President Erdogan has achieved his long-cherished ambition to be acknowledged as the uncrowned sultan of Turkey. However, his goal has been attained at great cost to the country. Turkey is divided down the middle regarding the wisdom of this course. A referendum, changing the constitution to a presidential system with almost unbridled powers for the chief executive, passed on Sunday with the barest majority—51 to 49 percent. Moreover, the CHP, the leading opposition party, is demanding a recount of up to 60 percent of the ballots cast, saying that unstamped voting papers were considered valid.

Additionally, international monitors from the OSCE and the Council of Europe have delivered a scathing report, casting serious doubts about the integrity of the referendum. They have declared that the referendum was held on an “unlevel playing field,” with disproportionate media coverage going to the “Yes” campaign.

The outcome of the referendum shows a glaring regional divide. The most developed parts of the country, the entire Aegean coast and much of the Mediterranean coastline voted against the constitutional amendment. So did the Kurdish-majority provinces in the southeast of the country. Equally important, if not more, the three largest cities—Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir—also voted against changing the constitution.

While Izmir has always been a holdout against the AKP’s domination, the “No” votes in Istanbul and Ankara were astounding, amounting to a political slap to Erdogan’s face. Istanbul is Erdogan’s home turf, where he cut his political teeth and gained the sobriquet “the bully of Kasimpaşa” for his no-holds-barred style of politicking. As the mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s, he gained a reputation as an efficient administrator, which stood him in good stead during his later career. It was during those years that he also made his reputation as a courageous fighter against the Kemalist elite, for which he was briefly jailed.

Ankara is the bastion of state power presided over by Erdogan and his AKP colleagues. Notwithstanding its reputation as “Atatürk’s city,” it has repeatedly elected the AKP in local elections in recent years. Losing Ankara despite all the state’s pomp and show at his command should force Erdogan to rethink the wisdom of his stance on constitutional change.

So should the slim majority—now being challenged in court by the opposition parties, for electoral irregularities—by which the measure was won. The margin of victory should in fact be interpreted as a sign of Erdogan’s defeat, in light of the fact that the referendum was held under the most inauspicious conditions for opponents of the change.

Erdogan and his government used the excuse of rooting out the proponents of the failed July coup to purge the media, academia and judiciary of all dissenting voices. The media was cowed into submission, and consequently the opponents of the amendment were mostly unable to put across their point of view to the voters.

It was an uneven playing field if ever there was one. Only a small percentage of coverage on electronic media was available to the opposition. With opposition media, both print and electronic, mostly closed down or taken over by the government, opponents of change were severely hobbled during the campaign. Pro-AKP private TV stations effectively shut out the opposition from their coverage. The state-run media, which was supposed to give equal time to the two sides, refused to cover opposition rallies except perfunctorily. That the opposition still managed to garner approximately half the votes is an astonishing rejection of Erdogan’s claim of victory in a free and fair referendum.

What does the referendum bode for the future? It is obvious that the outcome allows Erdogan to consolidate power and act as the sole decisionmaking authority in the country. He was launched on such a course in any case, but the constitutional amendment now gives his actions legal cover. Given his vindictive nature, this means that his opponents will be in for a rougher time than before.

It also means that any stirrings of opposition within his own party will be nipped in the bud. He has already sidelined the cofounder of the AKP—former president Abdullah Gül, who has been sent into political hibernation. So has his former handpicked prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, who served as the fall guy for the president’s errors. President Erdogan has surrounded himself by advisors who are more sycophants than counselors, because he does not like to hear dissenting views. This means he will be cut off further from learning the real state of affairs in the country.

In order to further bolster his legitimacy, in view of the slim majority with which he won the referendum, he is likely to emphasize his increasingly ultranationalist postures, thereby alienating the Kurdish population even further. Most Kurdish leaders, including the coleaders of the parliament’s HDP party and several of their colleagues, are already in jail. For many Kurds, the militant PKK appears to be the only viable option. An increase in Kurdish terrorism will provide Erdogan with the opportunity to crack down viciously on the Kurdish population in southeast Turkey, a path he has already embarked upon over the past couple of years. This would burnish his ultranationalist image, but at the same time widen the chasm between Turks and Kurds in the country—a recipe for continuing instability.

The EU and major European countries, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, were harshly critical of Erdogan’s unabashed display of autocratic tendencies prior to the referendum, and have earned his ire. He accused the Dutch government of acting like Nazis when it prevented a visit by one of his ministers to campaign for the referendum among Turks residing in the Netherlands.

Erdogan’s high-handed actions have indefinitely postponed the prospects of Turkish membership in the EU, thus reducing Europe’s significance in Turkish foreign-policy priorities. This means that Turkey’s incentive to conform to the Copenhagen criteria to gain entry into the EU is no longer in place. In victory, Erdogan is likely to be even less concerned about European views about democracy and human rights than he was before the polls. Erdogan has made a deal with the EU that has slowed the movement of refugees into Europe to a trickle. This gives him additional leverage that could help minimize European criticism of his authoritarian actions following the referendum, and leave him free to do what he desires.

Turkey’s differences with the United States, unlike those Turkey has with the EU, are not primarily related to Erdogan’s authoritarian tendencies or to Ankara’s human-rights record. They have more to do with concrete policy differences over U.S. support for the main Kurdish force in Syria: the YPG, which is the military wing of Syria’s leading Kurdish party. However, Turkey considers the YPG to be an arm of the PKK, which has been engaged in major acts of insurgency and terrorism in Turkey for over thirty years. Turkey perceives the American-supported YPG presence across its border with Syria as a major security threat, as it boosts Kurdish nationalist sentiments within Turkey. As the war against ISIS proceeds, Turkish forces may come to clash with the YPG militia—they have come close a few times recently—to prevent the latter from extending control over territories currently held by ISIS near the Turkish border.

This dimension of Turkish-American relations is expected to become more salient following the referendum, which is likely to presage greater conflict between the Kurds in Turkey and the Turkish state. Therefore, America’s relations with Turkey could face a setback as it gets further embroiled in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict as a result of the war against ISIS. Erdogan’s abrasive personality, fresh from victory in the referendum, could add to tensions between Washington and Ankara. This could happen both over the Kurdish issue and over Ankara’s demand for the extradition of Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania but whom the Turkish government considers to be the mastermind behind the abortive July coup.

The future of post-referendum Turkey appears uncertain, if not completely bleak. Societal divisions, both along ethnic and political lines, have hardened. Erdogan’s authoritarian style exacerbates both domestic and external problems, rather than alleviating them. Relations with the EU have reached a low point not seen in many years. Problems with the United States can be expected to increase, as ISIS begins to crumble and members of the polyglot anti-ISIS alliance, including inveterate enemies the Turks and the YPG, make a dash to conquer territory, thus bringing them into open conflict with one another.

Erdogan may have won the referendum, and may survive the challenge to the result in court, but his domestic and external problems can be expected to increase. His autocratic operating style, his refusal to countenance opposition and his societally divisive strategies adopted in order to consolidate personal power do not bode well for Turkey, especially if he remains in power for another ten years, which was the chief objective of the referendum. In the end, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for Turkey’s president.

The recent peace talks at Astana in Kazakhstan between the Assad regime and a select group of rebels underlined the Assad regime’s approach to the conflict and its resolution. The regime continued as it had done at other talks by focusing primarily on procedural matters, thus avoiding dealing with the substantive issues such as resolving the conflict. That approach allows it to keep chipping at the opposition, which is now more divided and fragmented than ever, whereas the Syrian army, with the support of the National Defense Force remains committed to victory.

To understand the reticence of the Assad regime, its steadfast refusal to settle and willingness to engage in an all-out war against its opponents, one must understand Alawism: the religious orientation of many of Syria’s leaders and soldiers. It is also important to note Hafez al-Assad’s pragmatism and ruthlessness, inculcated in his son, ‘Dr. Bashar’.

Alawism serves as the mobilizing tool for its Syrian adherents, linking them through a sense of ’asabiyya (solidarity of a group). The term Alawism was invented by the French to describe the inhabitants of Greater Latakia in the French mandate in Northwest Syria.

Until then the Alawites were known as the Nusayris, named after the sect’s mystic progenitor Muhammad ibn Nusayr (d. 868), who was a pupil of the tenth Shia Imam, Ali al-Hadi (d. 873). Ibn Nusayr claimed that he had divine powers, and he instilled a belief in reincarnation among his followers (these traits are ascribed as divine qualities to the first Shia Imam and the Fourth Caliph, ’Ali ibn Abi Talib).

The Nusayris are a syncretistic sect drawing influence from Phoenician paganism, Mazdakism and Manichism as well as Christianity. Much of the Nusayri faith is shrouded in mystery, as they don’t divulge their religion or practices to outsiders, which only serves to heighten the sense of ’asabiyya.

The French-sanctioned name raised the notion the Nusayris are adherents of Ali (the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the person whom Shi’ites claimed should have to succeed the Prophet Muhammad after he had died in 632). The name change allows the Nusayris, or Alawites, to be placed within the Shia camp and not as apostates. The significance of the name change is that the Shia saw the Nusayris as ghulat (exaggerator) whereas Sunni Muslims saw them as infidels, apostates or heretics, as seen with the famed Islamic jurist Ibn Taymiyya, who issued three fatwas (religious edits) condemning the Nusayris as ‘heretics’ and ‘enemies of Islam’, leading to centuries of brutal persecution.

Two key events helped remove the apostasy association from the Nusayri. The first was a July 1936 fatwa by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, which recognised the Nusayri as Muslims. The Mufti allegedly did that to promote Arab nationalism and solidarity, which may explain why, within months, the Nusayri ceased their opposition to the establishment of a Greater Syria, even though it was under French control.

The second event was a successful petition by Alawite clerics to the mufti of the Syrian Republic in 1952 to have Alawism recognized as part of the Twelver Shia creed. Six years later, the al-Azhar clerics recognized Twelver Shia Islam as ‘religiously correct’, which meant that Shia Islam was recognised—the fifth madhab (school) within Islam. In 1973, 80 religious leaders, representing the different parts of the ‘Alawi country, unqualifiedly affirmed that their book is the Qur’an; that they are Muslim and Shia; and that whatever else is attributed to them is an invention by their enemies and the enemies of Islam.

Bashar al-Assad depicts the same ruthlessness and pragmatism that took his father from a small village in the coastal hills near Latakia, where the Assad family name was known for centuries as al-Wahash (Beast), to the presidency of Syria in 1970. The 1982 Hama massacre—often referred to as al-Ahdath (the ‘events’)—, underlined Hafez’s ruthlessness. The rebels were crushed in a matters of hour by his brother Rifaat, and Assad authorized a three-week aerial and ground bombardment that left as many as 20,000 dead—the goal appeared to have been to terrorise people into submission.

Hafez’s obduracy was seen in the way he approached numerous overtures by the United States and Israel for improved relations. Hafez wanted to be recognized as the quintessential Arab leader, and he wanted it on his terms. When Yassir Arafat and King Hussein reached out to a more receptive Washington, Assad was willing to go back into the cold and wait. During that time, he fortified his power base in Syria and Lebanon, improved his relations with Iran and prepared the ground for Bashar’s succession. In May 2000, a month before Hafez died, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, and much of Syria’s ability to withstand such fierce opposition over the past six years stems from the way Assad shaped the military and the state.

The latest peace talks at Astana amounted to very little beyond emphasising the regime’s intractability. They highlighted the regime’s strategy of no compromise, ruthlessness, and pragmatism, as it knows that if it’s not in power, the Alawites would return to being murdbi (sharecropper) or fellah (agricultural labor), and endure the persecution that they’d experienced for eight centuries. And for Assad and his close allies, defeat would either mean death, as was the case of Gaddafi, exile or imprisonment for war crimes.

During his campaign, US President-elect Donald Trump questioned the alliances and institutions that undergird the liberal world order, but he spelled out few specific policies. Perhaps the most important question raised by his victory is whether the long phase of globalization that began at the end of World War II is essentially over.

Not necessarily. Even if trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP fail and economic globalization slows, technology is promoting ecological, political, and social globalization in the form of climate change, transnational terrorism, and migration—whether Trump likes it or not. World order is more than just economics, and the United States remains central to it.

Americans frequently misunderstand our place in the world. We oscillate between triumphalism and declinism. After the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, we believed we were in decline. In the 1980s, we thought the Japanese were ten feet tall. In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, many Americans mistakenly believed that China had become more powerful than the United States.

Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric, the US is not in decline. Because of immigration, it is the only major developed country that will not suffer a demographic decline by mid-century; its dependence on energy imports is diminishing rather than rising; it is at the forefront of the major technologies (bio, nano, information) that will shape this century; and its universities dominate the world league tables.

Many important issues will crowd Trump’s foreign policy agenda, but a few key issues will likely dominate—namely great power relations with China and Russia and the turmoil in the Middle East. A strong American military remains necessary but not sufficient to address all three. Maintaining the military balance in Europe and East Asia is an important source of American influence, but Trump is correct that trying to control the internal politics of nationalistic populations in the Middle East is a recipe for failure.

The Middle East is undergoing a complex set of revolutions stemming from artificial post-colonial boundaries; religious sectarian strife, and the delayed modernization described in the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Reports. The resulting turmoil may last for decades, and it will continue to feed radical jihadist terrorism. Europe remained unstable for 25 years after the French Revolution, and military interventions by outside powers made things worse.

But, even with reduced energy imports from the Middle East, the US cannot turn its back on the region, given its interests in Israel, non-proliferation, and human rights, among others. The civil war in Syria is not only a humanitarian disaster; it is also destabilizing the region and Europe as well. The US cannot ignore such events, but its policy should be one of containment, influencing outcomes by nudging and reinforcing our allies, rather than trying to assert direct military control, which would be both costly and counterproductive.

In contrast, the regional balance of power in Asia makes the US welcome there. The rise of China has fueled concern in India, Japan, Vietnam, and other countries. Managing China’s global rise is one of this century’s great foreign-policy challenges, and America’s bipartisan dual-track strategy of ‘integrate but insure’—under which the US invited China to join the liberal world order, while reaffirming its security treaty with Japan—remains the right approach.

Unlike a century ago, when a rising Germany (which had surpassed Britain by 1900) stoked fears that helped precipitate the disaster of 1914, China is not about to pass us in overall power. Even if China’s economy surpasses America’s in total size by 2030 or 2040, its per capita income (a better measure of an economy’s sophistication) will lag. Moreover, China will not equal US military ‘hard power’ or its ‘soft power’ of attraction. As Lee Kuan Yew once said, so long as the US remains open and attracts the talents of the world, China will ‘give you a run for your money,’ but will not replace the US.

For these reasons, the US does not need a policy of containment of China. The only country that can contain China is China. As it presses its territorial conflicts with neighbors, China contains itself. The US needs to launch economic initiatives in Southeast Asia, reaffirm its alliances with Japan and Korea, and continue to improve relations with India.

Finally, there is Russia, a country in decline, but with a nuclear arsenal sufficient to destroy the US—and thus still a potential threat to America and others. Russia, almost entirely dependent on revenues from its energy resources, is a ‘one crop economy’ with corrupt institutions and insurmountable demographic and health problems. President Vladimir Putin’s interventions in neighboring countries and the Middle East, and his cyber attacks on the US and others, though intended to make Russia look great again, merely worsen the country’s long-term prospects. In the short run, however, declining countries often take more risks and are thus more dangerous—witness the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914.

This has created a policy dilemma. On the one hand, it is important to resist Putin’s game-changing challenge to the post-1945 liberal order’s prohibition on the use of force by states to seize territory from their neighbors. At the same time, Trump is correct to avoid the complete isolation of a country with which we have overlapping interests when it comes to nuclear security, non-proliferation, anti-terrorism, the Arctic, and regional issues like Iran and Afghanistan. Financial and energy sanctions are necessary for deterrence; but we also have genuine interests that are best advanced by dealing with Russia. No one would gain from a new Cold War.

The US is not in decline. The immediate foreign-policy task for Trump will be to adjust his rhetoric and reassure allies and others of America’s continuing role in the liberal world order.

The long-anticipated battle to wrest Mosul from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is underway. Sitting on an ethnic fault line between Turkish, Kurdish and Arab spheres, the city affords a prism through which to view the geopolitical problems that beset the Middle East.

In the opening salvoes of a campaign that is expected to be long and hard fought, there have been some early successes. Kurdish Peshmerga forces have made rapid gains on the outskirts of Mosul, while the Nineveh Protection Units, an Iraqi Christian militia operating alongside the Peshmerga, are securing territory and have restored crosses to churches in villages liberated from the jihadis.

The Peshmerga and the Christian militia are just two groups fighting as part of an umbrella force arrayed against ISIS that includes the Iraqi army and the mostly Shiite Popular Mobilisation Units. While the US and Europe are providing air cover for the offensive, the US military is at pains to point out that all of the combat forces are Iraqi nationals.

This show of unity must be a good thing in a country that has been riven by ethnic and sectarian divisions. Iraq isn’t alone in this predicament. It’s well understood that ISIS first emerged out of a deeply fractured political landscape where sectarian discrimination and marginalisation are commonplace. So creating a coalition of forces to retake Mosul may go some way to healing those fractures.

But don’t put those rose-coloured glasses on too quickly. Problems arise when considering that each of the different elements of the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional force approaching the ISIS stronghold harbours different agendas and ambitions. Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians may be united in their desire to oust ISIS, but beyond that they have little in common. Mosul, the second biggest city in Iraq, is something of a prize, and one for which there are multiple competing claims.

The picture is further complicated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s loud insistence on Turkey’s right to be included in the coalition to take Mosul and to take a seat at the negotiating table once the campaign is over. Erdoğan has also recently revived the spectre of the National Pact, an intra-Turkish agreement dating to the 1920s in which Turkey envisioned itself retaining control of Mosul, as well as Aleppo, much of Iraqi Kurdistan and Armenia, and parts of the Balkans. This sabre-rattling posture has raised the ire of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and has unsettled Washington.

The prospect of a greater Turkey plays well to Turkish ultranationalists, who now make up a part of Erdoğan’s constituency, but it also highlights anew the controversies that linger over the drawing of borders in the region.

The rise of ISIS and its ‘caliphate’ had already called into question the existing state system in the Middle East; now that the group’s grip on territory is slipping it appears that regional players are jostling to best position themselves for the aftermath. The fact that Erdoğan’s evocation of the National Pact resonates at all, even with a maverick audience, is a measure of the state of play. Regional actors believe, or perhaps recognise, that everything on that ethnic fault line—borders, cities, territory—is in flux.

Turkey has a track record of opportunistic expansion, but Ankara’s not alone in taking advantage of prevailing geopolitical circumstances to claim territory and assert influence. In the wake of the ouster of Saddam Hussein, Iran is seen to have gradually extended its reach in the Arab world. More recently, the Iraqi Kurds seized Kirkuk, a city they have long coveted, and the Syrian Kurds, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, have extended control over much of northern Syria as ISIS has been pushed back.

These actions may all appear aggressive or expansionist, but they should be examined in light of the strategic landscape. In an arena where actors profoundly distrust their neighbours, and fear their neighbours’ regional ambitions, claiming territory is also a defensive measure. Land is a means to legitimacy and strength, but it also affords security in a hostile environment.

In today’s Middle East, communication between actors is fraught, there’s little faith in the regional order, and sabre-rattling and nationalist rhetoric are widespread. The imperative has been to seek advantages over rivals and to circumvent threats, real or perceived. That means that until channels of communication are opened, we’re likely to see a lot more jockeying for territory and the persistent risk of a widening conflagration.

Policy makers would do well to remember that the ousting of ISIS from Mosul is an important step, but that finding a lasting peace will require effort and ingenuity that addresses deep political and diplomatic cleavages, in Iraq and across the region.

The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) continues to pose a serious challenge not just to the Middle East, but to the entire world. While the efforts of a US-led coalition have weakened ISIS, destroying the group has proved difficult—and it has continued to inspire attacks in faraway places, from Brussels to Bangladesh.

To understand how to defeat ISIS once and for all, we first need to comprehend its strategy. And make no mistake: even if the ISIS-associated international attacks seem random, the group’s global crusade does have a strategic logic.

ISIS is fighting for its survival. It has neither the money nor the manpower to fight anything like a traditional war against the US-led coalition and its local allies—at least not for long. What it does have is a message that resonates with certain groups—typically marginalized, disenchanted, and tormented young men—within a broad range of countries, in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere. And it has become very good at tapping these sources of manpower.

The group’s spokespeople have repeatedly called on followers and supporters worldwide to strike its enemies, particularly in the West. Inspiring lone wolves and stay-at-home groupies or tight-knit local cells to launch attacks in distant, unpredictable locations is the ultimate weapon of the weak in asymmetric conflicts. It enables ISIS to reap all of the benefits of an attack, while incurring none of the costs.

The benefits are substantial. Such attacks divert attention from ISIS’s losses in Syria and Iraq, and can even make it seem that the group is getting stronger. This not only enhances ISIS’s capacity to recruit and inspire more terrorists; it also penetrates the thinking of citizens in coalition countries. ISIS hopes that, as the human and economic costs of the fight against ISIS accumulate in those countries, particularly in Europe, public opinion may turn against military involvement in Iraq and Syria.

As pressure on ISIS builds—particularly in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and Raqqa, the Syrian city that has become the self-proclaimed caliphate’s de facto capital—its calls for attacks will intensify. Given a widespread willingness—from San Bernardino to Nice—to heed those calls, the results could be devastating.

Of course, ISIS does not rely entirely on inspiration. It also recruits skilled combatants from just about anywhere—including Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Jordan, Turkey, France, Belgium, and Britain—whom it then sends to launch spectacular operations, such as those in Istanbul, Brussels, and Paris. There are credible reports that ISIS has even established an external branch responsible for plotting terrorist operations abroad.

If Mosul and Raqqa fall in the coming year, as seems likely, thousands of surviving ISIS combatants will return to their home countries, where they are likely to continue waging their war with terror attacks. As a result, the coming year is bound to be at least as bloody as the last one.

Who will bear the brunt of ISIS’s desperation? The US tops the list of ISIS’s enemies. But dispatching fighters there from the Middle East poses a logistical challenge. And there are only about 100 Americans fighting with ISIS, meaning that, in the US, inspiration is ISIS’s main tactic.

European and Muslim countries are much more convenient targets, and not only in geographic terms. Most ISIS fighters are from the Arab world, and 4,000 European men and women have joined the group.

Of the European countries, France, which has assumed a leadership role in the fight against ISIS, is the most vulnerable. It has already suffered more casualties than all of its neighbors together, with 235 people killed in the last 18 months.

One reason for this is that the sense of exclusion and alienation felt by a large segment of France’s Muslim community has made it easier for ISIS to recruit in the country. Some 1,200 French nationals have joined as fighters—the largest contingent of Westerners in the group. Add to that serious gaps in France’s domestic security arrangements, and the odds of further attacks appear high.

But as much as ISIS wants to hurt the West, the countries of the Middle East—especially the Shia regimes of Iraq and Syria, plus their Iranian ally—remain its prime target. After all, ISIS’s effort to build a caliphate requires it to control territory. The struggle against America, Europe, and even Israel must be deferred until a Sunni Islamic state is built in the heart of Arabia.

Given this, it is crucial that the security threat posed by terror attacks does not overshadow, particularly for Western leaders, the imperative of dismantling ISIS’s pseudo-state in Iraq and Syria. But even when that task is finished, ISIS will still wield its ideology as a weapon to attract fighters to engage in guerrilla warfare in Iraq and Syria, and in terrorism abroad.

That is why it is also necessary to cut off the social and ideological oxygen that has nourished ISIS’s spectacular rise. This means addressing the Middle East’s broken politics, including both its causes (such as the geostrategic rivalry between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran) and its symptoms (including the civil wars spreading through the Arabian heartland). Only then can the Arab-Islamic world and the international community defeat ISIS and others like them.