Crisisgroup

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s apparently unstoppable rise hit a democratic bumper in Turkey’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, despite his presiding over 12 mostly boom years at the top of Turkey’s political system and the fact that his party won more than 40 percent of the vote.

Washington has made its point loud and clear in the South China Sea. But it is likely to be lost on Beijing. 'There should be no mistake: the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows', Defense Secretary Ashton Carter declared at a late May gathering of Asia Pacific's top defence officials in Singapore. That statement came a few days after a fly-by of the US Navy's P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft around the man-made islands China is busy building in the South China Sea. Such actions, Carter said, demonstrate that the US 'will continue to protect freedom of navigation and overflight'.

Braucht der amtierende Ministerpräsident Ahmet Davutoglu nun eigentlich eine ganze Partei als Koalitionspartner, oder könnte er versucht sein, sich seine Mehrheit zu verschaffen, indem er einige Abgeordnete von der Opposition abwirbt?

Memories of the twentieth century’s great conflicts, from 1930s pacifism to Cold War antagonism, are stirring again, motivating both Russia and the West in one of the gravest threats to global order and European stability in the past 25 years. Indeed, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine involves nuclear-armed powers whose collective military spending accounts for nearly two-thirds of the global total. Yet history need not repeat itself, so long as the West takes steps to avoid being trapped by any sudden escalation.

Group of Friends on Counter-terrorism Meeting 4 June 2015: Violent Extremism and Crisis Management

Since President Paul Biya came to power in 1982, Cameroon has been a sleepy regime with a soft and aging dictator, a nation all but forgotten in a remote corner of the African continent. This has dramatically changed with the spillover of Boko Haram from Nigeria into Cameroon in 2014 and its transformation into a regional threat. Now there is not a single day without reports of Boko Haram attacks in northern Cameroon. Even before it realized what it meant, the Cameroonian regime had become part of the fight against terrorism. After initially downplaying the problem, Cameroon’s leaders are now discovering the challenges and dangers of this new war. This rising, external threat sheds a new light on a forgotten country with a strategic position in Africa. The geography of Cameroon is both its blessing and its curse—a pivot between West and Central Africa, divided by language, culture, and history, its very existence depending on a regional stability so often beyond its grasp.

مهما كان ما قد يعتقده نظام الأسد وخصومه، لا يتجه أي طرف نحو انتصار عسكري في هذه الحرب. ووفقاً للمسار الراهن فإن الأمور تتجه نحو الأسوأ، مع مزيد من القتل والتدمير للنسيج الاجتماعي وتفاقم حدّة التطرف العابر للحدود.

Loin de la guerre contre l’organisation de l’État islamique (EI), un autre conflit se joue au sein de la société kurde d’Irak. Cette dernière est divisée par une ligne générationnelle tracée par l’histoire du Kurdistan : alors que les plus de cinquante ans ont assisté à la création progressive d’une région autonome ou ont fait leurs armes dans la résistance contre le régime de Saddam Hussein (1979-2003), la majorité des jeunes nés dans les années 1990 a grandi, s’éduque et travaille au sein d’un Kurdistan déjà semi-souverain. Ils ne connaissent qu’une réalité structurée par leurs parents et coupée de l’extérieur, notamment du reste de l’Irak.

The game has changed. By sending a military aircraft to take a close-up view of the outposts China is constructing and stating it “will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” the U.S. appears to have drawn a red line for Beijing.

Al asumir la presidencia de Nigeria el 29 de mayo, Muhammadu Buhari toma las riendas de un país en emergencia. La inseguridad supone un problema gravísimo, la economía se encuentra en situación desesperada y la corrupción y la impunidad están extendidas.

As President Muhammadu Buhari assumes office this week, he takes the reins of a country in serious distress. Security poses a towering challenge, the economy is in dire straits, and corruption and impunity are rife.

The report that Korean People's Army General Hyon Yong-ch'ol, Minister of the People's Armed Forces, has been shot for insubordination – by an anti-aircraft gun and before a crowd of officials, no less – raises troubling questions about both halves of the divided Korean Peninsula.

To mark the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, Crisis Group's President & CEO Jean-Marie Guehénno speaks to China Radio International about the evolution of peacekeeping since the UN’s first mission in 1948, focusing particularly on China’s growing role in bringing peace to conflicts around the world. (29 May 2015)

Colombia’s peace process faces its most serious crisis yet, after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) suspended a five month old unilateral ceasefire. Instead of more measures to de-escalate the conflict ahead of a final peace agreement, there are now new risks that the confrontation will escalate, causing fresh humanitarian damage, crippling trust between the parties and further weakening public support for the process.

ean-Marie Guéhenno is the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group and former head of UN Peacekeeping. He is the author of The Fog of Peace, a Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century (Brookings press).

Turkey’s foreign relations, particularly with European capitals and Washington, have been plagued for decades by the debate of whether to use the term genocide in reference to the massacres and forced relocation of the Armenian community of Anatolia from 1915 to 1918.

Una lectura cuidadosa y distinta de la impopularidad del presidente. No le ha ido tan mal como a los gobernantes de países vecinos y –sobre todo- la causa de su mala imagen bien puede convertirse en su mayor activo. ¿Qué debe hacer entonces?

In this interview, Jean-Marie Guéhenno joins Global Dispatches to discuss his new memoir The Fog of Peace. Guéhenno discusses his experiences as the top French foreign policy planning official during the fall of the Berlin Wall; what it was like have Kofi Annan interview you for a job; and the future challenges facing international peacekeeping.

On 11 May 2015, Jean-Marie Guéhenno joined MSNBC's The Cycle to discuss his newly published memoir The Fog of Peace.