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

by allies (including the proposed nuclear swap deal with Iran in 2011); and some have been stillborn (a road map for Libya that failed to call for Muammar al-Qaddafi's departure). But all have been universally seen as evidence of Turkey's growing clout and ambitions.As Ziya On4, a professor at Koc University, told

s and even critical discussions are limited. Russia, Iran, and China remain supportive. Saudi Arabia and other GCC states tried last year to detach Bashar al-Assad from his ties to Iran, EFTA00712622 but without success. In this effort, they tipped their hand in supporting autocracy over democracy in the reg

tor in 2007. And it has close links to the Iranian regime, which is the No. 1 enemy of the U.S. and its allies in the region. Moreover, the longer Assad stays in power without being able to stop the uprising against his government — which is now more than a year old — the greater the odds that region

re is an important step the United States can take to change Israel's calculations -- helping the people of Syria in their battle against President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war may seem unconnected, but in fact they are inextricably linked. Israel's real fear -- losing i

Assad regime, are staunchly opposed. Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable result of saving many thousands of Libyan civilians from Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, it had no long-lasting consequences for the region. Syria is harder -- but success there would be a transformative event for the Middle Eas

ignificant action. Washington is the capital of idle EFTA_R 1_02205156 EFTA02721236 talk about justice. In Washington now almost everybody wants Bashar Al Assad to fall and almost nobody wants Barack Obama to bring him down. This discrepancy is called realism, though it is less a philosophy than a mood, th

he ethnic and religious complexity of Syria, there can be no doubt; but this has not impeded us in other crises in other countries, and the longer Assad remains in power the greater grows the probability of sectarian cataclysm, and the appearance in Syria of Iranians and jihadists. And about the de

o avail. It did, however, manage to help put down the Shia uprising against the Sunni government in neighboring Bahrain. It was only Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi's downfall that Saudi Arabia welcomed. Saudi-Syrian relations had been quite problematic under Qaddafi, who was once even accused of trying to assas