Benedikt van den Woldenberg

The current crisis in Syria has seen a largely inconsistent and vacillating foreign policy response from Turkey. This has led many to argue that Ankara’s foreign policy, called ‘zero problems with neighbors’, has failed. However, Turkey's…
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While the Arab Spring rocked much of the Arab world, upending the regional political order, states in the periphery of the region also saw some effects. All of the states covered in this article are at most marginally part of the Arab…
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While several Arab republics have witnessed regime transitions, there are some other republics that  have experienced only very limited unrest. The republics that faced little or no major unrest during the Arab Spring are Algeria, Iraq,…
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So far, it seems that republics in the Middle East were far more affected by uprisings than their monarchical counterparts.  While the presidents of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were ousted and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad severely…
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The civil war in Syria highlights the more vicious  and destabilizing aspects of the Arab Spring. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen the people managed to oust their former strongmen; In Syria however, President Bashar al-Assad did not…
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Since the beginning of what soon became known by the neologism ‘Arab Spring’ four countries have witnessed a completed change of regime. These four states, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, have witnessed mass protests which eventually led…
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What happened to the Arab Spring, this unprecedented wave of protests spreading throughout the Middle East? Since Ibn Khaldun’s goal is to shed light on current developments in the region, it seems appropriate to first recapitulate the…
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