Middle East Forum

Turkey has built one of its deepest partnerships in Africa in Somalia. It trains Somali forces, maintains its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, supports maritime security, and has expanded into offshore energy exploration. The relationship took another step forward in early October, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey had begun building a spaceport in the country. Yet the depth of this partnership does not necessarily translate into political alignment.

The defeat of any terrorist organization raises a question that counter-terrorism policy rarely addresses: What happens to its economic infrastructure after the defeat of its military? Territorial defeat leads to shifts in power. A factory determines which workers get jobs. A vehicle can show which group controls a smuggling route. Weaponry and cash can help a new group rise. The networks surrounding these assets can keep smuggling routes, trade networks and patronage connections alive.

American military history began on Cyrenaica’s shores with the nation’s first post-independence victory abroad. When William Eaton and Presley O’Bannon raised the U.S. flag over Derna in 1805, they forged eastern Libya’s first true polity through sheer force of arms. Decades before the United Nations manufactured an artificial paper kingdom, Sayyid Idris al Sanusi solidified this legacy by proclaiming the sovereign Emirate of Cyrenaica from Benghazi.

Washington’s decision to override human rights conditions on military aid to Cairo reflects the enduring primacy of strategic interests. Israel must not mistake diplomatic necessity for long-term security. When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized a waiver on October 1, bypassing human rights conditions attached to $320 million in military aid to Cairo, the announcement passed with minimal notice inside a public consumed by warfare with Iran and its proxies.

In the run-up to the third anniversary of the Hamas pogrom, whilst the London Metropolitan Police urged the organisers of a large pro-Palestinian demonstration not to hold it on 7 October, a motion defining Zionism as ‘racism’ was passed at the Green Party’s annual conference. There were 1,026 votes in favour and 648 against.

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, already under international scrutiny over documented contacts between senior political figures and Turkey’s criminal underworld, appears to have enabled the rise of a new alleged mafia powerbroker, Ali Uğur Uzun, an organized crime figure whose name has surfaced in criminal cases involving money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, assault, armed intimidation and the forcible seizure of businessmen’s assets.

On October 2, 2026, several hundred pro-government Arab residents staged a demonstration in the city of Hasaka, the provincial capital of a Kurdish-majority province of the same name in northeast Syria, demanding an end to the Syrian Democratic Forces’ continued control of the area. A similar protest is expected on October 9.

Three years ago this month, Hamas killed some 1200 people in the south of Israel, most of them civilians, in their homes, at a music festival, and on the roads in the border communities of Israel. They also took with them 251 people as hostages. Israel responded with a war that lasted for two years, not just in Gaza but all over the Middle East. The war reached Lebanon two days after it began, Yemen a few weeks later, and even Iran itself a year later.

‘The youth revolt in France’ was actually a headline in La Stampa ‘Youth’? They shout wallah, set fire to schools, douse teachers with petrol, burn the faces of unsuspecting citizens, chase and beat up police officers, and wreak havoc in the streets. Corriere della Sera tries to convince its readers (who are truly unsuspecting) that it is ‘a protest against an algorithm’. In 2005, it was the suburbs that were ablaze. Twenty years later, the flames have reached the school gates.

When American diplomatic messaging regarding Western Sahara multiplied late last month, observers across Middle Eastern capitals searched for signs of retreat. On paper, Washington continues to recognize Rabat’s sovereignty over the territory. Yet senior administration officials have now been emphasizing that the five-decade conflict remains unresolved and that no swift end is in sight. To a casual observer, this sounds like superpower hesitation or backtracking.