Daniel Gerlach
Daniel Gerlach (born 1977) is a German author, journalist, publisher and Middle East expert. He is the current editor-in-chief of the German Middle East quarterly magazine zenith and director-general of the Candid Foundation. Career Gerlach studied history and Middle Eastern studies. He holds a licence degree from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne and an M.A. from the University of Hamburg. In 1999 Gerlach co-founded and co-directed zenith Magazine. In 2012 he assumed the position of the magazine's editor in chief. Previously, he wrote as a freelance journalist for daily newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt and worked as a documentary filmmaker for national German television ZDF, mainly focusing on history and present of the Arab world. In 2014 he co-founded Candid Foundation, a privately chartered, independent think tank which devotes itself to international and intercultural cooperation and implements media and technology driven projects with countries of the Mediterranean, Middle East, West Asia and the Caucasus. Among his co-founders were the political scientist Asiem El Difraoui, social entrepreneur Belabbes Benkredda, and the photographer and documentary film director Marcel Mettelsiefen. Gerlach is a frequent guest expert with German and international news broadcasters where he comments on Syria, Iraq, the Arab world and European-Arab relations. He has spoken at international universities such as King's College, Yale, and Princeton, and think tanks and governmental institutions such as the European External Action Service. In 2016 Gerlach gave the eulogy for the Syrian-French poet Adunis, laureate of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize of the city of Osnabrück. The prize had stirred controversy from Syrian opposition members who accused Adunis of not having condemned the Syrian government unequivocally for its repressive demeanour. In 2017 German and international media reported that Gerlach's name had appeared on a travel ban list of Syrian state security. According to German news anchor Claus Kleber, Gerlach is a "leading expert" on the Middle East in Germany. Gerlach is a frequent contributor to German language media outlets, including Deutsche Welle, Deutschlandfunk, Welt, ZDF, Tagesschau, Der Spiegel Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Luzerner Zeitung, and SRF. Gerlach has also featured in several international publications, including The New York Times. Positions In his book about the Syrian government and the sectarian element of the armed conflict, Gerlach makes reference to the method of French sociologist Michel Seurat. He argues that the essential core of Syrian government was not simply a group of people around the Assad family, but a distinct logic of thinking and behaviour, an ideology described as implicitly sectarian. In 2014, Gerlach suggested that an international diplomatic initiative of Western countries should engage Russia and oblige it to assume the role of a protective force for parts of Syria in order to untangle the interests of international stakeholders and to prevent unilateral action. In an article published simultaneously in English, German, and Russian in 2017, Gerlach suggested that Saudi Arabia, a regional power that officially supported armed insurgents in Syria, had secretly endorsed or even "encouraged" the