 So, last but not least, we have Mr. Mdukar Kulukshu, who is the founding president of the Global Relations Forum, founding partner of Kanunum, chairman of the Croton Consultancy and a founder of a university and also a graduate of course six and course 14 at MIT. We have the floor. Thank you very much, Ambassador. Let me start, like everyone else, by thanking the organizers and Thierry de Montréal for really being persistent about this conference and making this happen. It's a very personal thing. I really, truly had missed being with friends, making new friends, the exchanges at dinners. This was fabulous. So thank you from the bottom of my heart that this was very much appreciated. It is, I mean, when I looked at the program, I liked the seeing the Middle East on the third day, although a very extended Middle East emphasis, still it's the third day. To me, that signified the Middle East crisis, the pressing nature of Middle East has been pushed back. The world has bigger fish to fry these days. That's always good. I mean, I felt comfortable with that choice. Usually, when we talk about the Middle East, myself included, we end up on a downbeat note. I remember the pre-COVID, my last presentation, was in Singapore on the Middle East, and I was going on about how the Asian miracle, economic miracle, was not applicable to the Middle East. That the Middle East is in a deadlock. It's not going to happen. So there's always this negative sentiment, negative analysis. When after the experience of COVID, when we start post-COVID with again the Middle East, I thought I really don't want to start with a negative message. So what I did, sort of with a clean palette, I wanted to look at the news headings about the Middle East for the last 12 months. I just literally went through them, read quite a bit, just the clippings. And I think there is something in the air. I mean, you look at the list, Libya in a much better position, where hopefully we'll have elections there. The IS and related radical terror seems to be under control. The Abraham Accords are historic. The Saudi-Iranian communication going on in Baghdad in Iraq, not Baghdad in Iraq, is critically important. Intra GCC rapprochement is very good. And then the Turkish UAE, Egypt, throwing, let's say, because we just heard the minister, it's going very slowly, but nevertheless, there is throwing. So you put all those together and there seems to be something in the air. Either it is my post-COVID or, you know, still we are in it, but coming to the end, they might deep desire to see something positive or there is something substantive. Then I came across Vitaly Nounkin's paper on the possibility of a third renaissance for the region, and I was further encouraged. So maybe there is something in the air. My usual analysis for the region is more or less like an unsoldable puzzle. The whole region, obviously, unfortunately rests on centuries-old rifts, fault lines, ethnic, sectarian, religious, and it's all over the place. It is at the sub-state level, state level, sub-regional level, regional, region-wide. It is just a fragmented, ethnically sectarian, fragmented community, fragmented geography. That's what it is. And when you start with that, my basic analysis, I won't go into the details of that, that makes it open to external power politics because you can play sides based on your interests, very vulnerable. Domestically, it opens the way for sectarian politics, sectarian government, and that creates state capture and that creates ineffective governments. So when you put external meddling plus ineffective governments, then international capital doesn't feel comfortable enough to flow here. So economically, you don't get much. So what you have, the economics of it, domestic politics and international politics, create a vicious deadlock and it is stuck in a bad equilibrium. And it's such a puzzle that you have to solve all three at the same time, it seems, because it's not a linear problem, it's a complex, nonlinear problem, and there is no way of saying, okay, if I start here, I can just follow the whole thing and the whole thing will move to a better state. And that, of course, is a very bad, sort of very upsetting, downbeat analysis. On top of it, because of all the grievances that the populations have lived through, there was, and there probably still is some, impatience in the public about the solution. So you have a puzzle in your hand which requires multi, you have to solve three things at the same time or more, and you are under time pressure coming from the public. So it seems very difficult. But, again, said, starting from data of the last 12 months, there is something in the air. I did go back and try to reformulate my model to see how else we can think about this, the whole system. And what I think is happening, or at least what I will test over the coming months, is possibly this puzzle in our hands has been exposed to systemic shocks. Basically, we've shaken the puzzle and the pieces have changed place and they have been aligned in different ways. So it wasn't, I mean, we can necessarily solve it again linearly, but it is a different puzzle. It looks different. What were those shocks? I mean, we can just go through that. There is, obviously, we lived, everybody lived through COVID. So it's an across-the-board systemic shock. There is the debt accumulation on more or less every nation which conditions what is to come. There is the history, the memory, the tragic memory of Libya, Syria in our minds. There is the prospect of climate for all of us. So these are all systemic risks that we'll have to deal with. And I think these, sorry, systemic effects, systemic shocks to the system, I think these systemic shocks impact both the internal dynamics and the external dynamics, potentially in a positive way. Internally, I think what probably we will observe and we are observing, the societies of the region are, because we have been, you know, we've been all searching for the argument of win-win arguments in our societies, in these societies, rather than zero sum. I think these shocks have shown us not the win-win, the benefits of win-win, but the costs of lose-lose. So when you see that if you do not have an effective governance structure, you end up with a lose-lose scenario, the opposite of lose-lose is working together for a win-win structure. So I think it's in a rather perverse way. These shocks have indicated the possibility of a win-win path for the region. Two, I think sense of time has changed. The impatient publics may have more understanding for well-meaning governments. And I think there has been a drop to the governments themselves. And I think in the UAE we've been hearing from our hosts about how effectively the UAE has been managing these crises. So this is internally. Now externally, I'll go very fast. When I look at the external meddling and the potential for changes in that dynamic, I think, yes, we will have big-power rivalry, but this is in the region, it is penny-pinching, low-cost rivalry, because there is the debt problem. And every big-power is also concerned with its own issues, domestic issues. So there isn't all that much money from anyone to meddle in this region. So that I think is important. Then there is the tech competition and climate issue, bigger fish to fry. So the Middle East takes a backseat, a reprioritization downwards. There is talk of end-of-fossil fuel, which could again be a positive effect. But I think not so fast. I think this region still has a few decades to go with fossil fuels. But I think the technology competition controlling microchips and the precision equipment for microchips is a much more surgical way to compete rather than unsettling the whole energy system globally. So I think we will not see much of that. And then there is, of course, the subsiding terror. So all those effects, I think, cut across the big powers and suggest that we may be in for a period where there won't be as much meddling. What are the exceptions and sort of issues to watch? U.S., I think the Iranian issue, Mr. Eisenstadt has outlined it, the Iranian issue is an open wound and that can unsettle this whole thing. From the Russian perspective, I think Russia has become a stakeholder in the region and Russia wants stability in the region. I agree with Vitaliy Namkin. But I think there is always the risk of linking the Ukraine problem with the Middle East as was experienced before. I hope that doesn't happen. With China, we heard Mr. Rudd, I mean China is still sort of trying to change the balance. If China uses this region as an element in that shift of balance, that is something to watch out for. And in the EU, I mean I think EU as in totality doesn't sort of is not a very active actor, but the nation states are. And I see France and Mr. Macron in the region quite frequently, which is again very positive. As long as the nation states of Europe are conciliatory powers, I think that will be helpful, but there is a lot of baggage. So one needs to do it with care. Finally, just a few words on Turkey. Now, I'm not a diplomat, but I spent the best part of COVID lockdowns with two former undersecretaries to go to the depths of Turkish foreign policy, the philosophy of Turkish foreign policy. When the nation was established in 1923, it was very clear. Strategically, it was a nation building process. And it was very clear strategically that the nation needed to have peace with its neighbors and beyond so that we could focus on internal matters. And that is a cardinal rule that has been ingrained into the philosophy of the Republic for a long, long period. I mean, some of these basic tenets that come from Attaturk himself and where I think in the custody of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was do not meddle in the affairs of other nations. Be equidistant to Middle Eastern conflicts and affairs. That's very critical. That's really a cardinal rule again. And going beyond, don't give advice to anyone if they don't seek your advice. So these are fundamentals of Turkish foreign policy. How come, of course, I mean, many of you will think the Turkish foreign policy lately has been on a more activist strain, arguably. The possibility, the argument, the discussion we have back at home is two things are drawing us into the region. One, the PKK, YPG terror. This is very close to heart. And the second one is the refugee problem. Those two problems, could we handle them the last ten years with this dispassionate equidistance approach or did we have to make an exception, an aberration in our policy? That discussion is still going on. I don't know the answer. I think historically we'll look back and see which way it is. But the bottom line is, I think it is in the interest of Turkey. It is in the interest of the region. It is in the interest of the world for Turkey to be at equidistant from Middle Eastern conflicts. And to do that, we need to find fast solutions to the refugee problem and the YPG terror coming from the region. Once those two are resolved, I think Turkey will go back to it is traditional foreign policy philosophy of being equidistant from the region and contributing to a more positive regional future. So with that, I think there is something in the air. I don't know if this is the turning point, but I think there is a possibility. This is a new puzzle. Dialogues like this, conferences like this, this is where we have the opportunity to think about the new puzzle and hopefully put the pieces together. Thank you very much. What you mentioned about the onset of the Turkish Republic actually echoes very much with us in Iraq. We were engaged in an existential battle. And now we are engaged in a reconstruction process. The really interesting thing about the politics of Iraq right now and you've put your finger on an important point of tensions between communities. If you look at the political landscape in Iraq, the tensions or conflicts are not between communities. They're within political groupings within communities. And so the really interesting thing that I take out of this is that it is very possible, in fact, probable that we will have cross-cutting alliances that represent politics as it should be within a national framework. And with this I think we're actually quite optimistic looking to the elections I alluded to at the beginning of my intervention.