2023
One of the most ambitious stories that Foreign Policy published this year was a profile of a Palestinian official in the West Bank, Hussein al-Sheikh, who clearly has ambitions to become the next Palestinian president. It ran in July, months before the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the bloodiest war between the two sides in their troubled history. But the story of Sheikh was also the story of the war to come: a chronicle of repression, corruption, and spasms of horrific violence.
Political profiles are meant to elucidate powerful figures. The good ones do more than that. They place the figures in a broader context, then explore what their idiosyncrasies might mean for the people around them—and why it matters. Profiles published in Foreign Policy in the past year focused mainly on people vying for power or working for change. Here are five profiles worth revisiting.
1. The Palestinian Leader Who Survived the Death of Palestine
by Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman, July 31
Hussein al-Sheikh is a member of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and its main liaison with Israel. The position has allowed him, on occasion, to make the Israeli occupation more tenable for some Palestinians. It has also helped entrench the occupation, now in its seventh decade, and turn his own people against him.
Like many Palestinian leaders, Sheikh spent years in Israeli prisons. He entered politics during the era of the Oslo peace agreements in the 1990s—but eventually became tainted by the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. As Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns 88, Sheikh seems to be aiming to replace him.
2. Is Selcuk Bayraktar Turkey’s Crown Prince-in-Waiting?
by Halil Karaveli, Oct. 5
Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the past two decades, Turkey has become a bulwark of religious conservatism. But in order for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to outlive him, it must appeal to a broader base that includes secular nationalists.
Which is why Selcuk Bayraktar is increasingly seen as the future of the AKP. He has no real experience in politics or diplomacy. But Bayraktar runs the Turkish aerospace group Baykar and is the chief purveyor of a political philosophy that is gaining ground in the country—techno-nationalism. He also happens to be married to Erdogan’s daughter.
3. Can Avinash Persaud Convince Capitalists to Embrace Green Growth?
by Lee Harris, June 17
Avinash Persaud was a banker with J.P. Morgan who drove a flashy Ferrari and believed that economic development was a moral imperative. That is, until one day when he quit his job, went to work as a climate envoy for the prime minister of Barbados, and bought a G-Wizz, an electric car so small that it’s not allowed on the highway.
In his new role, Persaud is trying to fix a lopsided global financial system—to help poor countries industrialize without destroying the planet. And, no, he’s not nagging anyone to shut off coal.
Igor Girkin sits inside a glass defendant’s cage during a hearing to consider a request on his pretrial arrest in Moscow on July 21. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AFP via Getty Images
4. Putin’s Paranoia Has Turned on Russia’s Far Right
by Kristaps Andrejsons, July 25
Igor Girkin was the kind of guy that Russian President Vladimir Putin could count on to do his dirty work. A former colonel in the Federal Security Service, Girkin served as commander of the so-called separatist forces in the Ukrainian Donbas region in 2014. He forced the Crimean parliament at gunpoint to hold an independence referendum that year, allowing Russia to annex the peninsula. And he gave the order for troops to fire on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing all 298 people on board.
But since criticizing the military’s handling of the war in Ukraine, Girkin has become one of Putin’s domestic enemies. His arrest earlier this year for inciting people to commit “extremist activities” signaled a broadening of Putin’s repression. Domestic enemies were usually confined to pro-democracy liberals, such as Alexei Navalny. But the coup attempt by the Wagner Group in June prompted the Russian leader to view far-right figures as a threat as well.
5. ‘We Don’t Want to Lose Our Second Motherland’
by Luke Johnson, Sept. 30
When Russia’s war on Ukraine finally ends, rebuilding the country will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and require project management on a massive scale. Ukraine already has a government agency dedicated to the task and a reconstruction czar to oversee it: Mustafa Nayyem.
Nayyem was a Ukrainian anti-corruption journalist, an activist, and a reformist lawmaker before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. His family immigrated in the 1980s from Afghanistan, where Russian soldiers had also ravaged the country. In Ukraine’s case, the international community has already pledged tens of billions of dollars for reconstruction. “When there is big money, there are big risks,” Nayyem told Foreign Policy, referring the potential for corruption.