The United States is counting on Turkey to help oust the Syrian regime and bring about a pluralistic government. But Ankara, whose Sunni leadership sees Syria’s conflict in sectarian terms, is not on board.
The Middle East that awaits the Clinton administration is a locus of terrorism, drugs, refugees, armaments and oil. Iran, newly pragmatic on domestic and economic issues, is not inclined toward cooperation with either its neighbors or the wider world. Iraq's Saddam Hussein wasted no time in testing the resolve of the incoming American president. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia find an increasingly educated middle class seeking a greater voice in the political process. Turkey, after half a century of avoiding outside entanglements, is a country at risk. The former Soviet republics of Central Asia are newly relevant to American policy, with Muslim fundamentalism on the rise and the nuclear arsenal of Kazakhstan still intact.
AKURDISH independence movement was officially inaugurated at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945, in a letter addressed to the delegates in the name of the Kurdish League. The letter was accompanied by a memorandum on the "Kurdish Question." It makes little difference that the material presented was strongly reminiscent of what had appeared in brochure form upon the same subject at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The figures in the memorandum may not be acceptable.
