Recent Developments in Turkey: Internal and External Implications
By Ian Lesser
17:30 - 19:30, OCP Policy Center, Rabat, Morocco.
In this conference, the speaker will present three aspects of the situation in Turkey. The first part will deal with the internal developments,de-coding the recent elections and the up-coming presidential and general elections and analysing the implications of economic slow-down after a decade of dynamism as well as the new social and political dynamics in a country of “parallel elites” and a strong state.
The speaker will then present Turkey’s regional environment and policies with the collapse of the regional order in Turkey’s Middle Eastern and Eurasian neighborhoods, the return of hard security challenges, from Syria to the Black Sea, the Energy dilemmas, costs of unresolved business on Cyprus and the the continued commercial engagement in MENA, Africa, etc.
Finally the speaker will present the Euro-Atlantic Outlook : the troubled agenda with the EU, the NATO as a critical but “uncomfortable” partner, the relations with Washington as well as the nationalism, sovereignty consciousness, and populism and the outlook for relations with the West.
Keep me informed
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Ian Lesser
Ian Lesser is Senior Director for Foreign and Security Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, managing activity in these areas across GMF. He also serves as Executive Director of the Transatlantic Center, GMF’s Brussels Office, and leads GMF work on the Mediterranean, Turkey, and the Southern Atlantic.
Prior to joining GMF, Dr. Lesser was Vice President and Director of Studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy (the western partner of the Council on Foreign Relations). He came to the Pacific Council from RAND, where he spent over a decade as a senior analyst and research manager specializing in strategic studies. From 1994-1995, he was a member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for Turkey, Southern Europe, North Africa, and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process.
A frequent commentator for international media, he has written extensively on international policy issues. His books and reports include Morocco’s New Geopolitics: A Wider Atlantic Perspective (2012); Beyond Suspicion: Rethinking US-Turkish Relations (2007); Security and Strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean (2006); Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (2003); Greece’s New Geopolitics (2001); and Countering the New Terrorism (1999).
He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the advisory boards of the NATO Defense College Foundation, the International Spectator, Turkish Policy Quarterly and Insight Turkey, has been a senior fellow of the Onassis Foundation and the Luso-American Foundation, and a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
Dr. Lesser was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and received his PhD from Oxford University.