Epstein Secrets

as made it difficult to discuss sectarian prejudice in public, which has sometimes kept hatreds bottled up. Some in the Sunni majority perceive the Assads as representatives of their sect and resent the entire community by extension. None of this makes sectarian conflict inevitable. Class and regiona

since the ascension of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey EFTA_R1_02029349 EFTA02689724 17 and Bashar al-Assad's inheritance of the Syrian presidency, relations have dramatically improved. Turkey invested enormous financial and political capital in Syria, esta

political capital in Syria, establishing a Levantine free trade zone and distancing itself from Israel. Erdogan extracted promises of reform from Bashar at the onset of the protests and then watched with increasingly visible consternation as the promises were broken. He warned Syria repeatedly again

an and allied interests. Sally McNamara is Senior Policy Analyst in European Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and

ary 29, 2012 -- A popular Washington illusion once held that the right combination of incentives and punishments might "peel off" Syria's President Bashar al-Assad from Iran's "Axis of Resistance," but nobody would have predicted that the weak link in Iran's alliance of radicals would turn out to be the Pales

, democracy and reform." Iran, Hamas knows, is not amused. But that appears to be a diminishing concern for the movement. Hamas' relationship with Assad, Tehran's key Arab ally, began to sour last year when the Palestinian group resisted pressure to stage pro-regime events in refugee camps in Syria.

hillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the Davis Institute and Director

e opposition in Syria began as a largely peaceful, grass- roots, pan-Syrian movement for democratic change. But it was deliberately met by President Bashar al-Assad with murder and sectarian venom. He wanted to make the conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of d

m, democracy and reform." Iran, Hamas knows, is not amused. But that appears to be a diminishing concern for the movement. Hamas' relationship with Assad, Tehran's key Arab ally, began to sour last year when the Palestinian group resisted pressure to stage pro- regime events in refugee camps in Syria.

Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and James Jay Carafano,=., is Deputy Director of the Davis Institute and Director of t