Middle East

For the last month the Gulf state of Qatar has been blockaded by its neighbours Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, who along with Egypt have severed all diplomatic ties with the country. These events have opened up a crisis situation in the Gulf region, which is being viewed with trepidation by the major powers on the world stage.

Israeli tanks advancing on the Golan Heights. June 1967

On 5th June 1967 the Israeli Air Force launched a surprise attack on Egyptian air bases in the Sinai province, beginning what came to be known as the Six-Day War and ending with Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza, the whole Sinai Peninsula and shortly afterwards also the Golan Heights. To this day the Palestinians have had to live with the consequences.

The defeat of Isis is imminent – their last pocket in Mosul is about to be wiped out, Raqqa is being encircled and even Deir ez-Zor is under pressure. The end of Isis in Iraq and Syria has begun a struggle for the aftermath.

Iranians are going to the polls today in presidential elections. President Hassan Rouhani has been leading the polls followed by the main principlist unity candidate, Ebrahim Raisi. Yet the result is not the most important aspect here—the elections have brought forward the enormous contradictions in Iranian society.

Türkiye deki referandumda Recep Tayip Erdoğan resmi olarak EVET oyunu kazandı. Ama bu zaferin karakteri neydi ve ne anlama geliyor?

Resmi sonuçlara göre, 48 milyon seçmenin %51.3’ü yeni anayasayı kabul etme yönünde oy verdi. Bunun anlamı ise Cumhurbaşkanına geniş yetkiler ve kontrolsuz güç sağlamaktı. Katılım oranı, Resmi olarak %84’ün üstüne çıktı ve ülkedeki atmosfer kutuplaşmıştı.

Recep Tayyib Erdogan officially won the YES vote in Turkey’s referendum. But what was the character of his victory and what does it mean?

On Sunday, Turkey's electorate will vote in a referendum on a new draft constitution which, if implemented, would concentrate enormous powers in the hands of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Egypt was rocked yesterday by suicide bombings in major cities which resulted in at least 45 dead and over 100 injured. In the second city Alexandria an attack was carried out at the entrance to St Mark’s Cathedral resulting in the death of 16 people. Two hours earlier in Tanta, a city in the Nile Delta, a bomb attack at a church killed 29. There are unconfirmed reports of further attacks on churches around the country.

Yesterday the US navy launched a series of missile attacks on the Al Shayrat airbase in the central governorate of Homs in Syria. Seven people are claimed to have been killed and several fighter jets are said to have been damaged.

Yet another crisis has been haunting Egypt’s 3 July military regime in the past three days. Hundreds of Egyptians in different cities have come out to protest cuts to subsidised good - mainly bread - in a militant and angry reaction to the Al-Sisi’s onslaught against the workers and the poor.

At the congress of the Pakistani section of the IMT on December 3rd, Fred Weston delivered the introductory speech analysing the world situation in the light of the recent victory of Trump in the US presidential elections, the role of Russia in Syria, the crisis of the EU and the general deepening crisis of world capitalism. We provide here two videos of the introductory speech and the summing up of the discussion.

The recapture of Aleppo by loyalist forces in December, represents a decisive milestone in the Syrian civil war as well as for the crisis in the whole region. But it also has wide ranging consequences for world relations in the coming period.

There has been much confusion on the left about the events that have unfolded in Syria in the past five years, with some supporting Assad as a supposed "anti-imperialist", while others have supported the so-called "Syrian revolution", de facto ending up in the same camp as the western imperialists who support the so-called "moderate rebels". In order to cut though this fog of confusion it is necessary to analyse the nature of the Assad regime, what it was and what it became, and also the process which cut across the initial revolutionary movement of the Syrian youth in 2011, transforming revolution very quickly into counter-revolution. Here we provide a list of the key articles we have

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