Free Republic

U.S. prosecutors last month charged a former Turkish economy minister and the ex-head of a state-owned bank with conspiring to violate Iran sanctions by illegally moving hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on Tehran’s behalf.

Poland hopes Turkey will eventually join the European Union, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday, days ahead of an EU summit which will discuss the frayed relations between Brussels and Ankara. The EU, particularly heavyweight member Germany, has become increasingly critical of Turkey since President Tayyip Erdogan launched large-scale purges of state institutions, the military, the judiciary and academia after a failed coup in July 2016.

AIN ISSA, SYRIA (Reuters) - A group of Islamic State fighters evacuated the Syrian city of Raqqa overnight, taking civilians with them as human shields, a militia spokesman told Reuters on Sunday. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, continued to battle Islamic State jihadists who remain in the city, SDF spokesman Mostafa Bali said.

Turkey’s latest intervention in the Syria conflict appears to reflect a 180-degree shift in its policy of backing Al Qaeda-linked takfiris and a range of largely fundamentalist insurgents, as well as the Saudi-sponsored Syrian opposition with the aim of bringing down President Bashar Assad. Last weekend, Turkish tanks, armoured vehicles and troops gathered in the western sector of the border between Turkey and Syria and exchanged fire with Al Qaeda’s Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham, a coalition headed by Jabhat Fatah Al Sham (formerly Jabhat Al Nusra). Ankara is deploying Syrian insurgents belonging to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), allegedly,...

A Wall Street Journal reporter has been sentenced by a Turkish court to 25 months in prison for publishing an article deemed to be terrorist propaganda by the increasingly authoritarian Turkish government. The sentence against Ayla Albayrak, a Journal reporter previously based in Istanbul, was in response to an Aug. 19, 2015, article Albayrak wrote entitled, “Urban Warfare Escalates in Turkey’s Kurdish-Majority Southeast.”

AKP-MHP have been revealed to be arming some Turkmens in Kirkuk. Erdoğan has sent thousands of infantry weapons to Turkmens in Kirkuk while hundreds of men have received training to provoke unrest in Kirkuk. Turkey has had plans for Kirkuk for a long time. Turkey uses the Turkmens in Kirkuk as an excuse from time to time, in various schemes, and claims that Kirkuk falls within the bounds of the Misak-i Milli (“National Pact”), and is therefore a province of Turkey. In this past month, citing the referendum held in Southern Kurdistan as an excuse, Turkey issued various threats against...

ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan blamed the U.S. ambassador to Turkey on Tuesday for a diplomatic crisis between the two countries and said Ankara no longer considered him Washington’s envoy. In a blunt and personal attack on outgoing ambassador John Bass, Erdogan suggested Bass acted unilaterally in suspending visa services in Turkey after the arrest of a U.S. consulate worker, and said “agents” had infiltrated U.S. missions.

Turkey has also suspended visa services in the US. Prosecutors are seeking another consulate worker for questioning as a suspect, the state news agency reports. snip It said the suspect's wife and child had been detained in the city of Amasya, in northern central Turkey.

The Turkish government is still in talks with Washington about the possible sale of Patriot missile defense systems, a senior Turkish official said Friday. Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Öztürk Yılmaz, who visited Washington last week, told a group of Turkish journalists on Friday that Turkey contacted Americans about the Patriot systems two to three weeks ago. The Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed Yılmaz's remarks and said that Turkey was routinely conducting this kind of talks and Turkish expectations on the deal has not changed. "For us, technology transfer and joint production...

Turkey’s targeting of dissident academics seems to have crossed the borders of the country. Academic freedom in Europe and in the U.S. is being stymied by the Turkish government and nationalist groups. Most recently, Turkey targeted a conference held September 15 to 18 at the European Academy Berlin entitled “Past in the Present: European Approaches to the Armenian Genocide.” It was part of the “Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship (WATS),” a series founded by the University of Michigan in 2000. It was co-organized by the University of Michigan, the Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies of the University of Southern California...

The budding bromance between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may finally be on the rocks. It’s not as if the Turks haven’t given us plenty of reasons to be upset with them already, but the recent arrest of of one of our embassy workers in Istanbul seems to have been the straw which at least put a crack in the camel’s back.This wasn’t even an American citizen who was taken in. It was a Turkish worker at the embassy who was charged with having ties to Cleric Fethullah Gulen (which is the same charge that the...

Plenty of us have been saying this for almost a year now or at least suspected it strongly. The Tyrant of Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been taking and holding American citizens prisoner since last winter, supposedly on charges of being conspirators (or at least sympathizers) in the failed coup attempt in Turkey last summer. One of the longest held is Pastor Andrew Brunson, who we’ve written about at length here. But now Erdogan has taken additional Americans captive, possibly more than a dozen, all of whom he alleges are somehow in league with exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen,...

The U.S. embassy in Turkey announced Sunday that it has suspended all non-immigrant visa services to Turkish citizens “effective immediately.”“Recent events have forced the United States government to reassess the commitment of the government of Turkey to the security of U.S. Mission facilities and personnel,” the embassy said in a statement. In response, the Turkish government suspended visas for Americans, using much of the same language the U.S. embassy used in its statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara on Oct. 8 announced that it had suspended all non-immigrant visa services at its diplomatic facilities in Turkey. "Recent events have forced the United States Government to reassess the commitment of the Government of Turkey to the security of US Mission facilities and personnel. In order to minimize the number of visitors to our Embassy and Consulates while this assessment proceeds, effective immediately we have suspended all non-immigrant visa services at all U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey," the Embassy said in a statement issued on its Twitter account. Statement from the U.S. Mission to Turkey...

The KAPLAN MT Modern Medium Weight Tank, first tank-class vehicle exported by Turkey's defense industry, was presented to the public Thursday by the Indonesian Army in Cilegon during an official parade on National Armed Forces Day. The parade in the coastal West Java city included nearly 6,000 soldiers and Indonesia's most modern imported weaponry including warships, helicopters, submarines and the KAPLAN MT tank. Pindad Chairman Abraham Mose told Anadolu Agency he is pleased by the completion of the tank project. "This project is the proof that we can produce high technology defense vehicles with our own efforts without being dependent...

Erdoğan continues with his insults and threats against KDP Leader Masoud Barzani. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech at a meeting where he gathered a group of people from Northern Kurdistan he dubbed “opinion leaders”. Erdoğan reacted to KDP Leader Masoud Barzani because of the referendum and said: “You are governing over a state. Even if it is a state within a country, you are governing over a state. Your borders and air fields will be closed now, how are you going to get out? What kind of governance is this? You are done, before you even began.”...

October 7, 2016. It’s been almost one year since Dr. Andrew Brunson was unjustly imprisoned without charges in Turkey. Imagine spending a year in a Turkish prison as a hostage. Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea what is really happening in Turkey. Turkey has long been an ally of the United States, but has chosen to complicate and weaken its relationship with the United States and other free nations of the world through its increasingly oppressive policies. On August 25, 2017, the Turkish government issued two new emergency decrees. Article 74 of decree 694 states that “with the exclusion of...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photo: File.Dear President Erdogan,I have been in your country scores of times, and have developed close and friendly relations with many Turks from all walks of life; these people all took pride in the incredible progress that Turkey made under your leadership.During your first ten years as prime minister, you transformed Turkey economically, socially and politically, and put the country on the path to greatness as an emerging regional and global power. That is why, Mr. Erdogan, it pains me to witness a once-great reformer destroying his own impressive achievements. You have chosen this destructive path...

The new school year has started this month in Turkey, but Assyrian Christians, otherwise known as Syriacs or Chaldeans, still do not have a single primary school in the country where they could learn their native language and culture. The Istanbul-based newspaper Agos reported that the activists of the Syriac community applied to the Ministry of National Education in 2012 to get its permission and support to open a Syriac kindergarten in Istanbul. When their application was rejected, they took on a legal struggle and were finally able to open the Mor Efrem kindergarten without any economic support from the...

Turkey and Russia are aggressively conspiring against U.S. interests in Syria. That's my takeaway from the joint press conference on Thursday, between Presidents Erdogan and Putin in Turkey. First off, on Syria, Putin stated that Turkey and Russia have agreed to a cease-fire in Syria's north-eastern Idlib province. That statement might sound positive, but with Idlib the last major holdout of the Sunni rebellion fighting the Assad-Putin-Iran axis, Putin's words suggest that Erdogan is about to cut-off the rebel supply lines from Turkey. As I warned last December, Russia's endgame has always been the annihilation of the rebels in Idlib....