EDITORIAL

Tassos Symeonides (PhD)
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can
Gaius Julius Caesar

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 13 December 2015

The Paris outrage has stunned the West. Disbelief is mixed with anger. Anger is justified. Disbelief is not.
Ever since 9/11, the West has waged a two-pronged war: one against Islamic terrorism, the other against itself.
Fighting the Islamist fanatics bent on death and destruction is far easier, it turns out, than competing with those inside the gates, who find any form of aggressive defense "a breach of human rights."..Read more

An Overview

Copyright: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en - Publication at RIEAS (www.rieas.gr) on 6 December 2015

The GTAZ (Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre) set up in Berlin in late 2004 is not an autonomous authority but a joint co-operation and communication platform used by 40 internal security agencies. Its founding did not require a new legal basis, because no agency was given additional competences or had to share sovereignty. Instead, each of the agencies involved takes its measures on its own authority and within the framework of the prevailing laws. Due to its organisational structure, the GTAZ has no director, but representatives of the following agencies co-operate on an equal footing: Read more

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
(Research fellow at Middle East Forum's Jihad Intel project)

Copyright: Middle East Forum (www.meforum.org) Republication date on RIEAS (www.rieas.gr) on 28 November 2015

The recent attacks in Paris carried out by the Islamic State have led to widespread speculation about a possible shift in strategy on the part of ISIS. Taken in conjunction with the downing of a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai and the bombings in the predominantly Shia Dahiyeh suburbs of Beirut, it is argued that ISIS is lashing out at the "far enemy" as it comes under pressure on the home fronts in Iraq and Syria, such as its recent loss of control of Sinjar, a town that formed part of a key route connecting the de facto ISIS capitals of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. Read more

John M. Nomikos
(RIEAS Director, Editor, Journal of Mediterranean and Balkan Intelligence)

Copyright: Journal of Mediterranean and Balkan Intelligence (JMBI)- http://www.rieas.gr/intelligence-journal - Publication date: 22/11/2015.

European intelligence cooperation is the most important weapon in the fight against the new threats in the 28 EU member states. The article emphasizes the reasons that make the European Union Intelligence Analysis Centre (INTCEN) move towards an independent operational agency into the EU mechanism. Even though, effective intelligence cooperation is hard to achieve even at the national level as different services compete for resources and attention from the decisions makers, past terrorist incidents in Europe served as a wake up for the European Commission to promote intelligence-sharing and cooperation among EU institutions and Member States. Read more (Article) & (References on EU Intelligence)

Monapo Mokose & Hussein Solomon
(Department of Political Studies and Governance,
University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) – Publication date on 14 November 2015

The advent of the month of June in 2014 coincided with an occasion that injected into the global community, a terror and distress whose intensity would only be aggravated by the corresponding events that succeeded it. Mosul, Iraq's second largest city was captured, with the Shia-dominated Iraqi forces that had been instated there, driven out (Baloch, 2015: 13). The architecture of this occasion, the Islamic State (ISIS) would go on to declare itself to be a worldwide caliphate on the 29th of that same month (African Defence Forum, 2015: 38). Read more

Anthony Derisiotis (PhD)
(Lecturer in Turkish Foreign Policy, Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies, School of Economics and Political Sciences, University of Athens, GR)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 8 November 2015

After 5 turbulent months and contrary to expectations that it will again fall short of winning the majority vote, the Justice and Development party secured 49.4% of the vote and 317 seats in the 550-seat Turkish parliament, thus securing a generous majority but not the 367 seats that would pave the road for the government to proceed to the transition to a presidential system, or the 330 seats that would allow a referendum, in line with President Erdoğan's aspirations. The Republican People's party, which is the main opposition, did not succeed substantial improvement, whereas the nationalistic MHP and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) saw their votes dropping sharply...Read more