Katherine Wilkens is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Katherine Wilkens was a nonresident associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment. She joined Carnegie after five years as a vice president of AMIDEAST, an American nonprofit organization engaged in education, training, and capacity building in the Middle East and North Africa, where she was engaged in promoting higher-education initiatives in the Middle East and partnerships between the United States and the region to expand educational quality and entrepreneurship training.
She served as president of the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC, from 2004 to 2007, where she spearheaded regional educational initiatives to enhance student and citizen education on foreign policy issues. Prior to that, Wilkens held senior positions in the U.S. government for over a decade, including as senior adviser for Caspian energy issues at the U.S. Department of Energy and staff director and professional staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East under the leadership of then chairman Lee H. Hamilton.
Wilkens began her career as a State Department analyst and specialist on Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean. She has been an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Presidential Management Fellow, and a member of the Board of Directors of Meridian International Center.
She has written and published on a wide range of issues, including Turkey, the Kurdish issue, U.S. policy in the Balkans, and higher-education reform in the Arab world.
Six months since the creation of the international coalition against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), the military campaign is entering a new phase following the gruesome murder of a Jordanian pilot and the defeat of IS in Kobane last month.
The steady decline of global oil prices since June 2014 is shifting economic, political, and strategic calculations of key Middle East actors, and adding a new element of uncertainty at a time of increased regional conflict and polarization.
Carnegie scholars assess the Middle East in the year ahead, including potential game changers that could have a big impact for the future of the region.
The outcome of the battle for Kobane will have significant implications for the fight against the Islamic State and developments in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq moving forward.
The growing strength and influence of ISIS is rooted in a deep-seated regional disagreement over the nature of the threat posed by jihadist extremists. Until the fight against ISIS is decoupled from the sectarian fires engulfing the region, efforts to make progress against the group will flounder.
The recent popular uprisings in the Arab world sought to dismantle authoritarian political regimes and address profound societal inequities. However, they also triggered fundamental questions about the relationship between citizens and the state, as well as the rights and obligations of citizenship.
Throughout the Middle East, the overthrow of Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi has heightened Islamist-secularist tensions and pushed actors toward zero-sum politics.
Turkey’s political landscape has been shaken by developments at home and in the region over the last six months, shifting the country’s democratic path onto a new course.
The battle for al-Yarubiya, a border crossing point along the Syrian-Iraqi border, is an extension of the broader regional battle for control of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon by jihadists.
Furthering the cause of democracy in the Middle East requires realistic, pragmatic U.S. leadership to encourage reform and promote the development of civil society in the region.
