The construction of what is nowadays called European energy policy is an ongoing process that officially started with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and has not yet been entirely finalized. It took several decades to move from a Community composed of six countries to a policy – not fully fledged – intended to strengthen as much as possible cohesion between 28 EU member states in the energy sector.

The Gezi protest movement gripped Turkey throughout the summer of 2013 and reignited observers’ interest in Turkey’s left-wing activist groups, which participated in the protests. 

This article, issued after Asia Center and ASEF's international conference on coal issues in China (26th and 27th of June 2014 in Beijing), tackles the challenges the country is facing in restructuring its coal industry, in a context of severe and recurrent air, soil and water pollution outbursts.

The Kurds in Iraq occupy what is practically a state. The Syrian civil war has resulted in the autonomization of the country’s Kurdish population. To Kurdish advantage, the JDP’s (Justice and Development Party – Turkey) ambiguous policy has cleared a new political space in Turkey.

While the peace process between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the Turkish government is at a standstill, the latter is attempting to circumvent Turkey’s Kurdish actors by aligning itself with the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party), which dominates the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.

The emergence of an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, the civil war in Syria, and the electoral ambitions of the JDP (Justice and Development Party) have led to new policy being formed by the Turkish government regarding the Kurdish issue.

Although the Kurdish population in Syria forms a very small and highly divided minority, the Kurds nevertheless have managed, thanks to the civil war, to gain relative autonomy in Northern Syria.