Salman Rafi Sheikh

Whereas the mainstream western and Arab media have been claiming a ‘serious rift’ between Russia and Turkey over the death of Turkish soldiers in a Syrian offensive in Idlib, this is far from the case. While there is no gainsaying that Russian and Syrian interests do not always converge fully and that there are some contentious areas, this then is also quite...

In the last week of January, US Special Representative for Syria, James Jeffery, travelled to Europe to step up US economic pressure on Syria due to its ‘attacks’ on Idlib. While it may sound strange why the US would sanction Syria for its resounding successes against al-Qaeda jihadi groups, the fact of the matter is that...

While many reports in the western main stream media claimed that Turkey’s ‘real motive’ behind its direct intervention in Libya is (a reflection of Erdogan’s obsession with creating a neo-Ottoman empire in the region, it may not be true. Creating an ‘empire’, even if the word is not literally translated and is broadly understood as a chain of countries under...