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As the black flag of the Islamic State (ISIS) rose above the Syrian town of Kobane on Monday, the soldiers of NATO’s second largest army stood and watched only a few hundred metres away. “We will do everything possible to help the people of Kobane because they are our brothers and sisters,” Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told CNN as the town was close to falling on Monday.

Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army. As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters...

he increasingly hostile divergence of views between Turkey and the United States over Syria is testing the durability of their 60-year alliance, to the point where some are starting to question whether the two countries still can be considered allies at all. Turkey’s refusal to allow the United States to use its bases to launch attacks against the Islamic State, quarrels over how to manage the battle raging in the Syrian border town of Kobane and the harsh tone of the anti-American rhetoric used by top Turkish officials to denounce U.S. policy have served to illuminate the vast gulf that...

Last week a U.S. journalist, Serena Shim, was murdered in Turkey for exposing the truth of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan allowing and facilitating ISIS militants going to and from Turkey into strategic positions around Kobane (Kobani). Now an independent journalist team have used video to show Turkish police and military meeting with ISIS militants on the Turkish border. Obviously the brutal reality of this expose’ is dangerous to Erdogan’s deceptive claims to the contrary. As a consequence, and in an effort to hide the inherent reality while simultaneously deflecting attention from both events, the Erdogan administration is directing Western media

Shiite militias, linked to the Iranian government, continue to commit war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq in retribution to attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to a report by Amnesty International. Reports suggest that these militias, which the Iraqi government is reportedly dependent on, are being funded and supported by Iranian authorities. …

The Kurdish struggle to hold on to Syrian border town isn't all good news Coming back after two weeks away, it’s surprising that the Syrian town of Kobani hasn’t fallen to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. Pentagon officials were predicting earlier this month that ISIS fighters would overrun the town, near the Turkish border, by mid-October, followed by widespread slaughters among the conquered population. That hasn’t happened. And while that’s obviously good news in the short term for the city’s 200,000 largely-Kurdish residents, it’s tougher to handicap what it means for the long-term U.S.-led effort to “degrade...

Threatened days before car crash for her reporting on ISIS. The death of an American journalist who worked in the Middle East has come under suspicion because she had claimed days before her death that the Turkish intelligence services had threatened her over her coverage of the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani. Serena Shim, an American citizen of Lebanese origin, was a journalist for Iran’s state-owned Press TV. She was killed in a car crash in the city of Suruc after she reportedly collided with a “heavy vehicle.” She was in a rental car returning from her assignment...

Recently, the Saudi ambassador in Turkey acknowledged that before the Unite States launched its airstrikes against the so-called Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Saudi embassy in Ankara provided the Saudi nationals who previously joined ISIL ranks and later defected and wished to return to home with passports and identification documents. The Saudi embassy also admitted that it housed many repentant former jihadists inside the Saudi compound in Istanbul or rented safe houses for them in downtown Istanbul. As a matter of fact, it seems not so much surprising to hear that a country provides consular services...

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales, the United States has said, vowing to impose harsh sanctions on the purchasers of the oil, “including middlemen from Turkey.” “With the important exception of some state-sponsored terrorist organizations, ISIL is probably the best-funded terrorist organization we have confronted,” David Cohen, U.S. Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Oct. 23. “It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace.” ISIL is generating tens of...

A team of British special forces were dispatched to the Turkish- Syrian border to help brave Kurdish fighters battle against Islamic State (IS) gunmen. The British troops called in several air strikes, killing dozens of IS fighters and halting their advance towards Kobane, just inside the Syrian border. In one attack, SAS guided warplanes into an area where IS fi ghters were massing for an attack The US jets dropped several 500lb bombs into the area, killing and injuring dozens of fighters.

AN UNLIKELY consensus is emerging across the ideological spectrum about the war against the Islamic State: President Obama’s strategy to “degrade and eventually destroy” the terrorist entity is unworkable. It’s not just that, as some administration officials say, more time is needed to accomplish complex tasks such as training Iraqi and Syrian forces. It’s that the military means the president has authorized cannot accomplish his announced aims. As Islamic State forces continue to advance in Iraq’s Anbar province while besieging the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, major weaknesses in the U.S.-led campaign have become apparent. One is a relatively modest...

The next few months will be decisive for the Iranian regime, which sees a strategic defeat looming on the horizon as all of its red lines in the Middle East are being trampled After years of enjoying the position of the main hegemon in Iraq and Syria, Iran is now facing an escalating dilemma as other powers have entered the scene to deal with the rising threat of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), an extremist group which has occupied stretches of Iraqi and Syrian territory in the past months. Previously, Iran had taken advantage of the...

In February 2014, while promoting his World War Two film, The Monuments Men, Hollywood A-List actor George Clooney declared that Britain should send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. Despite claiming they came from the Pantheon in Rome rather than the Parthenon in Athens (and also that they had been taken by Lord "Eljin"), he felt that returning them was now appropriate. This was fiercely controversial territory. However, once the furore had died down, most people wrote it off as a kooky PR stunt. Until last week, when it emerged that George Clooney’s new wife, Amal Clooney, a lawyer specialising...

Last August 14 the Wall Street Journal reported that, in July, after Israel had launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Washington had surprised Israel by turning down an Israeli request for “a large number of Hellfire missiles.” Hellfires are an important air-to-surface precision weapon, suited to the kind of warfare Israel was waging against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. But as Amir Rapaport, a veteran Israeli military-affairs writer and editor of the Israel Defense site, now reports: The full truth…is much more severe: apparently, during Operation Protective Edge, the USA had completely stopped all connections with Israel’s defense...

Jordan’s king told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow plays a pivotal role in efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during a meeting between the two in Moscow Wednesday. “The world should realize that without Russia, it is nearly impossible to make serious progress in the region,” King Abdullah II said, in a meeting that highlighted security and economic cooperation between the two nations, according to the Russian news agency TASS. “Of course, we are very grateful to Russia for the role it plays in the Mideast region.”

Britain to Crack Down on Muslim BrotherhoodPosted By P. David Hornik On October 24, 2014 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Britain’s The Telegraph reports that Britain is aiming to take serious measures against the Muslim Brotherhood. The situation contrasts notably with the one in the U.S., where—among much else—the Obama administration has cut back ties with the current, geopolitically moderate Egyptian government because—backed by the most massive popular protest in world history—it came to power by overthrowing a Muslim Brotherhood regime that the administration favored.As The Telegraph describes it: Downing Street is to order a crackdown...

Lockheed Martin and Turkish missile manufacturer Roketsan signed an agreement Wednesday to produce and sell Turkey's SOM-J air-launched cruise missile for the F-35 Lightning II combat jet, the companies said. The agreement, signed in the Turkish capital Ankara, envisages the development, production, marketing, selling and supporting the SOM-J for internal carriage on the F-35 or external carriage on other aircraft."Lockheed Martin has a long history of partnership with Turkey, and we look forward to working closely with Roketsan on this very important project," said Rick Edwards, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. Edwards also said the...

Image: The Ebola Virus More people hospitalized in Turkey, suspected having Ebola. (Taz). Three people suspected Ebola were hospitalized in the Turkish provinces of Izmir, Kahraman Marash and Konya, the Anadolu Turkish news agency said Oct.22. One of the hospitalized is a Turkish student who studies in Somalia and returned to his homeland, and the rest returned from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the number of hospitalized suspected Ebola in Turkey reached five people, four of whom are persons returned from the Hajj. Earlier it was reported that 45 special hospitals were allocated in 36 provinces of Turkey in...

<p>Muslim burial practices are being blamed for the spread of Ebola.</p> <p>Remains of Secretary General of The Nigeria Supreme General for Islamic Affairs and Seriki of Egbaland, Alhaji Lateeef Adegbite at his burial in 2012.</p> <p>Islam requires family members to personally wash the corpses of loved ones from head to toe. This practise is putting more Africans at risk to catch the disease that is spread by body fluids.</p>

Besides combat, what’s happening in northern Syria around the town of Kobani offers some interesting indications about the nature of the conflict with ISIS amid the Muslim world. I’m glad to see some dedicated U.S. air strikes in that area, but ISIS reinforcements are pouring in and the Kurdish forces aren’t receiving much in the way of supplies or weapons support. But what I find most interesting are the pictures of the Turkish Army tanks just sitting on a hilltop taking it all in – as interested bystanders. Furthermore, we know the Turks are now bombing the Kurdish people in...