Decisions made behind closed doors – a weekly news review

We see the staged handshakes in front of national flags, and read the official communiqués, but the life and death deals made behind closed doors we can only guess at. What was negotiated between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? How have the dynamics been impacted by the war in Ukraine? And what possibilities may have been opened for cooperation between Erdoğan and Bashar al-Assad? Circumstances have conspired to ensure that both Putin and Erdoğan have a lot to offer the other, and both are practised at driving a bargain. International negotiation is always about self-interest, and in this case that didn’t even need to be dressed up in the hypocritical language of liberal democracy.