Page:Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community Unclassified 2016.pdf/25

 remains culturally and administratively divided, weighed down by a barely functional and inefficient bureaucracy. The country, one of Europe's poorest, has endured negative GDP growth since the 2008 international financial crisis and is reliant on the support of international institutions including the IMF. Youth unemployment, estimated at 60 percent, is the world's highest.

Kosovo has made progress toward full, multiethnic democracy, although tensions between Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs remain. In Macedonia, an ongoing political crisis and concerns about radicalization among ethnic Albanian Muslims threatens to aggravate already-tense relations between ethnic majority Macedonians and the country’s minority Albanians, fifteen years after a violent interethnic conflict between the two groups ended. Social tensions in the region might also be exacerbated if the Western Balkans becomes an unwilling host to significant migrant populations. {{c|

Turkey
}} Turkey remains a partner in countering ISIL and minimizing foreign fighter flows. Ankara will continue to see the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as its number one security threat and will maintain military and political pressure on the PKK, as well as on the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed affiliate People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey equates with the PKK. Turkey is extremely concerned about the increasing influence of the PYD and the YPG along its borders, seeing them as a threat to its territorial security and its efforts to control Kurdish separatism within its borders.

Turkey is concerned about Russia’s involvement in the region in support of Asad, the removal of whom Turkey sees as essential to any peace settlement. Turkey is also wary of increased Russian cooperation with the Kurds and greater Russian influence in the region that could counter Turkey’s leadership role. The Russian-Iranian partnership and Iran’s attempts to expand Shiite influence in the region are also security concerns for Turkey.

The refugee flow puts significant strain on Turkey’s economy, which has amounted to $9 billion according to a statement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Refugees have also created infrastructure and social strains, particularly regarding access to education and employment. Turkey tightened its borders in 2015 and is working to stanch the flow of migrants to Europe and address refugee needs. {{c|

Iraq
}} In Iraq, anti-ISIL forces will probably make incremental battlefield gains through spring 2016. Shia militias and Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have recaptured Bayji and Sinjar, respectively, from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In western Iraq, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have retaken most of the greater Ramadi area from ISIL and will probably clear ISIL fighters from the city’s urban core in the coming month.

ISIL’s governance of areas it controls is probably faltering as airstrikes take a toll on the group’s sources of income, hurting ISIL’s ability to provide services, and causing economic opportunities for the population