There are 324,770 official Syrian refugees in Turkey (Turkish government estimates are 400,000). 17 out of 23 of the region’s refugee camps are in Turkey, which has decided to halt construction of any new camps. The main issues are cross-border attacks by pro-regime forces (as witnessed recently in Reyhanli where two car bombs killed at least 51 [...]
I thought this was very innovative and worth noting: a floating electricity-generating power plant, a “power ship” that can be parked by any shore and used to generate part of that country’s electricity needs. There is currently a Turkish “power ship”, the Fatmagül Sultan, parked off Beirut that is producing 188 MW of electricity daily, the [...]
In YaleGlobal, Mohammed Ayoob writes that the new deal for peace between Turkey’s government and PKK rebels to end more than thirty years of hostilities also has implications for the wider region, especially Iraq, Syria, and Iran. If Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can convince the various political factions in Turkey to go along with the [...]
There’s so much good news in a row that it’s giving me vertigo. First, the Turkish government and the PKK call for an end to their long, vicious war. Then Israel makes up with Turkey by apologizing for the Mavi Marmara incident. And now, oh the irony, the Turkish government has kindly offered the financially ruined [...]
CHP member of parliament Safak Pavey recently returned from Syria where she and a group of Turkish lawmakers met with President Bashar al-Assad in an attempt to free foreign journalists believed held by his regime. Pavey crossed overland in Hatay and on her trip spoke with Syrian refugees. She learned that Christian refugees were being [...]
Here is the final resolution on Afghanistan issued by a large and varied group of top-level international Islamic scholars who met this week in Istanbul (see my blog post about the meeting below). The content was the result of two days of discussion and hours of haggling over the wording so that all the scholars [...]
On March 5, CHP parliamentarian Şafak Pavey boarded a plane in Istanbul that would carry her to the Syrian border. There she led a delegation of Mersin parliamentarian Aytuğ Atıcı and two other CHP lawmakers from Hatay province, Hasan Akgöl and Mevlüt Dudu, over the border and through war-torn Syria. On March 7, the group met for [...]
I’m in Istanbul for a rather unusual event — the Third International Conference for Islamic Cooperation for a Peaceful Future of Afghanistan — a meeting of dozens of top Islamic leaders and scholars and Grand Muftis, including Deoband Ulema from India and a variety of Islamic scholars from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and [...]
Update: Read this article by Murat Yetkin for a breakdown of the various possible killers and motives. It has the makings of a real political thriller. Three women belonging to the PKK were shot and killed in the Kurdistan Information Office in Paris yesterday: Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez. The murderer locked the door, [...]
In addition to the NATO anti-missile systems being trucked overland to Turkey, the U.S. is deploying two Patriot air defense batteries and 400 American military personnel to Turkey. The missiles are expected to become operational at the end of January. NATO also will send special aircraft that can detect missile launches from Syria. The Syrian government [...]