The article looked at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "increasingly authoritarian" rule and alleged establishment of a private militia network made up of fighters from the Syrian civil war.
It was, apparently, the result of joint research with an independent think tank called Trends, based in Abu Dhabi, reported by Middle East Monitor.
"Their [private Syrian militias'] role is to advance [Erdogan's] grand plan of re-establishing influence over a region roughly ov erlapping the former Ottoman Empire, from the Palestinian territories to Syria and the Caucasus to as far away as Kashmir, according to some reports," wrote Yanarocak and Spyer. "These proxies provide the Turkish president with a large pool of available, organised, trained, easily deployed and easily disposable foreign manpower as a tool of power projection, which can be used with a degree of plausible deniability."
They added that the West must pressure Erdogan to end such "nefarious" practices. "This needs to end. Militias, terror groups and extremism are all elements that the Middle East must outgrow if it is to achieve stability and reconstruction," they insisted.
Although Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common enemy in Iran, Riyadh has so far declined to normalise ties with Israeli regime, saying that Palestinian statehood goals should be addressed first.
Source: Qods News Agency