Podcasts

It’s often said that the Kurds are the world’s largest nation without a state. Yet, in the Middle East they play an outsized role, helping Western powers advance their security goals, sometimes at the cost of their relations with their own allies such as Turkey. Giran Ozcan explains why the United States needs to think of the Kurds as a standalone policy issue in its own right.

Ben Caspit speaks this week with Yarden Vatikay, the former director of the national information directorate in the prime minister’s office. The senior strategic adviser speaks about the killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh and the ensuing media storm Israel found itself in the midst of, noting that "being in the middle of a storm over international public opinion is not new for Israel.

Mirza Dinnayi, 2019 Aurora Prize Laureate for Awakening Humanity & Founder of House of Coexistence in Sinjar, explains how and why Sinjar has become a regional dispute involving Turkey, Syria and Iran, as well as Iraq; the culture, history and geography of the Yazidi community; the impact of the ISIS genocidal campaign; why Yazidis seek some autonomy within Iraq; and more!  

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov caused a diplomatic incident with Israel, Ukraine and the Jewish world last week when he claimed that Hitler had Jewish roots. For Dayan, the conspiracy theory advanced by Lavrov was antisemitic by any account. The Yad Vashem head expresses his satisfaction over the reported apology made by Russian President Vladimir Putin for Lavrov’s words.

Ben Caspit speaks this week to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. He notes that his mother survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, while Gantz's father fought in Israel’s 1948 Independence War.

Born in Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk rose to become one of Turkey’s most prominent novelists. His works have sold over 11 million copies worldwide and have been translated into sixty-three languages. In 2006, Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming Turkey’s first-ever Nobel laureate. His latest novel “Veba Geceleri” (“The Nights of the Plague”) examines the psychology of a pandemic and bridging feelings of loneliness with the details and “beauties of life.”

Steve Clemons, founding Editor At Large of Semafor, discusses why the Russia-Ukraine war has not boosted Biden’s ‘Trump-level’ popularity; reasons for American fatigue with global security commitments; the missing ‘realists’ and anti-war Democrats in Congress; why some Middle East elites may perceive an ‘America on crutches;’ the challenges of managing US-Saudi ties; the barriers to a US-Iran nuclear deal; why bipartisanship in the Senate still has a pulse; an update on the new global media company Semafor; and much more.

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Turkey was at the forefront of an international campaign to name and shame the perpetrators of the 2018 murder in Istanbul of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Ankara has just dropped a case to try 26 Saudi officials who allegedly took their orders from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The consensus is that Ankara did so to fix relations with Saudi Arabia and the powerful crown prince who it once sought to pull down.

Al-Monitor columnist Kadri Gursel discusses the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on Turkey’s economy and domestic politics; why Turkey is well-positioned as a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow; why the purchase of the S-400 was "a consequence of distress" and "doomed to fail;" Turkey’s policies toward Syria and the Kurds; whether Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman can bury the hatchet; why the 2023 elections will be a "remarkable example" for Turkey’s democratic transition; and more!

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