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By Scott Ritter
$11.16
By John W. Dean
$14.00
$22
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AP / Dogan family
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One of the nine flotilla passengers shot dead by Israeli commandos was a 19-year-old American-born student named Furkan Dogan. He was shot four times in the head and once in the chest.
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16.jpg)
World Economic Forum
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Israel is still being widely criticized for the flotilla attack, but on Wednesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not about to apologize for his country’s actions in the incident or for Israel’s stance toward Gaza.
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AP / Amr Nabil
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Relations between Israel and friends like Turkey and the U.S. went south following Monday’s raid on a flotilla en route to Gaza, as differing reports emerged to challenge Israel’s account ... (continued)
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Flickr / Somebody on This Earth
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Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate what they call “Genocide Remembrance Day” in honor of the 1.5 million Armenians who died in the genocide from 1915 to 1923.
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The Swedish parliament took a vote Thursday on an important wording issue, and the end result led to diplomatic strain between Sweden and Turkey. That’s because the word that parliament members decided on was genocide, and the incident they were applying it to was the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915.
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By William Pfaff — Other than the United States, Turkey has probably been the most important of Israel’s allies, but now it is getting the “freedom fries” treatment.
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trt.net.tr
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A Turkish television series, “Separation,” caused a diplomatic clash between Turkey and Israel after an episode this week portrayed an Israeli soldier shooting and killing a Palestinian baby. The fictional scene was shown on Israeli television Wednesday and drew criticism from Israel’s foreign minister Thursday.
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pvld.mobi
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Despite a last-minute hitch, Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement normalizing relations. The accord comes almost a century after the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915, an action for which Turkey denies responsibility. Under the agreement, a panel of independent historians will study the genocide issue.
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White House / Pete Souza
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A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that people in 25 countries view the U.S. more favorably now that President Obama is in office than they did during the Bush II era, but it’s not a worldwide trend—Israel and parts of the Muslim world are among the exceptions.
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By Marie Cocco — History demands an investigation into U.S. torture. We have a contemporary model for how to conduct a politically sensitive inquiry properly, without undue theatrics and with respect for classified information. It is the 9/11 commission.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Obama over the weekend commemorated the 1915 murder of over a million Armenians without using the word genocide, a term he had used during the presidential campaign in speaking of the slaughter. The word from the lips of the U.S. president would have angered Turkey at a time when relations between Washington and Ankara are going so well. In the end, Obama’s rhetorical gifts were not enough to keep outraged Armenian-Americans from taking to the streets.
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President Barack Obama draws upon the traditions and meanings behind “two very different holidays”—Passover and Easter—as his jumping-off point for his weekly address about the state of the country and the world ... and about his time rubbing elbows with other world leaders during the past week.
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The economy’s not the only thing that “Left, Right & Center” co-conspirators Matt Miller, Tony Blankley and Robert Scheer are thinking about this week, but it’s a biggie again, as are the Obama administration’s announcement about defense spending and the changes under way in American foreign policy. Also: Somali pirates!
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By Joe Conason — In the struggle against the extremists and terrorists, the new president understands how to divide the enemy and neutralize their base—and is uniquely suited to accomplish the mission. He got elected in the United States of America, after all.
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AP photo / Burhan Ozbilici
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By Robert Fisk — If the issue doesn’t trip Obama up on his visit to Turkey, he is going to have to walk into a far worse minefield on April 24 when he has to honor a campaign promise to call the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turkey a “genocide.”
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State Dept. / WikiMedia Commons
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Hillary Clinton’s media savvy was on full display Saturday during an appearance on the Turkish equivalent of “The View.” Dishing on family and fashion, Clinton was by all accounts a hit in a country where only 9 percent view the U.S. favorably. Update: Video
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AP photo / Alessandro Della Bella
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By Sandy Tolan — Dear Mr. Prime Minister: I write with grave concern over your impertinent remarks to the president of Israel at the World Economic Forum last week, which threatened to delay dinner for hundreds of extremely important global thinkers.
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AP photo / Eyad Baba
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By Robert Fisk — If reporting is, as I suspect, a record of mankind’s folly, then the end of 2008 is proving my point.
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Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons —
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DoD / CWO2 Michael A. Lujan, USMC
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The Turkish military launched an airstrike aimed at Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Sunday. It was the latest in a series of cross-border attacks authorized by the Turkish parliament in response to what it has criticized as the Iraqi government’s lack of attention to the Kurdish fighters.
Posted on Oct 12, 2008
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at two welcome developments in the Middle East: On Wednesday, Israel and Syria said they had begun indirect talks in Turkey, the first confirmation in eight years of negotiations between the long-time enemies. On that same day, the Gulf state of Qatar scored a diplomatic coup by pulling off a deal intended to end Lebanon’s protracted crisis.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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The politically weakened government of Ehud Olmert is engaged in peace talks with neighboring Syria, the two countries have acknowledged. Turkey is moderating the indirect negotiations, the first since 2000. The last round of talks failed over the demand for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
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A week after Turkey withdrew troops from northern Iraq, claiming its military initiative against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was successfully completed, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul to try to figure out how regional tensions might be contained in the future.
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On Tuesday, the Iraqi Cabinet expressed extreme displeasure over the incursion of Turkish troops into the Kurdish northern region of Iraq and called for a halt to Turkish interference, which Cabinet officials called a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” Also on Tuesday, an apparent suicide attack on a bus headed toward Syria from Mosul in northern Iraq killed nine people, according to The New York Times.
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english.aljazeera.net
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After bombarding the area with airplanes and artillery, Turkish forces entered northern Iraq, ostensibly in search of Kurdish rebels. It isn’t the first time Turkey has crossed the border, but one source described the force as much bigger—roughly 10,000 men—than previous incursions. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, however, said he believed only a few hundred Turkish troops were involved in the operation.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Turkey has dramatically ramped up its cross-border campaign against Kurds in Iraq with an airstrike involving as many as 50 warplanes. The Turkish military says the assault was aimed at Kurdish rebels seeking refuge in Iraq and not “people living in northern Iraq or local groups not engaged in enemy activity.”
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AP photo / Murad Sezer
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By Scott Ritter — The former weapons inspector and military intelligence officer argues that Turkey, once dismissed as the “sick man of Europe,” will be ignored by the West at its own peril.
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whitehouse.gov
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Along with family gatherings and counting one’s blessings, Thanksgiving has come to signify a rather rosy view of the unity of American society. This weekend, however, two largely overlooked news items—one about unexpected financial issues that some wounded American veterans face and another about hunger in New York City—tell a different story.
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By Ellen Goodman — My Thanksgiving prep began in one of those markets where, for a premium, you get a story with your food. Every vegetable, every creature and every jar of jam comes with its own pedigree and memoir.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report takes a look at the United States’ Kurdish double standard: Washington supports those in Iraq while declaring Kurdish fighters in Turkey a “common enemy.”
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sunsearch.info
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The Turkish parliament has authorized military incursions into Iraq in order to track down rebels who, the Turkish government has long claimed, use Iraqi Kurdistan as sanctuary.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Turkey’s Abdullah Gul says he will once again run for the presidency, which could lead to a crisis in the politically and religiously complex nation. Turkey’s avowedly secular military has already announced its willingness to intervene should Gul win the post, because of his Islamist background.
Posted on Aug 14, 2007
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As if Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki didn’t already have his hands full, now he’s dealing with pressure from Turkey to drive out members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who have hunkered down in northern Iraq—or else Turkish troops will do the honors.
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Although Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, is denying the report, other government insiders anonymously confirmed that several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Wednesday to target Kurdish groups that have been attacking Turkey from Iraq, according to the Associated Press.
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A raid on a Turkish military camp by Kurdish separatist rebels left at least seven Turks and one rebel dead on Monday and seven more soldiers injured, according to the BBC. The attack took place in the eastern town of Tunceli in the Pulumar region and is being attributed to the controverial Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
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Last Friday’s presidential vote by the Turkish parliament has been scrapped by the nation’s constitutional court, which decided that not enough lawmakers had voted to make a quorum. This means that candidate Abdullah Gul, whose party’s Islamist ties have raised widespread concern, won’t advance to the next level—not yet, at least.
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AP Photo/Serkan Senturk
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Crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands gathered Sunday for a pro-secularism rally in Istanbul, calling for a secularist democracy in Turkey amid concerns that presidential candidate Abdullah Gul, whose Justice and Development Party has Islamist ties, will let his beliefs influence his actions if he wins the election.
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Turkey’s leading presidential candidate has Islamist roots, a cause for concern among the country’s many secularists. The Turkish military has even weighed in on the issue, saying the armed forces were troubled by the election and would display their “positions and attitudes” as “a staunch defender of secularism” at the appropriate time.
Posted on Apr 27, 2007
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militaryphotos.net
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The Bush administration finds itself in a difficult position as tensions between two regional allies threaten to escalate to war. The Turkish military is fed up with Kurdish rebels it says have safe harbor in northern Iraq, and now wants to mount an assault across the border. One of Iraq’s Kurdish leaders has said such an attack would trigger retaliation.
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politikforum.de
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Germans are outraged over the emergence of documents that suggest a government official allowed an innocent German citizen to remain in Guantanamo for years after the United States offered to repatriate him.
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sl.wikipedia.org
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A Turkish publisher, two editors and a translator have all been acquitted of insulting Turkishness. The four were charged for translating and publishing “Manufacturing Consent,” by Noam Chomsky (above), which criticizes Turkey’s treatment of Kurds. Though the EU has pressured Turkey to reform its laws regarding expression, it remains a crime there to insult the state.
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AP / EUROKINISI
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By Chris Hedges — The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” takes a hard look at the political capital of suffering.
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