During the Gezi Park protests last month in Istanbul, Turks and Kurds dismissed historical mistrust and banded together against Prime Minister Erdogan’s growing authoritarianism. Some have suggested the newly unifying cause has strengthened momentum for a long-standing solution to Kurdish autonomy and rights in Turkey. Still it may be water that the fate of Kurdish ambitions is most tied to, rather than officials in Ankara or protestors in Istanbul.

The original version of this article, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, appeared on The Guardian.

A northern wind had been blowing since early morning, lifting a veil of dust that had blocked the sun and turned the sky the color of ash. Abu Zayed was sitting on the porch of his unfinished concrete home, watching the storm build. He loved sandstorms. They reminded him of Dubai, where he had lived before the war. He admired the people there for turning a desert into a paradise. They had vision, he told his followers.

As President Obama readies a new road map for addressing climate change in the United States, experts warn that poorly designed and implemented initiatives, especially in already-fragile parts of the world, could unintentionally provoke conflicts, rather than diffuse them.

Several high-profile reports in the last few months have suggested that climate change and natural resource scarcity contributed to the events that have rocked the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since December 2010. Thomas Friedman is apparently working on a Showtime documentary about the topic. But what exactly was the role of environmental factors in the mass movement?

The original version of this article, by Josh Wood, appeared on The New York Times.

Once highly dependent on revenue from petroleum sales, the Syrian government has lost control of many of the country’s major oil fields over the past few months as Kurdish forces and the rebel Free Syrian Army have made significant gains in the east.

Excerpted below is the introduction, by Haleh Esfandiari, to Challenges to Women’s Security in the MENA Region. The full report is available for download from the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2013, the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center invited a cross-section of women activists, politicians, academics, and entrepreneurs to give us their views on the challenges women face to their security. This publication, “Challenges to Women’s Security in the MENA Region,” includes pieces from 42 women from 20 countries, including the United States, Malaysia, Indonesia, and countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) shared with us their concerns, disappointments, and hopes for women in the region.

“The discovery of gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean comes at a time when world demand for energy is growing rapidly and many are questioning the reliability of supplies from North Africa and the Middle East,” said Emmanuel Karagiannis, assistant professor of Russian and post-Soviet politics at the University of Macedonia, in an interview at the Wilson Center.

How should the seven billion or so of us on Earth mark World Population Day? Today, major global players are focusing on increasing access to family planning around the world. But there are other important aspects to population that also deserve our sustained attention.