Turkey has announced various measures, in an effort to punish Israel for its failure to meet its demands for the Mavi Marmara incident last year, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli soldiers. Ankara’s decision came on the eve of the announcement of... MORE

Executive Summary:Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime, once considered the Middle East region’s most secure, is showing signs of vulnerability in the wake of the Syria uprisings. Al-Assad’s violent crackdown in recent weeks has emboldened his opponents and driven them to demand that he step aside. While... MORE

The Syrian army’s violent campaign against the uprising, despite the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, invited ever escalating criticism from Turkey and the international community. While previously criticized for being ineffective in its approach toward the Baath regime’s operations, Turkey recently emerged... MORE

On July 29, Turkey was shaken by yet another development concerning a possible political crisis between the civilian authorities and the country’s upper military echelon. The Chief of the General Staff Isik Kosaner quit his post, followed by three of the four force commanders, Land... MORE

Barely a week after US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had asked Turkey’s leaders in Ankara to open the Turkish-Armenian border, Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has thwarted that effort by issuing an irredentist-sounding statement to youth (“Armenian President Casts Doubt On Ongoing Negotiating Processes,” EDM,... MORE

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a one-day working visit to Baku, where he met the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to discuss various bilateral and regional issues. Erdogan deliberately chose Baku as the destination for his second official trip abroad, since he formed his... MORE

Turkey has hosted an important meeting, which marked the drastic transformation its policy on Libya has undergone. Although Turkey initially expressed strong opposition to military intervention against the Gaddafi regime, over time it adjusted its policy and managed to coordinate it with Western powers and... MORE

Turkish security forces did not wait for the June 15 deadline set by Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK – Kurdistan Workers’ Party), to make his decision on extending the PKK’s unilateral “non-attack” ceasefire. On June 14, hundreds of Turkish... MORE

Following the parliamentary elections on June 12 in the wake of a heated election campaign, Turkish politics remains unsettled. While the sweeping victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) dominated the discussions initially, attention has shifted to Turkey’s sharp political intrigues and political crises... MORE

As the momentum of opposition demonstrations targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gains in the face of an increasingly violent crackdown by the state, questions are emerging as to the survivability of a regime widely considered to be among the most autocratic in the region.  Like... MORE