Strategic Studies Summit in partnership with ORSAM-NESA

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The 2016 Strategic Studies Summit was held in Ankara, Turkey, from 31 March to 03 April 2016 in partnership with Near East South Asia (NESA) Center for Strategic Studies and the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), with the support of Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry’s External Relations Department.

The Strategic Studies Network (SSN) is a partnership of institutions conducting interdisciplinary studies of politics, natural resources, economics, diplomacy, and military power. SSN is one of the largest network of research centers in the world which includes around 80 different organizations across more than 30 countries from North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Far East. The goal of the SSN is to encourage the organizationstocarry out policy-relevant research. In order to reach this goal, SSN tries to build an environment of frank and informed dialogue among the organizations and to develop regional solutions to regional problems.

Each year, The Summit meetings bring together SSN members. SSN Summit meetings provide opportunity to form concrete relations and cooperation among research centers, to enable communication among different countries, and to discuss current political, strategic and economic issues from around the world through different perspectives of experts specialized in their field.  This year’s Summit brought together 133 participants from 77 different organizations across 35 countries. Entitled “The NESA Region 2020”, the Summit focused on identifying the security concerns in the NESA region and analyzing strategic changes that will shape the future of the region. Over the course of two days, the SSN members were divided into working groups with different titles and discussed the issues in-depth. The Summit explored different approaches through the participation of the experts and each country had the opportunity to express their own experiences.

The Summit began with the opening remarks from the NESA Academic Dean, Dr. Roger Kangas, and the ORSAM Director, Dr. Saban Kardas.All researchers participated in the opening plenary and Amb. Altay Cengizer, Director General for Policy Planning, Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Turkey, presented his thoughts on Turkish foreign policy and U.S.—Turkish relations.In the days following the opening sessions, the participants took their places in the groups that were predetermined and made presentations in different rooms and discussed regional developments. Here are the groups of this year’s Summit: North Africa, Near East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and The Gulf. Four plenary sessions were held in total, including the opening session. The sessions focused on “Refugees and Migration Trends”, “ISIS and Radicalism in the NESA region”, and “Emerging Economic Landscape in the NESA Region”.

2016 SSN Summit came to a conclusion in a final plenary session where the head of each working group summarized the issues they addressed and the conclusions they reached. Each group will prepare a final written text based on their conclusions and these texts will be published for the attention of public opinion and the decision makers.