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  • Turkey Today
    Essay: Thoroughly Modern Muslim Turkey

    Turks have always grasped better than most that modernity is something of a con game. Through hard experience -- spending decades, say, building what they thought were clean, cutting-edge, concrete apartment blocks only to be told by Europeans that a more modern government would have focused on historic preservation -- Turkish leaders discovered that the best thing about being a modern country is having the money and strength to decide what it means to be modern.

  • Turkish Perspective
    Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk

    The United States may currently be focused on the Islamic State, but Turkey is looking years ahead at the mess that will likely remain. This is why Turkey is placing conditions on its involvement in the battle against the Islamic State: It is trying to convince the United States and its Sunni Arab coalition partners that it will inevitably be the power administering this region. Therefore, according to Ankara, all players must conform to its priorities, beginning with replacing Syria's Iran-backed Alawite government with a Sunni administration that will look first to Ankara for guidance.

  • Turkey and ISIS
    Turkey to approve a bigger military role in Iraq and Syria — but not on American terms

    Erdogan urged lawmakers to vote in favor of the resolution authorizing intervention in Syria and Iraq, which renews a similar 2012 mandate set to expire Saturday. Significantly, this authorization adds language allowing the government to permit “foreign militaries” to use Turkish soil for cross-border attacks, potentially paving the way for the United States to launch airstrikes from Turkish bases. The proposal is expected to pass because Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has a majority in parliament.

  • Turkey and ISIS
    Erdogan says Turkey will join fight against Islamic State

    Erdogan’s remarks in New York have yet to translate into concrete action. They nevertheless involve the clearest language to date on the topic and are expected to help staunch the flow of negative publicity Turkey has been receiving in the West about Ankara’s alleged soft stance on IS.

  • Turkey and Smuggling
    The truth about Turkey and Islamic State oil

    For decades, successive Turkish governments have tolerated this illegal trafficking based on some strategic logic. The 30-year war between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) impoverished the southeastern region, diminishing revenues from agriculture and husbandry. Smuggling remained the only source of income for some villages. “Pro-state” (anti-PKK) villages especially benefited from the government’s benign neglect, which was a form of compensation for their loyalty. The December 2011 accidental bombing of 34 smugglers from Roboski village by the Turkish armed forces was a horrific tragedy that exposed this tradition. Villagers revealed to the press that until that day, the soldiers always looked the other way when they “went out to smuggle.”

  • Syrian Refugees
    Fleeing ISIS, Syrian Kurds Swarm into Turkey (28 Photos)

    Late last week, ISIS fighters attacked a Kurdish city in northern Syria, after seizing 21 nearby villages in a major assault. The attack on the city of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, drove hundreds of thousands of residents to flee, most heading to the nearby border with Turkey. The Associated Press is reporting that more than 150,000 Syrian Kurds have entered Turkey since the border was opened to refugees on September 19, and the United Nations warns that number could soon climb as high as 400,000

  • Turkey and ISIS
    How the Islamic State Took Turkey Hostage

    While the details of the hostage deal are still unclear, Ankara has had interlocutors with IS -- from Arab tribes to former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who sought refuge in Turkey -- who could have been instrumental in reaching it. Such a deal, however, may include a promise of continued non-involvement in the campaign against the jihadist group, with the soldiers stationed at Suleyman Shah serving as an insurance policy for the jihadists.

  • Turkey
    Turkey Is Courted by U.S. to Help Fight ISIS

    The Obama administration began the work on Monday of trying to determine exactly what roles the members of its fledgling coalition of countries to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will play, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel huddled with the leaders of the one country the administration has called “absolutely indispensable” to the fight: Turkey.

  • Turkey
    Turkey Struggles to Halt Islamic State ‘Jihadist Highway’ – WSJ

    Turkey is struggling to close a "jihadist highway" that lets foreign militants slip across its border into Syria, amid pressure from Western governments and mounting security fears at home. Turkish forces have stepped up arrests, patrols and interrogations in recent months, but the rapid advance of Islamic State extremists in Iraq has made Ankara's initiative even more urgent, say Turkish officials, Western diplomats and residents.

  • Islam
    Turkey’s Culture Wars

    Turkey is replete with political confrontations and cultural clashes, and way too often, unfortunately, the battleground is women’s bodies. Men of all political persuasions feel free to lecture women on how to dress and how to live.