After failing to block Turkey’s purchase of the advanced S-400 Russian air defense system, Washington diplomacy in recent months appeared to have managed to “flip” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to support of US interests in several critical countries from Libya to Armenia to Ukraine, even Afghanistan. With the Turkish economy on the brink of…
President Recep Tayyip Erdoganushered in the new year, pledging to employ his country’s military to secureTurkey’s place in a rebalanced new world order. Mr. Erdogan spelledout his vision when he inserted himself on December 30 into anaddress by his defense minister, Hulusi Akar, to several hundred masked Turkishand Azeri military officers in the Azerbaijani capital…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t mince his words at this month’s opening of parliament. In his first assertion of a claim to a lost non-Turkic part of the Ottoman empire, Mr. Erdogan declared that Jerusalem is Turkish. “In this city, which we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is…
Turkey’s controversial decision to reconvert Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque has been met with sharp criticism abroad from those who claim that it’ll exacerbate the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” and reverse the secular reforms of Ataturk while supporters of this move claim that it’s a justified reassertion of civilizational identity in an…
On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree changing the status of the Byzantine-era built Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque. The first Islamic service in the formerly Christian Orthodox Cathedral is scheduled for July 24 and a flurry of international condemnation has been heard. Greece of course has been the dominant…
The latest installment of the interminable Syria tragedy could be interpreted as Greece barely blocking a European “invasion” by Syrian refugees. The invasion was threatened by President Erdogan even as he refused the EU’s puny “offer you can refuse” bribe of only one billion euros. Well, it’s more complicated than that. What Erdogan is in…
