For a generation, the issue of the Armenian Genocide has played a role in U.S. domestic politics and has overshadowed U.S.-Turkish relations. On April 24 this year, competing centennial ceremonies in Yerevan of the 1915 Genocide, and in Turkey of the Battle of Gallipoli, will once again highlight the issue on the global stage.

As Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad clings to power, proxy battles among neighboring countries are helping determine which armed factions will emerge victorious from the rubble.

Turkey’s Kurdish question is that country’s single most important problem. It is and has always been a political problem. Successive Turkish governments have sought to resolve it either through repressive military and occasionally economic means.