Under the Ba'as regime, civil engineering was promoted as choice for young male students. It has everything to do with the presence of petroleum industry.
Note that, in terms of Omer Ozkizilcik, he is (quite literally-not as an insult) a Turkish lobbyist, having worked for the SETA think-tank that is notoriously close to Erdogan's government personally. He made have some insight into the new governmental figures, but a lot of what he writes, especially regarding the AANES/Kurdish issues more broadly, is to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
My first encounter with his work was when he published a document analysing the SNA through SETA which accidentally revealed that a significant portion of its troops (5% IIRC?) were recruited as children. SETA then quietly deleted the post and it was not mentioned again.
After that he has also written work with fellow lobbyist Mike Doran (Turkey/Azeri-the links are not quite as obvious but it is hard to come to any other conclusion if you follow his works and his past social media output regarding Aliyev's government) for the Hudson Institute, titled: "Escape from the Syrian Labyrinth: A Road Map" which was frankly extremely detached from reality in its recommendations and, again, promoted outright falsehoods and lies about the AANES and the SDF that indicate, to me, a dishonest motivation to the work, including the common use of 'YPG/PKK' which is pretty much exclusively used as a common refrain in Turkey. Of course English-language media may talk about the relationship between the PYD and the PKK, but it falls far below academic/journalistic standards outside of Turkey (even in sources which are far from anti-Turkish, e.g., the BBC) to simply act as if they are one and the same.
So yeah, take with immense caution if you are going to follow the guy.
Fascinating, thanks. I wanted to give a bit of credit to those I'd seen posting about appointments, but yeah, the Syria analyst landscape seems like such a minefield.
Under the Ba'as regime, civil engineering was promoted as choice for young male students. It has everything to do with the presence of petroleum industry.
Great point, thanks for commenting.
Note that, in terms of Omer Ozkizilcik, he is (quite literally-not as an insult) a Turkish lobbyist, having worked for the SETA think-tank that is notoriously close to Erdogan's government personally. He made have some insight into the new governmental figures, but a lot of what he writes, especially regarding the AANES/Kurdish issues more broadly, is to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
My first encounter with his work was when he published a document analysing the SNA through SETA which accidentally revealed that a significant portion of its troops (5% IIRC?) were recruited as children. SETA then quietly deleted the post and it was not mentioned again.
After that he has also written work with fellow lobbyist Mike Doran (Turkey/Azeri-the links are not quite as obvious but it is hard to come to any other conclusion if you follow his works and his past social media output regarding Aliyev's government) for the Hudson Institute, titled: "Escape from the Syrian Labyrinth: A Road Map" which was frankly extremely detached from reality in its recommendations and, again, promoted outright falsehoods and lies about the AANES and the SDF that indicate, to me, a dishonest motivation to the work, including the common use of 'YPG/PKK' which is pretty much exclusively used as a common refrain in Turkey. Of course English-language media may talk about the relationship between the PYD and the PKK, but it falls far below academic/journalistic standards outside of Turkey (even in sources which are far from anti-Turkish, e.g., the BBC) to simply act as if they are one and the same.
So yeah, take with immense caution if you are going to follow the guy.
Fascinating, thanks. I wanted to give a bit of credit to those I'd seen posting about appointments, but yeah, the Syria analyst landscape seems like such a minefield.
Wassim Nasr has been around after the fall of the regime, so it seems.
He's been doing great work!
Yeah definitely, didn't mean to do a 'gotcha' or anything, just thought it was worth pointing out.
I didn't take it that way - thanks again for all the background, I didn't know much of that.
Thank you, Alex, for this update on key appointments in Syria since its fall. One can tell you are an educator!