The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a panel on Thursday, June 13, 2013 from 3-5pm on Turkey’s role in and response to the Arab Spring protests, political transitions, and revolutions. The panel was hosted by Christian Ostermann, director of the History and Public Policy Program (HAPP) and the director of the European Studies (ES) program at the Wilson Center, and featured  Bülent Aras, Chairman of the Turkish Foreign ...

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) co-hosted a conference titled "Dynamic Gulf: Forces of Change in a Strategic Region." The second panel, “A New Ruling Bargain? Reform and Gulf Elite Dynamics,” was moderated by Prof. Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, and featured panelists Andrew Hammond, former Reuters correspondent for Saudi Arabia, Ali Al Shihabi, ...

The Project on Middle East Democracy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace cohosted a three-panel conference on Friday, June 14, 2013. The final panel was entitled “Continuity and Change in the Gulf: How Stable and For How Long?” It featured Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, Baker Institute Fellow for Kuwait at Rice University, Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and Mark Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science and ...

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) co-hosted a conference titled "Dynamic Gulf: Forces of Change in a Strategic Region." The first panel, "New Trends in Activism: Youth, Women, and Islamists", was moderated by Stephen McInerney, Executive Director of POMED, and featured as panelists Kristin Smith Diwan, Assistant Professor of Comparative and Regional Studies at the American University School of International Service; Jane ...

On Tuesday, June 5, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled “Obama’s Failed Syria Policy.” Mr. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ms. Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Dr. Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified. The committee’s chairman, Rep. ...

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in conjunction with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), hosted a panel discussion titled “Arab Uprisings and Mass Politics: Possibilities, Constraints and Uncertainty” featuring Laurie Brand, Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, and Steven Heydemann, Senior Advisor for Middle East Initiatives at USIP. Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, moderated. For full event ...

The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Middle East Program released its latest Gulf Analysis Paper, "Saudi Arabia and Qatar in a Time of Revolution," by Bernard Haykel. The paper reviews both countries' behavior during the Arab Spring and finds that they have been "proactive in the pursuit of revolutionary change" despite their conservative domestic policies. It notes that Qatar has been particularly assertive, treating the turbulence as an opportunity to ...

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)'s International Forum for Democratic Studies and POMED put on a conference on Wednesday (2/13) titled “The Arab Spring after Two Years: Prospects for Democracy in the Gulf States.” Carl Gershman of NED and U.S. Representative James McGovern (D-MA) gave opening remarks. The first panel, “The Future of Reform in the Gulf,” was chaired by Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution and featured Jafar Alshayeb, a ...

The Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East has issued a report titled "The United States and the Gulf States: Uncertain Partners in a Changing Region" examining the current state of relations between the U.S. and the Gulf countries and making recommendations for continued cooperation. In the report, Richard LeBaron argues that although there is "continued congruence of interests between the GCC states and the United States,"  the democratic ...