Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad recently gave an interview on Turkish TV in which he discussed Ankara’s support for opposition forces battling to overthrow the Assad regime. The Syrian strongman was less than measured, and he very pointedly threatened that Turkey would “pay very dearly.” Hezbollah media outlets were only too...

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Turkey has since the summer been publicly flirting with a $3.4 billion deal that would see Ankara purchase missile defense assets from the China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp (CPMIEC), a company that among other things is currently under U.S. sanctions for violations of the Iran, North Korea and...

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Turkey’s heavy-handed response to summer anti-government protests – which saw the use of tear gas, live fire, beatings, and so on – was criticized during and after the riots. Arrests and injuries reached the thousands, and Turkey’s European NATO partners in particular demanded investigations into who was responsible and how...

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A controversial decision by E.U. foreign ministers to cut off projects with Israeli-Jewish communities beyond Israel’s 1948 armistice lines may face additional complications, as legal scholars are pointing to deep contradictions within E.U. practices. The guidelines regarding those communities have in recent weeks been blasted by top international figures –...

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Responding last July to news that Turkey was planning to purchase air defense systems from China, a NATO official declared that the decision – if confirmed and implemented – “would certainly leave many of us speechless.” Last week Turkey announced that it was moving ahead with purchasing the FD-2000 missile...

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A few months after Ankara violently put down a wave of anti-government protests, Turkey now risks entering a downward spiral where political authoritarianism fuels economic instability, and economic instability fuels more political protests that are put down through authoritarian measures. Observers had already worried over the summer that the government...

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World-renowned Turkish pianist Fazil Say has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for blasphemy, following a retrial over social media posts he made criticizing Islam: Say was prosecuted for a series of tweets criticizing Muslims, one of which said: “I am not sure if you have also realized it, but...

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Amid a series of grim milestones associated with the Syrian-driven refugee crisis – including the displacement of over one million children – Jordan is now reporting a surge in refugees crossing its border this past week. The numbers, per the Associated Press, have crossed 900 a day: Ali Bibi, a...

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There are credible arguments to be made that Turkish-Egyptian relations have literally never been worse since the two countries took shape as modern states. The two countries had exchanged ambassadors soon after WWII, signed a free trade agreement in 2005, and been declared by Ankara to be part of an...

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An expose published yesterday in Foreign Policy by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, outlines Turkish support for the Palestinian terror group Hamas which – among other things – has allowed Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri to operate out of Turkish territory. Hamas’s domestic...

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