On June 19 a court in the city of Diyarbakir in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey acquitted three young boys of charges of terrorist propaganda after a choir of which they were members sang a song in Kurdish at a World Music Festival in... MORE

On June 18 and 19 Turkish lawyers, academics and Internet professionals met in the mountain resort of Abant in the Bolu mountains of northwest Turkey to discuss the increasing censorship of the Internet in Turkey through the use of court orders to block access to... MORE

Since the founding of the Republic of Turkey 85 years ago, the Turkish Armed Forces (Turk Silahli Kuvvetleri--TSK) has seen itself as the guardian of the nation’s secular Kemalist traditions. The unresolved tension between the country’s Islamic heritage and its secular traditions is rising due... MORE

In recent years Turkey has geared up its efforts to diversify its energy sources. The State Planning Agency estimated that there is a need for an $80 billion investment in the next 15 years to meet the country’s energy needs (Dogu Karadeniz Bolgesi Bolgesel Gelisme... MORE

On June 13, during a visit to Istanbul for the Third Turkish-Arab Economic Forum, Syrian Oil Minister Sufiyan al-AW announced that Syria and Turkey were preparing to create a joint oil company to conduct oil prospecting activities in Syria, Turkey and third countries. Al-AW said... MORE

On June 12 the public prosecutor in the Istanbul neighborhood of Beyoglu initiated a criminal investigation of two young women wearing head scarves who had told the host of a popular television program that they did not like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who founded the... MORE

On June 11 the Turkish Privatization Administration (PA), which handles sales under the country’s privatization program, announced that it had received just five bids each for the electricity distribution grids in the capital of Ankara and the northwestern city of Sakarya. In 2006, 24 companies... MORE

From Cold War enemies on opposite sides, Turkey and Russia have developed flourishing trade ties since 1991, so much so that last year bilateral trade exceeded $20 billion. Now a dispute over Turkish agricultural exports to the Russian Federation threatens to disrupt the burgeoning trade.... MORE

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has finally begun to prepare for what now appears to be its almost inevitable closure by the country’s Constitutional Court, according to reports in the Turkish media. On March 14 Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya applied to the Constitutional... MORE

On June 6 the military court in the southeastern city of Van once again postponed a scheduled hearing in a case brought against three members of the security forces who are accused of carrying out an extra-judicial execution in the Kurdish town of Semdinli in... MORE