On October 9 Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler predicted that the evaluation of the winning bid in Turkey’s first nuclear power plant tender at Akkuyu on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast would be completed by the end of October. He added that the government was currently working... MORE

At around 5:30 P.M. on October 8, six people were killed and 21 wounded when militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ambushed a bus carrying police personnel in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. Eye-witnesses reported that the assailants hurled hand grenades and sprayed the... MORE

The military confrontation between Georgia and Russia in August highlighted the West's misconception that the Caspian energy transit through the Caucasian nation is a totally secure means of bypassing Russia and Iran, a key tenet of the U.S. administration’s policy. In the aftermath of the... MORE

In the early hours of October 7, Turkish warplanes struck at suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq for the third day in row as Turkey continued to reel from the October 3 PKK attack on a military outpost in the... MORE

The large death toll in the recent attack by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on a Turkish military outpost close to the border with Iraq has dealt a major psychological blow to the Turkish government and severely damaged the prestige of the Turkish military, which... MORE

In the early hours of October 4, 2005, Turkey officially began accession negotiations with the EU. Over the previous four years, in order to secure a date for the opening of negotiations, successive Turkish governments had eased many of the restrictions on freedom of expression... MORE

On September 30 simmering ethnic tensions between Turks and Kurds in the town of Altinova in the western province of Balikesir erupted into violence as stores, automobiles, homes, and workplaces belonging to ethnic Kurds were attacked after a Kurdish youth drove a truck into a... MORE

The armed military confrontation between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August has produced major shockwaves throughout the Caucasus and beyond. Amid the suffering, the military clash may have shaken opportunities to resolve one of the "frozen conflicts" left over from the... MORE

In a country in which the prevailing, and often paradoxical, interpretation of secularism frequently causes political and economic instability (see EDM, July 31), it is ironic that one of the Turkish state’s unequivocal concessions to religious sentiments has provided the Turkish markets with at least... MORE

On September 27 the Turkish navy launched the corvette TCG Heybeliada, the first modern warship to be designed, built, and equipped primarily from local resources. The TCG Heybeliada is the first in what will eventually be a series of 12 multi-purpose littoral combat warships built... MORE