Birol Başkan is non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of several books, including Turkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East and From Religious Empires to Secular States: State Secularization in Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Ömer Taşpınar is Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam is Not the Problem.