On April 27, Turkey and Syria launched their first joint military exercise on their border. The three-day long land exercises between border forces involved an exchange of units to enhance joint training and interoperability, and are expected to be followed by similar exercises in the... MORE

Norway's StatoilHydro company, commercial operator of the gas export pipeline from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field, has publicly identified Turkey as stalling on the transit agreement for Shah Deniz gas to Europe. StatoilHydro's latest statements corroborate the concerns of European and Azerbaijani officials on this issue... MORE

On April 27, Police in Istanbul conducted operations on 60 different addresses, targeting the newly emerged militant organization Devrimci Karargah (DK) (Revolutionary Base). The police detained 40 suspects. At one address they exchanged gunfire with a militant for over six-hours. During the operation, the militant... MORE

The enigmatic figure of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish-born U.S. resident who runs an extensive Islamic movement in Turkey, has been warned by the Kurdish Hezbollah (Hezbollahi Kurdi - HK) against making further statements critical of Hezbollah. [1] Gulen recently argued that the Kurdistan Workers Party... MORE

On April 22, the Foreign Ministries of Turkey, Armenia and Switzerland issued a joint announcement saying that Ankara and Yerevan had agreed to work toward improving their relations within the framework of a roadmap under Swiss auspices. United States' diplomats were also closely involved in... MORE

President Barack Obama's long awaited statement on the Armenian Remembrance Day caused mixed reactions on both sides of the dispute. Although Obama refrained from referring to the killing of Armenians as "genocide," which reflected well on Turkish diplomacy, his clear expression of support for the... MORE

The counterterrorism units of the Gaziantep, Konya, Adana, Kahramanmaras and Sanliurfa provincial police departments staged simultaneous raids on a number of addresses in their respective cities. As a result 37 suspected al-Qaeda members were detained. It was reported that one of the suspects in Gaziantep... MORE

Capitalizing on the European Commission's November 2008 initiative to promote the Corridor and to create a Caspian Development Corporation, the Budapest meeting set the goal of signing the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) and at least clear the way for signing the Project Support Agreements (PSA's) during... MORE

The high-level conference on energy in Sofia on April 25 and the European Union's summit in Prague on May 7 are survival opportunities for the Nabucco gas pipeline project. This project, which is the centerpiece of the EU-planned Southern Energy Corridor, finally began moving forward... MORE

On April 8 Fethullah Gulen, the leader of the moderate Islamist neo-Nur movement (a Sufi Islamist network that follows the path of Islamist thinker Said Nursi who died in 1960), released a surprising statement. Gulen drew attention to a possible "social engineering" campaign about the... MORE