On Wednesday, 19 March, Turkey awoke to the news of a major round of arrests targeting opposition figures. Around a hundred politicians, journalists and academics were arrested, including Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. The latter is Erdoğan’s greatest adversary. He was planning to stand in the upcoming presidential elections.

Throughout Tuesday 18 March, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) launched barrages of bombs upon the people of Gaza, shattering the fragile ceasefire with a rain of death and destruction. Over 400 Palestinians were killed and more than 600 injured in the strikes, making it the single bloodiest day of Israel’s genocide since late 2023.

Since December, when the Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept to power in Damascus, European diplomats and Arab leaders have been meeting the now besuited ex-ISIS, ex-Al Qaeda commander al-Jolani in order to launder the new regime’s image, with the help of the press. Now we see the real face of their friends in Damascus. Since Friday, fighters loyal to the al-Jolani regime have swept through coastal villages, towns and cities, carrying out a pogrom that has left over 1,200 Alawite civilians dead so far; men, women and children killed for being Alawites.

The Palestinian issue has reignited Egyptian politics. Since Trump proposed the plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, it has become the main preoccupation of the Egyptian public and the most important topic of conversation, in café discussions among friends, on social media, in the workplaces and at school.

Late on 4 February, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump proposed that the US should take over Gaza and force the whole of its population (2 million Palestinians) to relocate to other “plots of land” (in Jordan and Egypt) so that the area could be rebuilt as an international enclave, which he described would be “like the Riviera of the Middle East”.

Recent reports into NEOM – an impossibly ambitious series of megaprojects being constructed by the Saudi Arabian monarchy in the desert – have revealed the slave-like conditions of the workers, which have already led to 20,000 deaths.

The guns have fallen silent in Gaza, for now. After fifteen months, a ceasefire agreement has brought a pause to the relentless genocidal killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the near total destruction of the Palestinian enclave by the state of Israel.

Defined by political crises all over the world, spiralling tensions between the imperialist powers, and revolutions in Bangladesh and Kenya, 2024 was an historic year in the crisis of the capitalist system. But now, with Trump days away from power, Ukraine headed unavoidably towards a humiliating and bloody defeat, and with no end in sight to the complete destabilisation of the Middle East, this new year looks to be even more explosive.

Over the last few weeks, the Turkish-backed offensive by Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has managed to topple the Assad regime. In the western media this has been generally celebrated. One thing that has not been reported on, however, is the simultaneous Turkish advance into a part of the Kurdish Autonomous Area in North Eastern Syria (AANES), more commonly known as Rojava.

The Syrian regime has collapsed. Bashar al-Assad has fled the country. His army has disarmed, and his government has capitulated. The prisons have been overrun, and thousands have been released. Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in celebration. 

In yet another sudden and sharp event, highly characteristic of the period of history we are living through, a surprise offensive by Syrian Islamist militants is fast unravelling Syria. Israel’s western-backed wars against Gaza and Lebanon have upended the fragile equilibrium in the Middle East and pulled a thread that has begun unwinding the fabric of the region.

After four years of relative stasis, the Syrian civil war was reignited this week by a sudden rebel offensive on Aleppo. In order to answer the questions this raises from a Marxist perspective, we are republishing this reading guide.

This week has been full of sharp and sudden turns. The Syrian civil war has suddenly reignited due to the shock advance of a Turkey-backed rebel group. The French prime minister was forced to resign after trying to force through an austerity budget. Joe Biden has used his last few weeks in power to pardon his corrupt son. And, to top things off, the president of South Korea declared martial law, only to be quickly defeated by opposition from the whole of parliament and mass mobilisations. 

85,000 students went on strike last week against Israel’s ongoing slaughter in Gaza. This was the largest student strike over international solidarity that Canada has ever seen.

This week, the Middle East has once again dominated the news, with the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as the announcement of a supposedly ‘lasting’ ceasefire in Lebanon. In Europe, meanwhile, explosive events are being prepared in France, as the tottering National Assembly is set to face off against a rising tide of class struggle.