Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm me and Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and

issues in the news. We'll begin with massive demonstrations across Turkey in response to

Erdogan's jailing of the opposition leader, which it appears Trump greenlighted, and his

co-president Musk is playing an active role in helping Turkey's autocrat and kleptocrat

brutally suppress the demonstrators

by removing opposition content on his platform X. Joining us at David Phillips, professor at the

School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at Oxford University,

and a former director of the Peace Building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University.

A former senior advisor and foreign affairs expert to the United States Department of State

during the administrations of presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama,

he chaired the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission and the Track 2 program in Turkey and the Caucasus.

And his books include Unsalancing the Past, Diplomatic History, The Turkey-Armenian Protocols.

Then we'll examine the strategy behind Netanyahu's resumption of his war on Gaza as the death toll

there passes 50,000, half of whom are women and children.

Joining us is Asha Kaufman, director of the Crock Institute for International Peace Studies

and a professor of history and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Prior to that, he taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

and Kauffman is the author of Contested Frontiers, Cartography, Sovereignty, and the

conflict at the Syria-Lebanon-Israel-tribota region. And we'll discuss these article at the

conversation, The Gaza Ceasefire is dead, Israeli domestic politics killed it. Then finally

we'll speak with Olga Loutman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for

...