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Levant Quartet
The Levant Quartet was a formal economic and cultural partnership of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan formed in December 2010. The Quartet had the stated aim of eventually giving rise to an economic, cultural, monetary and political union similar to the European Union in the Middle East. Projected member states included the four founders as well as Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The Quartet agreement was formed following a decade of increasing trade and diplomatic traffic between Turkey and the other member states. The ''Levant Business Forum'' was set up, with a secretariat at Beirut, with the intention of enabling free circulation of goods and people among the Quartet states. Also planned was a customs union called ''Shamgen'', a pun on ''Sham'' and the EU's Schengen Agreement, in which Iran and Iraq would participate by issuing joint visas with Turkey and Syria. The project was effectively put to a stop when Turkey imposed econom ...
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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister of Turkey, prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Justice and Development Party (Turkey), Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2001. He also served as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. Coming from an Islamist background and promoting socially conservative policies, Turkey has experienced increasing authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and suppression of dissent under Erdoğan's rule. Erdoğan was born in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, and studied at the Marmara University, Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, before working as a consultant and senior manager in the private sector. Becoming active in local politics, he was elected Welfare Party's Beyoğlu district chair in 1984 and Istanbul chair in 1985. Following the 1994 Istanbul mayoral election, 1994 lo ...
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The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston as ''The Atlantic Monthly'', a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine also published the annual ''The Atlantic Monthly Almanac''. The magazine was purchased in 1999 by businessman David G. Bradley, who fashioned it into a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and " thought leaders"; in 201 ...
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Accession Of Turkey To The European Union
Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987. After the ten founding members in 1949, Turkey became one of the first new members (Member states of the Council of Europe, the 13th member) of the Council of Europe in 1950. The country became an Ankara Agreement, associate member of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1963 and was an Western European Union#Associate members, associate member of the Western European Union from 1992 to its end in 2011. Turkey signed a European Union–Turkey Customs Union, Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership on 12 December 1999, at the Helsinki summit of the European Council. Negotiations for full membership were started on 3 October 2005. Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complet ...
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Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population, seventh-largest by population, with over 212 million people. The country is a federation composed of 26 Federative units of Brazil, states and a Federal District (Brazil), Federal District, which hosts the capital, Brasília. List of cities in Brazil by population, Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the most Portuguese-speaking countries, Portuguese speakers in the world and is the only country in the Americas where Portuguese language, Portuguese is an Portuguese-speaking world, official language. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a Coastline of Brazil, coastline of . Covering roughly half of South America's land area, it Borders of Brazil, borders all other countries and ter ...
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AK Party
The Justice and Development Party ( , AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative, right-wing populist and as espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is currently the largest party in Grand National Assembly with 273 MPs, ahead of the main opposition social democratic Republican People's Party (CHP). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chairman of the AK Party since the 2017 Party Congress. The AK Party is the largest party in the Grand National Assembly, the Turkish national legislature, with 268 out of 600 seats, having won 35.6% of votes in the 2023 Turkish parliamentary election. It forms the People's Allian ...
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Soner Cagaptay
Soner Cagaptay (; born in 1970) is a Turkish-American political scientist based in the United States. He is director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.Expert biography http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/cagaptay-soner He is a historian by training and is an expert on Turkey–United States relations, Turkish politics, and Turkish nationalism. Education Cagaptay received his Ph.D. degree in history from Yale University in 2003. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Turkish nationalism. Career Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Cagaptay has taught courses at Yale, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and Smith College in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe. From 2006-2007, he was Ertegun Professor at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies. He was a visiting professor at the ...
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World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development. The World Bank is the collective name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA), two of five international organizations owned by the World Bank Group. It was established along with the International Monetary Fund at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. After a slow start, its first loan was to France in 1947. In its early years, it primarily focused on rebuilding Europe. Over time, it focused on providing loans to developing world countries. In the 1970s, the World Bank re-conceptualized its mission of facilitating development as being oriented around poverty reduction. For the last 30 years, it has included NGOs and environmental groups in its loan portfolio. Its ...
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World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Group. The bank is headquartered in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It provided around $98.83 billion in loans and assistance to "developing" and transition countries in the 2021 fiscal year. The bank's stated mission is to achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity.The World Bank, Press release: "World Bank Group Commitments Rise Sharply in FY14 Amid Organizational Change"July 1 2014, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/01/world-bank-group-commitments-rise-sharply-in-fy14-amid-organizational-change/ref> Total lending as of 2015 for the last 10 years through Development Policy Financing was approximately $117 billion. Its five organizations have been established over time: ...
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Civil Uprising Phase Of The Syrian Civil War
The Syrian revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 15 March 2011 to 8 December 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nation-wide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives. Despite al-Assad's attempts to crush the protests with crackdowns, censorship and concessions, the mass protests had become a ...
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Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, '' Bloomberg Businessweek'', '' Bloomberg Markets'', Bloomberg.com, and Bloomberg's mobile platforms. Since 2015, John Micklethwait has been editor-in-chief. History Bloomberg News was founded by Michael Bloomberg and Matthew Winkler in 1990 to deliver financial news reporting to Bloomberg Terminal subscribers. The agency was established in 1990 with a team of six people. Winkler was first editor-in-chief. In 2010, Bloomberg News included more than 2,300 editors and reporters in 72 countries and 146 news bureaus worldwide. Beginnings (1990–1995) Bloomberg Business News was created to expand the services offered through the terminals. According to Matthew Winkler, then a writer for ''The Wall Street Jo ...
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Al-Arabiya
Arabiya (, transliterated: '; meaning "The Arabic One" or "The Arab One") is a Saudi state-owned international Arabic news television channel. It is based in Riyadh and is a subsidiary of MBC Group. The channel is a flagship of the media conglomerate and is therefore the only single offering to carry the name as simply "Al Arabiya" in its branding. History Al Arabiya was originally launched in Dubai Media City, United Arab Emirates, on 3 March 2003. An early funder, the production company Middle East News (then headed by Ali al-Hedeithy), said the goal was to provide "a balanced and less provocative" alternative to Al Jazeera. A free-to-air channel, Al Arabiya broadcasts standard newscasts every hour, as well as talk shows and documentaries. It has been rated among the top pan-Arab stations by Middle East audiences.Peter Feuilherade (25 November 2003).Profile: Al-Arabiya TV". '' BBC Monitoring''. Retrieved 4 September 2009. The news organization's website is accessible ...
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