About the authors & Acknowledgements

Asli Aydıntaşbaş is a senior policy fellow at ECFR. Her topics of focus include Turkish foreign policy and the external ramifications of its domestic politics. Aydintasbas joined ECFR after a lengthy career in journalism; most recently she was a columnist at Milliyet (2009-2015) and was previously a commentator on regional issues in international publications and networks.

Julien Barnes-Dacey is director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at ECFR. He focuses on European policy on Syria, the wider Mashreq, and the Gulf, and has worked as a researcher and journalist across the Middle East. Barnes-Dacey also headed the Middle East and North Africa practice at Control Risks, a private sector political consultancy.

Cinzia Bianco is a visiting fellow at ECFR where she is working on political, security and economic developments in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and relations with Europe. Additionally, she is a senior analyst at Gulf State Analytics. Previously, Bianco was a research fellow for the European Commission's project on EU-GCC relations ‘Sharaka’ between 2013 and 2014.

John V. Bowlus is the editor-in-chief of Energy Reporters, where he writes about energy policy and geopolitics. John received his PhD in history from Georgetown University, and is a researcher and lecturer at the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

Hugh Lovatt is a policy fellow with ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa programme. He works extensively on European foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as on Israeli regional policy. Prior to this, he worked as a researcher for International Crisis Group and as a Schuman Fellow in the European Parliament focusing on Middle East policy.

Tarek Megerisi is a policy fellow at ECFR specialising in Libyan affairs and more generally politics, governance, and development in the Arab world. Megerisi started his career in Tripoli, Libya with the Sadeq Institute and various INGOs providing diverse research and democratisation assistance to Libya’s post-revolutionary authorities between 2012-2014.

Prof Michaël Tanchum teaches at the University of Navarra in Spain and is a senior associate fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Studies (AIES). He is also a fellow at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, the Hebrew University, Israel, and non-resident fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Başkent University in Ankara, Turkey (Başkent-SAM).

Acknowledgements

ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa team would like to extend our thanks to ECFR editor Adam Harrison for his diligence and patience in editing all of the individual pieces. We are also indebted to Marco Ugolini at Objectif.co.uk, ECFR’s web lead Juan Ruitiña, and the coding team at Queo for delivering this web platform.