On October 14 the Turkish authorities announced that the Turkish Interior Ministry would be restructured to improve coordination of Turkey’s counter-terrorism efforts (Radikal, Milliyet, Vatan, NTV, October 15). The announcement was contained in a statement released after a meeting earlier in the day of the... MORE

Turkish engineers swelled with pride when the first Bogazici Koprusu (Bosporus Bridge) opened in 1973, spanning Istanbul's historic channel between Asia and Europe. When opened, it was the longest suspension bridge outside the U.S. It was followed 15 years later by the Fatih Sultan Mehmet... MORE

On October 10 the Turkish government announced that it was preparing to initiate a long-term dialogue with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in an attempt to increase pressure on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whose main camps and bases are located in the mountains of... MORE

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