This week, Ifri, in partnership with CATS Network, is launching a series of five videos on the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, seen through the prism of the geopolitical rivalry between France and Turkey. 

This week, Ifri, in partnership with CATS Network, is launching a series of five videos on the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, seen through the prism of the geopolitical rivalry between France and Turkey. 

This week, Ifri, in partnership with CATS Network, is launching a series of five videos on the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, seen through the prism of the geopolitical rivalry between France and Turkey. 

The EU and Turkey both say they are ready to iron out their differences and step up bilateral cooperation, which could take place in many areas. But Ankara will have to prove its goodwill.

Competing claims have left Ankara isolated. Its efforts to stall projects threaten billions of dollars in investment. Europe’s top diplomat smiled for the camera as he took a helicopter flight over the disputed waters of the island of Cyprus at the end of June.

Turkey has decided to suspend the opening of several French studies departments in its universities, in a context of bilateral tensions after the publication of a "manifesto against new anti-Semitism" last month, calling for the correction of some parts of the Quran. Dorothée Schmid, head of the Contemporary Turkey program at Ifri, analyses the reasons behind this decision and its implications for the two countries.

Turkey is looking to revive a fragile ceasefire in Aleppo, and the planned evacuation of civilians, which brokered with Russia. But why is Ankara, a staunch opponent of Damascus, interested in helping to create an outcome that would benefit President Assad? Amanda Morrow put the question to Dorothée Schmid, head of the Turkish studies programme at the French Institute of International Relations. 

"Past year has been marked not only with the Ukrainian crisis and unprecedented tensions in political relations between Russia and the West, but also with somewhat radical change of Moscow’s approach to international energy affairs. Widely promoted new energy partnerships with countries like China and Turkey were supposed to demonstrate that Russia has a choice of alternatives for mass-scale international energy cooperation, as compared to previous domination of European dimension, and if West wishes to cut ties with the Kremlin, Russia has somewhere else to go.

Does Russia really have an option of developing new international energy partnerships comparable in scale and significance to those with Europe as the consumer of energy, and with Western IOCs as key agents helping to secure further exploration and development of Russian oil & gas resources?"

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP suffered a stunning defeat in the latest parliamentary poll with the party losing its absolute majority for the first time in 13 years. The question now is whether it can hold on to power.

Read the article on France24.com

Will there be a significant change of policy, in Russia itself and in its foreign affairs, during Putin's third term as president?

- For the past two months, Putin has published a series of seven pre-electoral articles in Russian newspapers. Each of these focus on a particular area of Russia's policy - its social, economic, defense policy, its external relations, etc.

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