Human Rights Watch and the Gulf Center for Human Rights and as a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Dr. Aldosari was the Washington Post‘s inaugural Jamal Khashoggi Fellow and received POMED’s 2019 Leaders for Democracy award.

Yahya Assiri, a former member of the Saudi Royal Air Force, is a Saudi human rights activist and the head of the independent organization ALQST, which promotes human rights in the kingdom. Mr. Assiri has assisted several human rights organizations and participated in numerous courses and seminars relating to human rights. He has a Masters degree in Human Rights and Political Communications from Kingston University, London.

Iyad el-Baghdadi is an internationally recognized activist for Arab democracy and expert on authoritarianism. He is the President of Kawaakibi Foundation and Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Tyrant Manual. A former career entrepreneur and startup consultant, in 2014 Mr. el-Baghdadi was summarily arrested and forcibly exiled from his home in the United Arab Emirates after gaining prominence during the 2011 Arab uprisings. He now resides in Norway, where he has been granted political asylum. He is co-author of the forthcoming book The Middle East Crisis Factory: Tyranny, Resilience and Resistance.

Stephen McInerney (moderator) is POMED’s Executive Director. Prior to joining POMED in 2007, he had spent six years living, working, and studying in the Middle East and North Africa. He spent two years in a master’s degree program in the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut, one year on a fellowship at the Center for Arab Study Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo, and three years teaching at Cairo American College and the American School of Doha. He received a Master’s degree from Stanford University and is fluent in Arabic.

Featured Q & A

Sahar Aziz is Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University Law School. She is the founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights. Professor Aziz is an editor for the Arab Law Quarterly and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Her forthcoming book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom examines how religious bigotry racializes immigrant Muslims through a historical and comparative approach.

Rick Rowley is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning director. His films have won Television Academy Honors, a News and Doc Emmy, the DuPont-Columbia Award and a Peabody Nomination, and have been honored at festivals around the world. Rowley’s Oscar-nominated feature Dirty Wars (2013) was the culmination of ten years as a war reporter in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the lesser known battlegrounds of America’s “War on Terror.” Since then, Rowley has turned his lens on our domestic racial nightmare. His 2019 feature for SHOWTIME, 16 SHOTS, won Television Academy Honors, a News and Doc Emmy and a Peabody nomination for its unflinching look at the police murder of Laquan McDonald and the coverup that followed. His Emmy-winning series Documenting Hate (2018) unmasked an underground neo-Nazi fight club and a terrorist cell. The series received a DuPont Award and prompted an FBI investigation that led to dozens of arrests.

Panel 2

Ben Hubbard is the Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times and the author of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman. A fluent Arabic speaker with more than a decade of reporting experience in the Middle East, he has covered coups, civil wars, protests, jihadist groups, rotten fish as cuisine, and religion and pop culture from more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, and Yemen.

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science Middle East Centre and Fellow of the British Academy. Al-Rasheed was previously Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King’s College London and Research Fellow at the Open Society Foundation. A prolific author, her latest book, The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia, will be published in 2021.

Karen E. Young is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies the political economy of the Middle East with a focus on the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Previously, Dr. Young was a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute of Washington, a research and visiting fellow at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Sharjah. She is the author of The Political Economy of Energy, Finance and Security in the United Arab Emirates: Between the Majilis and the Market.

Amy Hawthorne (moderator) is POMED’s Deputy Director for Research and an expert on Middle East politics and U.S. policy. Before joining POMED five years ago, Ms. Hawthorne was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Egypt Coordinator at the Department of State during the Arab Uprisings. Her previous positions include executive director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and senior program officer for the Middle East at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Amy studied at Yale University and the University of Michigan and has lived and traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey.

Panel 3

Yasmine Farouk is a visiting fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on Saudi Arabia and regional foreign relations. Dr. Farouk obtained her BA at Cairo University, her PhD at Sciences Po Paris, and was a Fulbright Fellow at Yale University. Her previous research and publications have covered Egyptian and Saudi foreign policy, international relations in the Arab world, and social participation in policy and constitution making.

Ambassador Robert W. Jordan is Diplomat in Residence and adjunct professor of political science in the John G. Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2001 to 2003 and as partner in the international law firm Baker Botts L.L.P. for many years where he headed the Middle East practice in Dubai. Ambassador Jordan is the author of Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11.

Ali Soufan is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Soufan Group. A leading national security and counterterrorism expert, he plays a significant advisory role in global intelligence issues. As an FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Mr. Soufan investigated and supervised complex international terrorism cases, including the events surrounding 9/11. He serves as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Mr. Soufan is the author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State and New York Times best-seller The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda.

Jackie Northam (moderator) is NPR’s International Affairs Correspondent. She is a veteran journalist who has spent three decades reporting on conflict, politics, and life across the globe – from the mountains of Afghanistan and the desert sands of Saudi Arabia, to the gritty prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and the pristine beauty of the Arctic. Northam has received multiple journalism awards, including Associated Press awards and regional Edward R. Murrow awards, and was part of an NPR team of journalists who won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for “The DNA Files,” a series about the science of genetics.

Photo credit: Ron Przysucha/State Department

The public sphere has always been contentious in Turkey, a multicultural and politically polarized country. For two decades, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AK Party expanded their control over public spaces and used their influence to reshape cities according to their social, political, and economic values. In the 2019 local elections, however, the victory of opposition mayors in Turkey’s main cities shattered the AKP’s municipal dominance. In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and cultural capital, transition to opposition rule has given a particular boost to civil society and brought fresh air to civic and cultural life.

One year after the June 23, 2019 landslide victory of Ekrem Imamoğlu—the first opposition mayor of Istanbul elected in 25 years—please join us for a panel with Turkish civil society leaders and experts to hear their reflections on how civic space and civil society activism in Istanbul has changed under the new political leadership.

Featuring:

• Yaşar Adanalı
  Director, Center for Spatial Justice (Mekanda Adalet Derneği), Istanbul
• Mehmet Ergen
  Director, Istanbul City Theaters (İBB Şehir Tiyatroları)
• Ayla Jean Yackley
  Istanbul-based journalist

Moderator:

• Merve Tahiroğlu
  Turkey Program Coordinator, POMED

Speaker Bios:

Yaşar Adnan Adanali is an Istanbul-based urbanist, activist, and researcher. He is one of the co-founders and the general director of the Center for Spatial Justice (Mekanda Adalet Derneği), an Istanbul non-profit working toward more fair, democratic, and ecological urban and rural spaces. His PhD research at the Technische Universität Berlin is on right-to-land movements in informal neighborhoods in Istanbul. Yaşar previously worked as an action planner with urban communities in the Dominican Republic and on refugee camp improvement projects in the Middle East. Since 2010, he has been teaching participatory planning and co-housing at Darmstadt Technical University in Germany. Yaşar is a volunteer consultant for Düzce Hope Homes, the first participatory social housing project in Turkey and a finalist for the World Habitat Awards. He has received fellowships from the Ashoka Foundation and the Bertha Foundation.

Mehmet Ergen is the general director of the Istanbul City Theaters (İBB Sehir Tiyatrolari), operated by the Istanbul municipality. He has produced and directed performances at London’s Arcola Theatre and Southwark Playhouse, both of which he co-founded. In Istanbul, Mehmet has served as the artistic director at the Yeni Kusak Theater (New Generation Theater) at Akbank Art Center and Talimhane Theater, which he also founded. He has directed plays in Israel, Canada, and across Europe and taught at the University of Essex, the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts, and Bilgi University.

Ayla Jean Yackley is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul. She contributes regularly to Al-Monitor and has also published in the Financial Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, and Politico, among many other outlets. She mainly writes about politics and civil society, with a focus on human and minority rights. Ayla is a graduate of Northwestern University and has worked as a correspondent and reporter for the Associated Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg LP in Turkey.

Merve Tahiroğlu (moderator) is POMED’s Turkey Program Coordinator. Prior to joining POMED in September 2019, Merve was a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she focused on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and relationship with Washington. She has authored several monographs and published articles in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Politico, and Huffington Post.

Photo credit: Flickr user Ben Morlok

Click here to read the report that was the subject of this event.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Trump administration has proposed wide-ranging cuts to foreign assistance and funding for democracy and governance programs abroad, in particular. While Congress is once again poised to reject the administration’s budget request, President Trump’s continuing efforts to slash foreign aid take on new significance as governments all over the world struggle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. What does the president’s budget tell us about the administration’s priorities for and approach to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? What could be the impact of President Trump’s proposed changes and cuts to foreign aid on U.S. policy toward the region and on human rights and democratic reform there? What does COVID-19 mean for U.S. foreign assistance in MENA?

We are pleased to invite you to the virtual launch event for a new report from lead author Andrew Miller and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), “President Trump’s FY21 Budget: Examining U.S. Assistance to the Middle East and North Africa in the Shadow of COVID-19.” The annual report is a comprehensive analysis of current and proposed new U.S. foreign aid for the MENA region, with a focus on democracy and governance assistance.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Virtual Discussion via Zoom

FEATURING

Remarks from

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)

Moderated by

Michele Dunne
Middle East Program Director
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Panelists

Andrew Miller
Deputy Director for Policy
POMED

Kori Schake
Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies
American Enterprise Institute

Nahal Toosi
Foreign Policy and National Security Correspondent
POLITICO

Speaker Biographies

CHRIS MURPHY is a United States Senator for Connecticut. Senator Murphy has been a strong voice in the Senate fighting for affordable health care, sensible gun laws, and a forward-looking foreign policy. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has been an outspoken proponent of diplomacy, international human rights, and the need for clear-eyed American leadership abroad. Murphy currently serves as the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. 

MICHELE DUNNE directs the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, where her work focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries as well as U.S. policies in the region. A former U.S. Department of State official, her assignments included the National Security Council staff, U.S. Embassy Cairo, U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, and the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

ANDREW MILLER is POMED’s Deputy Director for Policy. From 2014 to 2017, Andrew served as the Director for Egypt and Israel Military Issues on the National Security Council (NSC), where he was deeply involved in the Obama Administration’s efforts to modernize U.S. military assistance to Egypt and participated as a member of the U.S. delegation that negotiated a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance to Israel.

KORI SCHAKE leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and edited with Jim Mattis Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military. She has worked in the Pentagon, State Department and NSC staffs, and taught at Stanford University, the U.S. Military Academy, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the University of Maryland.

NAHAL TOOSI covers foreign policy and national security for POLITICO. Her work has taken her from the halls of the U.S. State Department to refugee camps in Asia. In 2019, Toosi was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in reporting for her story on the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Toosi joined POLITICO from the Associated Press, where she reported from and/or served as an editor in New York, Islamabad, Kabul, and London. She was one of the first foreign correspondents to reach Abbottabad, Pakistan, after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Prior to joining the AP, Toosi worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she mostly covered higher education but also managed to report from Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003, as well as from Egypt, Thailand, South Korea, and Germany.

A virtual discussion hosted by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)

Thursday, April 30, 2020

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
(6:00 – 7:00 PM GMT+3)

Via livestream

Speakers

Harun Ercan
former advisor, Diyarbakır Municipality

Seren Selvin Korkmaz
Executive Director, IstanPol Institute

Aylin Yardımcı
Digital Editor, İstanbul Municipality

Moderator

Merve Tahiroğlu, Turkey Program Coordinator, POMED

Background

Just over a year ago, opposition candidates won the mayoralties of İstanbul, Ankara, and nine other cities across Turkey in a striking political upset for President Erdoğan. Now, the COVID-19 crisis has put the spotlight back on these opposition mayors. As they struggle to protect their cities’ residents and minimize the pandemic’s humanitarian costs, Erdoğan has shut down their soup kitchens, blocked their fundraising activities, and imposed erratic curfews—all to deny his emerging rivals any political credit. These are only Erdoğan’s latest interventions against the opposition mayors and their efforts to reclaim democracy in their cities.

Please join us on April 30 for a virtual panel discussion on Turkey’s opposition mayors, one year after the municipal elections.

Speaker Bios 

HARUN ERCAN served as an international affairs advisor to the co-mayors of Diyarbakır. He is currently a PhD candidate at the State University of New York at Binghamton, studying conflict resolution, social movements, and authoritarianism. He has taught courses on Turkish political history at Koç University and was a founding editorial board member of Toplum and Kuram, Turkey’s first academic journal to focus on Kurdish issues.

SEREN SELVIN KORKMAZ is the co-founder and executive director of IstanPol Institute, an independent think-tank in Turkey. She is a PhD candidate and researcher at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS). Previously, she was a Fox International Fellow at Yale University. Until 2017, she was the Turkey director of the Political and Social Research Institute of Europe (PS:EUROPE), an Austria- and Turkey- based institute that she co-founded. She is a political commentator frequently appearing both in Turkish and international media.

AYLIN YARDIMCI is a digital media editor at the İstanbul Municipality (İBB) under Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and a PhD candidate of international relations at Koç University. Before joining the municipality, she was an anchor for the English-language weekly news program “This Week in Turkey” at the independent online media channel Medyascope TV.

MERVE TAHIROĞLU (moderator) is POMED’s Turkey Program Coordinator. Prior to joining POMED, Merve was a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she focused on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and relationship with Washington. She has authored several monographs on Turkey and published articles in various outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Politico, and Huffington Post.

In response to the October 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the lack of accountability for his killers, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) authored legislation in the Intelligence Authorization Act and National Defense Authorization Act that required a public report on who was responsible for Jamal’s murder. That bill became law in December and the report was due in January. Last week, the administration finally responded to the legal requirement with a fully classified report. According to Senator Wyden: “The administration’s response was not only late, but it lacked any substantive answers.”

On Tuesday, March 3, Senator Wyden and Representative Malinowski will discuss the administration’s refusal to publicly release details on the killing of Jamal and will announce next steps for securing transparency and accountability for his murder.

Featuring:

• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
• Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)
• Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of the late Jamal Khashoggi

Sponsors:

• Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain
• Committee to Protect Journalists
• Human Rights First
• James W. Foley Legacy Foundation
• PEN America
• Project on Middle East Democracy
• Reporters Without Borders

Media are encouraged to attend the press conference or to view the livestream on Senator Wyden’s Twitter account here.

Egyptian-American Mustafa Kassem passed away after more than six years of unjust detention and negligent medical care in Egypt. In 2013, he was detained after showing his American passport to Egyptian army officials when they asked for identification, then held in pretrial detention for five years, and convicted in a mass trial with no individualized evidence against him. Mustafa leaves behind his wife and two children, all of whom are American citizens. (See the CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post stories on his death.)

On Wednesday, January 15, 2020, six human rights and democracy organizations held an event on Capitol Hill to address the tragic circumstances surrounding Mustafa’s death, the other Americans currently jailed in Egypt, and the dire conditions in Egypt’s prisons.

“An American Tragedy: Mustafa Kassem’s Needless Death in Sisi’s Prison. https://t.co/2aNSVB8YQ6

— POMED (@POMED) January 15, 2020

Wednesday, January 15, 2020
10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 192
50 Constitution Ave NE, Washington, DC

Featuring

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [remarks]

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) [remarks]

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)

Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY)

Aya Hijazi, Belady Foundation

Mohamed Soltan, The Freedom Initiative

Diane Foley, James W. Foley Legacy Foundation

Sponsored by

The Freedom Initiative
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
James W. Foley Legacy Foundation
Pretrial Rights International
Project on Middle East Democracy