Webinar TODAY at Noon - Russian Roulette: Putin's Increasing Footprint in the Middle East & North Africa

Despite our universal concern with COVID-19, the dire situation for millions of people throughout the Middle East doesn’t go away. In 2011, President Obama overthrew Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, leaving a chaotic situation on the ground there, and wide open void for other power-hungry leaders, such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

America’s abrupt withdrawal from most of Syria under President Trump, has left our former allies, the Kurds, in a particularly vulnerable state in that country. There are now 4 million refugees from Syria, 1 million from the Kurdish-held region of Idlib, alone. After nine years of brutal war, with estimates of 600,000 fatalities, Syria is now a failed state and both Putin and Erdoğan have been swooping in to fill the void.

Here to shed sunlight on these rapidly changing dynamics of the Middle East, are three of the world’s paramount experts - Dr. Aykan Erdemir, Dr. Stephen Blank, and Diliman Abdulkader.

EMET's upcoming Seminar will take place as a Zoom Webinar. To register for the webinar, please click the link below. We will also be broadcasting the webinar on our Facebook page as a livestream.

When: Mar 19, 2020 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Russian Roulette: Putin's Increasing Footprint in the Middle East & North Africa

Register in advance for this webinar: HERE

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Webinar Speakers

Dr. Aykan Erdemir
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Dr. Aykan Erdemir is the Senior Director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a former member of the Turkish Parliament who served in the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, EU Harmonization Committee, and the Ad Hoc Parliamentary Committee on the IT Sector and the Internet. As an outspoken defender of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedoms in Turkey and the Middle East, Dr. Erdemir has been at the forefront of the struggle against violent extremism, religious persecution, hate crimes, and hate speech. He is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and a drafter of and signatory to the Oslo Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief as well as a signatory legislator to the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism. He is a member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities.

Dr. Stephen Blank
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Dr. Stephen Blank is an internationally recognized expert on Russian foreign and defense policies and international relations across the former Soviet Union. He is also a leading expert on European and Asian security, including energy issues. Since 2013 he has been a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, www.afpc.org. From 1989-2013 he was a Professor of Russian National Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. Dr. Blank has been Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute since 1989. In 1998-2001 he was Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research at the War College. Dr. Blank's M.A. and Ph.D. are in Russian History from the University of Chicago. His B.A is in History from the University of Pennsylvania.

Diliman Abdulkader
American Friends of Kurdistan
Diliman Abdulkader is the Co-Founder and Spokesperson of a newly established Washington based advocacy organization, American Friends of Kurdistan (AFK). AFK works to strengthen American-Kurdish relations through education and advocacy. Diliman comes from a foreign policy, national security background where he was previously director of the Kurdistan Project at EMET. He invests his time on Capitol Hill, educating lawmakers and staffers on the plight of the Kurds. Diliman frequently publishes article pertaining to the developments in the Middle East. Diliman received his MA at the American University in Washington, D.C. in international peace and conflict resolution.

The event will also be available on EMET's website beginning at 12:00pm on Thursday, March 19th.

We look forward to your participation in the event. If you would like to submit a question for our panel of speakers, please email [email protected], or submit a question during the Zoom webinar with the Q&A function. We would be glad to include it in the discussion, time permitting.

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FOLLOW THE ENDOWMENT FOR MIDDLE EAST TRUTH

Endowment for Middle East Truth

P.O. Box 66366

Washington, DC 20035

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