Turkey’s digital surveillance policy has been shaped by five events: the 2013 Gezi protests, the leakage of wiretapped government conversations (the “17-25 December incident”), the country’s growing involvement in the Syrian Civil War and the subsequent refugee influx, successive terrorist attacks through 2015-16, and the failed coup attempt in July 2016.

On June 21 and 22, 2018, Oxford University’s Centre for Technology and Global Affairs hosted the First “Robotic Skies” Workshop: The Role of the Private Sector and Public Policy in Shaping the Drones Industry in Rhodes House, Oxford. 

Can moments of viral media activity transform into enduring activist movements? The killing of Cecil the lion by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015 attracted global attention and generated enduring conservation activism in the form of monetary donations to the research unit that was studying him (WildCRU). Utilizing a longitudinal survey design, we found that intensely dysphoric reactions to Cecil's death triggered especially strong social cohesion (i.e., “identity fusion”) amongst donors. Over a 6-month period, identity fusion to WildCRU increased amongst donors.

Lucas Kello's chapter on “Cyber Security: Gridlock and Innovation”  has been published in David Held and Thomas Hale, eds., Beyond Gridlock (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

Could offensive cyber operations provide strategic value? If so, how and under what conditions? While a growing number of states are said to be interested in developing offensive cyber capabilities, there is a sense that state leaders and policy makers still do not have a strong conception of its strategic advantages and limitations.

In the issue, Prof Fawcett brings together 15 articles published between 1926 and 2017 which provide an insight into the key political events affecting the region.