“The alliance between Houthis and Saleh is officially over and it will only get worse. The result of this conflict will determine the future of Yemen… Get prepared for another humanitarian disaster.”
“If the Trump administration truly wanted to send a strong signal to Sisi’s government on human rights, they could have used the authority in the law to cut [instead of delaying] this $195m in military aid to Egypt.”
“The charges are themselves are absurd. Targeting foreigners has become part of Turkey’s strategy for pressuring Western powers. Although the Trump administration has prioritized the Brunson case, there are many Americans detained.”
“This is an alliance of convenience to get rid of common enemies. It lasted this long only because of the Saudi-led military intervention. The alliance was never sustainable because Saleh and Houthis are enemies and they never trusted each other.”
“What’s striking about today’s abuses isn’t that they’re innovative…—most would have quite normal in the 1990s—but rather that they represent a very clear rolling back of reforms that the AKP itself had implemented.”
“My strong sense is that much of this is generated by prosecutors and facilitated by judges who are guessing at what the government wants… You have an environment where everyone is trying to demonstrate their loyalty.”
“The main problem with Saudi Arabia’s involvement was the regionalisation of the conflict, its transition from a civil war to a regionalised crisis. Now with Qatar isolated, it is likely that Yemen will become the battleground for this Gulf crisis.”
“Trump has sanctioned Turkey before, but he does this in such a transactional way that the message is, I will sanction you now but you just have to give me one concession and I will lift it.”
“Regardless of the oil’s origin and how many times it changed hands, it appears to have come to Turkey through Kurdish middlemen and smugglers. This is all part of the war economy we’ve been tracking along the Turkish-Syrian border.”