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Turkey Arming, Training Syria Rebels - Michael Weiss, Telegraph Blogs

The weekend before last I was in Hatay province, in southern Turkey, interviewing Syrian rebels and activists, who all complained of the lack of foreign assistance in toppling th...

Saudi Arabia & Turkey: Frenemies - Meliha Altunisik, Foreign Affairs

Last month, Saudi Arabia rolled out the red carpet for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The visit was yet another example of the degree to which relations between the t...

Building a New Future for Turkey - Albright & Hadley, The Great Debate

The crisis in Syria and the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program have highlighted the renewed importance of one of the oldest and most enduring relationships of the U...

One in Five Turkish Generals in Prison - Michael Rubin, Contentions

The Turkish press is reporting that, with the latest round of arrests of former military officers for allegedly forcing the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist governme...

Can Islamists Be Liberals? - Mustafa Akyol, New York Times

For those concerned about extremism in the Middle East, this is good news. It was the exclusion and suppression of Islamists by secular tyrants that originally bred extremism. (Aym...

Erdogan Tightens His Grip in Turkey - Andrew Finkel, Latitude

Is Turkey’s prime minister past his expiration date? At first glance, the question sounds absurd. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has led his Justice and Development Party, known as the...

Turkey-U.S. Ties in a Post-Alliance World - Gokhan Bacik, Today's Zaman

The foreign policies of states are less consistent nowadays. In the past, alliance formation among states occurred on the basis of very precisely defined common interests. A typica...

Why Is Turkey Doing So Little in Syria? - Omer Taspinar, Today's Zaman

What are the driving factors of Turkey's Syria policy? The same question could be asked by focusing on why Turkey is so cautious and reluctant to take unilateral military action in...

Turkey & Iran Forging Closer Economic Ties - Crown Center

As the tenth anniversary of the landmark visit by then Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to Iran approaches, Prof. Nader Habibi analyses the evolution of Turkish-Iranian relatio...

The Cyprus Farce - Amanda Paul, Today's Zaman

As was expected, the latest round of talks aimed at reunifying Cyprus after almost 40 years has come unstuck....

Turkey Has Reasons to Fear Arab Spring - Ersin Kalaycioglu, Bitter Lemons

When the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid led to an avalanche of protests in Tunisia in January 2011, nearly the entire Arab world began to rock with popular upri...

NATO Options for Syria - Beril Dedeoglu, Today's Zaman

There is theoretically a cease-fire in Syria; nevertheless, we have had no signs that, on the ground, the fighting has actually stopped. The Bashar al-Assad regime has allowed inte...

The Rise of the Turkish Superpower - Nicholas Burns, Boston Globe

During the past decade, Turkey has become the rising power in Europe, arguably the world’s most influential Muslim country and a dynamic inspiration for young Arab reformers....

Advance U.S.-Turkey Ties With Missile Defense - Heritage Foundation

This year, Turkey celebrates its 60th anniversary as a member of the NATO alliance. As a Muslim-majority country with close ties to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Turkey’...

Syria Faces Neo-Mujahedeen Struggle - Victor Kotsev, Asia Times

If a regime such as Syria's is too strong militarily to be defeated from the outside, it can be torn apart from the inside - such as a foreign-sponsored insurgency that has been te...

Ataturk Font a Sensation in Turkey - Vanessa Larson, Your Middle East

Ever-present in modern life, typefaces have sparked lawsuits, influenced business decisions and even inspired films and books. In Turkey, a typeface has now become a political ...

Turkey's Kurdish Predicament - Omer Taspinar, Today's Zaman

What Turkish nationalists fail to understand is that to millions of Turkish Kurds, the PKK and Öcalan are heroic symbols of rejection of decades of forced assimilation under t...

Turkey and China's Awkward Diplomacy - Peter Lee, Asia Times

If there was a message from China to visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month, it was that Beijing doesn't need his leadership in the Middle East. Instead of...

Assad Is an Arab Problem - Not America's - Buck Sexton, National Review

In a region that generally soaked itself in post-colonial pity until the Arab Spring, a unique opportunity presents itself for Muslims to take the reins and free an oppressed Sun...

Meet the Smugglers on the Syrian Border - Erin Banco & Sophia Jones, TNR

As violence has intensified in Syria, the human smuggling business has boomed - in both directions. Syrian civilians employ smugglers in hopes of getting out of harms way, while ...

Triumphalist Turkey Can't Go It Alone - David Gardner, Financial Times

One of the most remarkable success stories of the past decade, the emergence of Turkey as a vibrant democracy and dynamic economy under the Muslim equivalent of Christian Democra...

How Iran, Turkey See Each Other - Cagaptay & Vatanka, Hurriyet

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is visiting Riyadh on Friday. The Syrian crisis will dominate the agenda in Riyadh, and Iran will scrutinize every statement made by Erd...

Syria's Border Blackmail May Backfire - Michael Young, Daily Star

Pity Ali Shaaban for the hypocrisy that surrounded the reactions to his death. From Hezbollah we heard that the cameraman’s killers had to be punished, even though the party has ...

What's Going on at Turkey-Syria Border? - Pepe Escobar, Asia Times

There is a video [1] that could be loosely translated as "Terrorist Turkish border opening fire on the Syrian side" that pretty accurately sums up what's going on at the ultra-...

Turkey's Neo-Ottoman Game Plan - Timothy Garton Ash, Globe and Mail

The day I arrived in Istanbul, they buried the last Ottoman. Her Imperial Highness Fatma Neslisah Sultan had been born in a royal palace overlooking the Bosphorus when her grandfat...

Ten Things You Don't Know About Turkey - Andrew Finkel, Foreign Policy

No walls fell in Turkey at the end of the Cold War; there was no color-coded revolution. Yet, arguably, the country is in the throes of a transformation as profound as those of it...

Obama Must Stop Spread of Syria Crisis - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

Syria's crisis is spreading to Turkey and Lebanon, and regional powers are increasingly entangled - it's time for decisive action....

A Global Assault on Religious Liberty - Doug Bandow, Forbes

Despite its best efforts, America cannot make the world free. But at least Americans can work to make the world freer. They should support religious liberty as they go out into...

Obama Reaches Out to Iran Through Turkey - David Ignatius, Wash Post

President Obama has signaled Iran that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent public claim that ...

A Risky Syria Scenario for Turkey - Abdulhamit Bilici, Today's Zaman

It does not augur well that there has been a rapid increase in opinions asserting that the crisis in Syria is beginning to resemble the situation and massacres in Bosnia in the ...

Can Erdogan Play Mideast Peacemaker? - Sinan Ulgen, Project Syndicate

ISTANBUL – Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken on a daunting challenge. After participating in the nuclear-security summit in South Korea at the end of Mar...

Turkey's 'Deep State' Goes on Trial - The National

It wasn't long ago when the mention of Turkey's derin devlet, the deep state, brought blank stares and uncomfortable silence. Today, not only is this shadowy locus of power being d...

Don't Fear Nuclear Arms Race in the Mideast - Steven Cook, Foreign Policy

The conventional wisdom has it wrong: Iran's development of a nuclear weapon won't spur its neighbors to get the bomb....

U.S. and Turkey's Bipolar Relationship - Leon Hadar, The National Interest

In early 2001, as Bush-administration officials were formulating a new global strategy, an Israeli diplomat met in Washington with a top Pentagon official who explained that Washin...

Don't Expect Turkey to Invade Syria - Soner Cagaptay, CNN

A visit to Gaziantep, a Turkish city near the Syrian border, suggests that Turkey’s policy on Syria is evolving in parallel to Bashar al-Assad's crackdown: The more brutally al-...

Turkey's Internal Challenges - New York Times

In Istanbul and Ankara, high-rise apartments and office towers are changing the landscape. With recent economic growth rates that exceed those in many European countries, Turkey ...

Egyptians Sour on U.S., Eye Closer Ties to Turkey, Iran - Gallup

The majority of Egyptians (56%) now see closer relations with the U.S. as a bad thing for their country, up sharply from 40% in December 2011. Slightly more than one-quarter (28%...

Turkey vs. Iran - Mustafa Akyol, Foreign Affairs

In a speech last August, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, who was Iran's chief justice from 1999 to 2009 and is now a member of the Guardian Council, argued that "arrogant Western powe...

U.S. Tells Turkey to Back Off Syria - Tony Badran, NOW Lebanon

In a previously unreported turn of events, it has now come to light that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her meeting with Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu las...

Turkish Journalists Fight Repression - Daniel Steinvorth, Der Spiegel

He has done things in the last 375 days that he would never have imagined doing before. He made dumbbells out of pipe sections, watched too much television, and at some point he d...

Turkey's Foreign Policy Pivot - Soner Cagaptay, Los Angeles Times

What made Ankara do an about-face and re-embrace the West? Recognition of what gives it power in the Middle East....

The Coming Mediterranean Gas Conflict - Nizar Abdel-Kader, Bitter Lemons

The discoveries of gas fields by Israel and Cyprus are stirring the pot of regional turmoil and provoking various reactions from the other players in the Eastern Mediterranean....

Turkey Continues Assault on Journalists - Suzy Hansen, The New Republic

Last week, the Turkish journalist Oray Eğin returned to Turkey to attend his father’s funeral. It was the first time he’d been home in months, and when he arrived at Istanbul...

Why Turkey Hasn't Intervened in Syria - Soner Cagaptay, New Republic

If Turkey has one priority these days, it's maintaining its soft power and popularity within the Middle East - and any sort of military intervention involving Turkish boots on th...

In Turkey, Kemalism & Democracy Don't Mix - Sahin Alpay, Today's Zaman

Reasonable people in Turkey (or abroad) have to face the simple and naked truth: Kemalism, that is, Turkish secular nationalism, is not compatible with liberal and pluralistic d...

Turkey

Don't Exaggerate Turkey-Israel Row

Syria's Neighbors Are Growing Restless

Israel's Undersea Gas Find May Spur Strife

Turkey's New Course Between East, West

Turkey in the Syrian Hot Seat

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