Showing results for "Shoura Council"

NATO-EU differences exposed by Turkey dilemma

  • EU leaders on Friday postponed the discussion of a potential arms embargo on Turkey to the bloc’s March 2021 summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after last week’s meeting that the EU had agreed to prepare limited sanctions on Turkish individuals involved in oil exploration activities i...
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How an eastern Med incident played into Turkey’s hands

  • A Turkish container ship was last month stopped and searched in the eastern Mediterranean by a German frigate under the command of EU Naval Force Mediterranean Operation Irini. There are several discrepancies between the Turkish and EU versions of how the exercise unfolded. The first discrepa...
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Russia strengthens its hold on the South Caucasus

  • After 43 days of military clashes in the Nagorno-Karabakh border region, Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to a tenuous truce. Various aspects of the cease-fire deserve detailed analysis. This article will focus on those aspects relating to Russia’s return to one of its former “backyards,” th...
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EU continues to slam Turkey over Mediterranean conflict

  • The European Council this month held a special summit to discuss a number of issues. Among them was the EU’s approach to Turkey-Greece relations. Greece and Cyprus actively lobbied before the summit to impose sanctions on Turkey. The only favor done to Ankara was to begin the “conclusions” of ...
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Conflicting interests difficult to balance in Azeri-Armenian conflict

  • The Azeri-Armenian military confrontation that broke out last week contains the risks of further escalation because Azerbaijan seems to be militarily better prepared than in previous rounds. Early 20th century US senator Hiram Johnson used to say that “the first casualty when war comes is trut...
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Turkey’s Libya project threatened by political developments

  • Fayez Al-Sarraj, the prime minister of Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, this month announced that he would resign at the end of October. He added that he expected the dialogue committee set up to find a solution to the Libyan crisis would complete its work and t...
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Isolated Turkey aware that pressure is growing

  • At an informal meeting in Berlin late last month, EU foreign ministers debated the Turkish-Greek tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the heart of the issue is Turkey’s initiative to drill for oil and gas in a disputed maritime jurisdiction area that it considers to be its own. The minis...
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Turkey’s Erdogan ignores international opposition to Hagia Sophia mosque conversion

  • A controversy that has been on Turkey’s political agenda for decades is now disposed of, but debates on it and its international implications are likely to continue for some more time. The Council of State, which is Turkey’s highest judicial authority on administrative matters, this month con...
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Kurdish political deal a major setback for Turkey

  • Kurds live mainly in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. There are also scattered Kurdish minority communities in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia and some Central Asian countries, but they are too small for any political role in these countries. The earliest written reference to the Kurds goes back to ...
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Reconversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque may be a vote-winner for Erdogan

  • A debate is again open in Turkey on the question of reconverting the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque.  Built nearly 1,500 years ago on the orders of Byzantine Emperor Justinian, this cathedral is one of the oldest standing shrines in the world, but it has a tumultuous history.&n...
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