Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Turkey wants NATO to address threats from all directions — including from Middle Eastern countries — during the Ankara Summit on July 7-8. 'We are reminded that what happens in the south does not stay in the south,' said Ambassador Mehmet Burçin Gönenli, director general for International Security Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, speaking at the 18th Istanbul Security Conference organized by Başkent University and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
The legislation comes amid disagreements with Greece and Israel in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.
After Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters near Crete, detaining at least 20 Turkish nationals among approximately 175 activists on board, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan moved quickly on the diplomatic front, holding back-to-back calls with his Spanish and Greek counterparts.
The US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack is under attack in Turkey and the United States for saying Middle East countries require “strong leadership.”
Turkey launched offshore oil and gas exploration off the eastern coast of Africa, deploying a 7th-generation ultra-deepwater drillship. Simultaneously, Turkish F-16 fighter jets, T-129 attack helicopters, and AS-532 Cougar utility helicopters, and the aircraft performed ceremonial flyovers across Mogadishu.
The Middle East is no longer simmering — it is boiling over. The genocide being carried out in Gaza, the attacks on the West Bank, the incursion into Syria, and the devastating assault on Lebanon have cemented one uncomfortable truth that much of the world is now willing to state openly: Israel has become the primary driver of instability in the region.
Blue Homeland-26, one of the Turkish Armed Forces’ most extensive exercises this year, was conducted from April 3 to 9 in the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the participation of 120 ships, 50 aircraft, and 15,000 personnel from the Naval, Land, and Air Force Commands, as well as the Coast Guard Command.
The war on Iran has once again revealed the confusing complexities of Turkey’s geostrategic positioning as a middle power between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
NATO has launched efforts to establish a second headquarters in Turkey, adding to the alliance’s presence and strengthening its posture against threats from the Middle East.
Few Turkish words arrive with less subtlety than füze. Borrowed from the French fusée, it sounds clipped, metallic and modern. It is a word that pierces a sentence rather than softly enters it, except when used in slang. In the mid-20th century, füze was slang for breasts that projected upward; the opposite of pide, or flat, breasts. It is a small linguistic reminder of how the male gaze has long blended the language of warfare with that of desire.
If Cyprus were a film, it would probably be The Truman Show. Not because anything dramatic is happening, quite the opposite. The genius of The Truman Show is that nothing seems to be happening at all.
The planned meeting of the Turkish–Greek High-Level Cooperation Council (HLC) in Ankara on February 11 comes when the calm in relations between Ankara and Athens conceals numerous fragilities. That’s just one reason why the meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is unlikely to produce a breakthrough. Rather, the meeting aims to keep communication channels open while both sides pursue sharply divergent agendas in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.