‘Every war is different. Every war is the same.’ – Anthony Swofford Since the beginning of the Olive Branch Operation in Syria’s northwestern Afrin region on January 20th, the Turkish army has launched massive air and ground force strikes on targets across the
“You can live a normal life here [Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus] if you keep quiet, if you don’t tell the truth that we live under Turkish occupation, that much of our territory is a military zone where we can’t go.” — Şener Levent, owner
The Afrin events are being used to assert the notion that without Russian military guarantees, and a Russian military base deployed in Armenia, Yerevan will be under a constant threat from a potential Turkish offensive, says Benyamin Poghosyan in this op-ed. Turkey’s military
Since gaining independence in 1991 Armenia has faced tough challenges in building relations with two of its four neighbors — Azerbaijan and Turkey. Relations with Azerbaijan were mainly influenced by Karabakh conflict. Armenia was supporting Nagorno Karabakh Armenians to defend themselves against Azerbaijani
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the spiritual center of Orthodox Christianity which is based in Turkey, is unable to train clergy and potential successors for the position of patriarch. The reason is that the Halki Seminary, the only school for training the leadership
Signed on 24 July 1923, the Lausanne Treaty divided Kurdistan between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan. Even though we are entering its 94th anniversary now, one serious aspect of the Treaty has often, wittingly or unwittingly, been omitted. The dominant narrative maintains
“A coup whose plotting was known beforehand, a coup not prevented, a coup whose consequences are abused for power is called a ‘controlled coup’. We demanded that all the measures against the putschists would be discussed in Parliament, but they did not… I
The ongoing crisis in the Gulf Region between the Saudi-led trio and Qatar that came in the wake of Donald Trump’s ‘orb diplomacy’ has presented yet another difficult test for Turkish ambition to gain notice as a regional power and to regain a
The denouement of the Turkish referendum melodrama, which has seen the ruling party’s proposal to change the country’s political system from parliamentary to presidential approved by a marginal percentage, marks the death of the Kemalist republic founded in 1923 and the birth of
It wasn’t until 1989 when a Lebanese soldier was overheard speaking Turkish words by his commander that Turkey found out about the existence of a Turkmen community in Lebanon. The soldier coming from the small village of Qawashra in Northern Lebanon and identified