Podcasts

Turkey has been piling pressure on Sweden to sever its ties with the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria. Sweden's new government has finally agreed to that condition and to resume arms exports to Ankara. The demands were made in exchange for Turkey's approval for Sweden and Finland's NATO membership. Swedish academic Paul Levin believes that these concessions are a diplomatic win for Turkey but that Ankara's behavior has lost it many friends in his country.

With the world's attention focused on Ukraine, Turkey has escalated its campaign against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) across its own borders in Iraq and Syria. Meghan Bodette, director of research at the Kurdish Peace Institute in Washington DC, tells Al-Monitor that Turkey is increasingly targeting activists, politicians and other civilian figures associated with the Kurdish political movement founded by imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. This is because Turkey fears the legitimacy such individuals lend to Kurdish aspirations. 

Protests in Iran are continuing despite a harsh crackdown by security forces. Human rights groups say that at least 201 people have died in the violence that was triggered by the death in custody of a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old was detained by the morality police for supposedly breaking rules on mandatory Islamic-style covering.

Al-Monitor’s business correspondent Salim Essaid discusses Saudi Arabia’s investments in esports; trends in cryptocurrency markets in the Gulf; AI governance in the UAE; the region’s evolution as a hub in global climate policy; and Al-Monitor Pro coverage.

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Israel’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Orit Farkash-Hacohen. Israel and the United States started this week a strategic dialogue focused on technological cooperation. The minister explains that "climate change, the covid pandemic, the desertification phenomenon and so many other international and regional issues, are all in essence technological challenges.

Nationwide protests sparked by the brutal killing of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman by Iran's so-called morality police are continuing, marking one of the biggest challenges to the country's clerical regime in recent years.

Ben Caspit speaks this week with Knesset member for the Likud party Nir Barkat. The legislator just came back from a tour in the United States, where he campaigned against the Iranian nuclear program. Barkat argues that the Iranians do not hide their desire to annihilate Israel, and thus the international community should not try to conclude any deal with them. "You don’t make a deal with someone who wants to take you out of business. They want to destroy Israel, so what kind of a deal can you make with them?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces the biggest challenge to his nearly two decades of uninterrupted rule as galloping inflation, a wilting national currency and resentment toward Syrian migrants sap his popularity — and one world leader is watching closely: Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Mark Galeotti, a London-based lecturer and writer on transnational crime in Russia and director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence, has studied Turkey's relations with Russia closely.

Ben Caspit speaks this week with Attila Somfalvi, chief anchor at the Israeli Ynet news site and tv channel. Israel is preparing now for its fifth round of elections in less than four years. Somfalvi, a senior political analyst, says Israeli politics and society have deeply changed in the last few years. In the past, the political battle centered on the Palestinian issue, with the Peace Now camp on one side and those advocating against any territorial concessions on the other. This political duel is now gone, replaced by a struggle over the very nature of the state of Israel.