On the Middle East with Amberin Zaman

Starvation, disease, mutilation and death have become the norm for children in Gaza, says Arwa Damon, founder of the INARA charity. She warns that aid workers, journalists and medics are also being targeted, making it nearly impossible to deliver relief to children trapped in a cycle of despair.

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Since last week, Turkey has been rocked by mass protests over the jailing of Istanbul's opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, on thinly-evidence corruption and terrorism charges. These protests are widely seen as the most significant challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to power 22 years ago. Turkey experts Gonul Tol and Lisel Hintz weigh the risks and opportunities for the country’s beleaguered democracy.

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Russia is seeking to keep its naval bases in Syria, viewing them as a vital strategic asset. Syria's interim president, a hard nosed pragmatist, will likely strike working relations with the Kremlin while trying to defuse tensions with Israel and win over the United States, says the International Crisis Group's Jerome Drevon, who has met Sharaa numerous times.

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Israel's expansionist policy in Syria's Golan Heights and its support for the Druze and Kurdish minorities are justified by Israeli officials on the grounds that they are protecting natural allies and countering Turkish influence. Yet Syria expert Joshua Landis says Israel's actions are having the opposite effect, making Syria's new Islamist leaders more dependent on Turkey for their protection.

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Private military contractors are changing the nature of warfare as national governments outsource fighting to mercenaries, especially in the Middle East and Africa. None has elicited as much interest as Russia's Wagner Group and its founder Yevgheny Prighozin with others following in his footsteps, as author John Lechner explains.

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Since April last year, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in talks with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. The goal is to get his organization to end its 40 year-long armed campaign against the Turkish state. But one of Turkey's demands, that Ocalan’s concessions extend to northeast Syria where a PKK-linked group has been in control since 2012, is unrealistic, says Kurdish Peace Institute...

The surprise fall of Iran's close regional ally Bashar al-Assad has dealt a huge blow to Tehran's so called axis of resistance running through Iraq onto Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran's loss is Turkey's gain and Tehran is increasingly worried about rising Turkish influence, says Hamidreza Azizi.

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Iran is badly weakened by Israel's pummeling of its Shiite allies in the Levant. Yet, unlike during Trump's first presidential term, Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia has been mending relations with the Islamic Republic. Vali Nasr, a leading expert on Iran, says there is room for cautious optimism for nuclear talks to resume.

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Nikolaos van Dam, the Netherland's former Syria envoy and an acclaimed Arabist who has authored several books on the country, says Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's new ruler and the leader of the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, ought to be supported by Western governments.

The ambassador notes that the risk of renewed conflict remains high in Syria and that Sharaa must be taken at his word when he says he plans to establish...

Turkey expert Gallia Lindenstrauss, who is a senior fellow at Israel's National Institute of Security Studies, says Israel is concerned about Turkey's expanding influence in Syria with the rise to power of the Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

With thousands of Turkish troops deployed in Syria, Lindenstrauss says an accidental confrontation with Israeli forces there could trigger a broader conflagration amid worsening...

French academic Fabrice Balanche, who has written extensively on Syria and just returned from a ten-day -long trip there, believes Turkey is paying a high stakes poker game in Syria through its backing of a Salafist group that has made stunning advances against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

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The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is holding exploratory talks with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, to end the 40-year-old Kurdish conflict. Turkey has made clear its expectation that the PKK lay down its arms and end the conflict. What would it take for the PKK to comply? Giran Ozcan, executive director of the Kurdish Peace Institute i...

Fethullah Gulen, the Sunni Muslim Cleric who was accused of engineering the failed coup to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has died in self imposed exile in the United States. Once feted as a moderate who steered generations of young Muslims away from radicalism, Gulen did untold harm to Turkey's fragile democracy, says Turkish analyst Selim Koru.

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Jim Muir, one of the most seasoned Western journalists in the Middle East, has been covering the Arab-Israeli conflict for almost 50 years. Muir tells Al-Monitor that the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is unlike any other in the past, with unforeseeable consequences for both sides, as well for Lebanon and Iran.

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