Free Republic

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israel must withdraw its forces from Syria or it will cause “unfavorable outcomes for everyone.” “The aggressive actions of the forces attacking Syrian territory, Israel, in particular, must come to an end as soon as possible,” he said during a meeting of his party in Ankara. “Everyone should take their hands off Syria and we, along with our Syrian brothers, will crush the heads of Islamic State, the YPG and other terrorist organizations in a short time.”

The Metsamor archaeological site is located near the village of Taronik, in the Armavir Province of Armenia, where the oldest trace of human settlement dates from the 4th millennium BC during the Copper Age.In the Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages, the site became an important religious and economic centre, developing into a city with many temples and sanctuaries, fortified by a citadel and cyclopean walls, and an advanced economy based on metallurgical production.Recent excavations have uncovered a sunken chamber framed by large stones, containing the remains of a wooden burial and two skeletons who died at the age of...

Call it the dark side of liberation. America’s most loyal allies in Syria, the Kurds, are now facing the wrath of Turkish proxies that helped topple Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny earlier this month. As of now neither President Joe Biden nor president-elect Donald Trump have offered any guarantees for the survival of the 200,000 Kurds who are now at risk of being cleansed from the northeastern city of Kobani and surrounding areas. “We feel betrayed,” Ilham Ahmed, a Kurd who serves as the de facto foreign minister for the North and East Syrian administration, told The Free Press in an interview...

Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli called for the internartional coomunity to grant and recognize the independence of Kurdistan as Kurdish regions in northern Syria face attacks from Turkey and Turkish-backed rebel groups. "Kurdistan must be granted independence, while Erdoğan should be expelled from NATO and left to crown himself as the caliph of an Islamic state, ruling alongside his friends in ISIS and Al-Qaeda," Chikli wrote on X. Chikli's comments were made in response to an interview given by a Kurdish journalist in Syria with Israel's Kan News channel. .....

Syrian Kurdish commanders seek Israel's help amid territorial losses to Turkish-backed Islamist forces. The assessment is that intervention would escalate tensions with Turkey. ===================================================================== The Israeli defense establishment is weighing requests for assistance from Syria's Kurdish minority, who are under attack from Turkish-backed Islamist groups. The appeals for help have reached Israeli officials in recent days following the advancement of these groups and their successful capture of Kurdish-held territories. Israel and the Kurdish forces have maintained an ongoing dialogue, which has strengthened significantly following the fall of the Assad regime. The Israeli dilemma stems partly from the potential impact such...

Meeting on the margins of the Doha Forum, in Qatar, Turkey, Russia, and Iran urged the Syrian opposition to heed the call to end the fighting and to preserve Syria as an integrated and united country.Amid reports that Russian diplomats are fleeing Damascus in the face of the lightning opposition advance...Earlier this year, Assad had refused to speak to Turkey so long as Turkish forces remained in Syria. This refusal led the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to give the implicit green light to militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last month to mount its stunningly successful attacks on Aleppo, and...

• Syrian rebels are speeding toward the major city of Homs, where residents are fleeing ahead of potential clashes between the rebels and regime forces. • The rebels seized Hama to the north on Thursday, the second major city taken from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in just over a week of fighting. • A new uprising has also emerged in the southern Daraa province, with rebels there claiming to have taken a major military base and announcing that their “destination is Damascus.” • Russia’s embassy in Syria has urged its citizens to leave the country, citing “the difficult military and...

President Erdoğan stated the West’s progress is built on blood, tears, massacres, genocide, and exploitation and that the chapter of the West’s dominance is coming to a close…

Abstract===================================== The Armenians are a culturally isolated population who historically inhabited a region in the Near East bounded by the Mediterranean and Black seas and the Caucasus We find that Armenians form a distinctive cluster linking the Near East, Europe, and the Caucasus. We show that Armenian diversity can be explained by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3000 and ~2000 bce, a period characterized by major population migrations after the domestication of the horse, appearance of chariots, and the rise of advanced civilizations in the Near East. However, genetic signals of population mixture cease after ~1200 bce...

Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically inhabiting the Armenian highlands, were long believed to be descendants of Phrygian settlers from the Balkans. This theory originated largely from the accounts of the Greek historian Herodotus, who observed that Armenians were armed in Phrygian fashion when serving in the Persian army. Linguists further supported this theory, suggesting that the Armenian language shares ties with the Thraco-Phrygian subgroup of Indo-European languages.But the first whole-genome study challenges this long-held belief, revealing no significant genetic link between Armenians and the populations in the Balkan region. The study compares newly generated modern Armenian genomes and...

LBJ’s corrupt ghost still haunts South Texas during this most most important of American elections. The Commander Jay Furman for Congress Campaign reports that an alarming number of voters in Webb County Texas (Laredo) were not presented with correct electronic ballots during Early Voting. Apparently robbed of their most sacred American voice, the good citizens of Webb County are not surprised that the race to replace Department of Justice indicted (28-count) U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar is fraught with such bold injustice. Beginning several days into early voting, the campaign received reports from voters that Furman’s name was not appearing on...

“I smell cigarette smoke,” one of my travel companions noted. That was the moment I knew that we should not linger any longer. We had been warned twice on the way up the hillside not to come here. In one instance, it was claimed that two treasure hunters had been arrested by the police a week or two earlier. In the other case, we were told that if the military or police caught us there, we would be arrested. Such is the experience of interrupting the destruction of Armenian cultural sites in Turkey. There are few photographs of the monastery...

Could Finland´s next President be a foreigner? Finland´s current President Alexander Stubb speaking to the public. Finland´s President Alexander Stubb Credit: Alexander Stubb, Facebook Finland´s future President may be a foreigner, said current President Alexander Stubb during a recent presidential Q&A session on the local Yle Radio Suomi. The Finnish President emphasised that 10 per cent of residents in Finland have foreign backgrounds and argued that the future could see a foreign national leading the country. “Racism should not be politicised. Every nation has to go through this discussion,” emphasised Stubb. “In Finland, 10 per cent of people were not...

ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.Erdogan, who has been a fierce critic of Israel's offensive in Gaza, started discussing that war during a speech praising his country's defence industry."We must be very strong so that Israel can't do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them," Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party...

ISTANBUL, July 12 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it is not possible for NATO to continue its partnership with the Israeli administration. "Until comprehensive, sustainable peace is established in Palestine, attempts at cooperation with Israel within NATO will not be approved by Turkey," Erdogan said at a news conference at the NATO summit. Turkey also continues its diplomatic efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, he said. Erdogan said as well that he has instructed Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to start to restore relations with Syria.

Steve Forbes warns that a major war between Israel and Iran, which could bring in more nations, is nearly inevitable.

A jury of eight generals started deliberating the fate of Air Force Major General Phillip Stewart accused of sexual assault and derelection of duty.... Two killed in Iran when gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying ballot boxes... The US military aid pier in Gaza moved yet again due to poor weather conditions. And it may not be reinstalled... Armenia set to participate in a Washington DC summit July 9-11 celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO... Five missiles landed in close proximity to a merchant vessel in the Red Sea... In France the latest polls ahead of the first-round vote for the...

Muslims never guilty of 'terrorist massacres,' Turkey's Erdogan insistsTurkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly bizarre rhetoric continued this week when he told reporters Muslims have "never taken part in terrorist massacres" and appeared to blame the West for the recent Islamist attacks in Paris.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko made an antisemitic statement Saturday during his government meeting in which he hinted at a connection between Jews and theft. He referred to a corruption case involving his former aide, the governor of the Vitebsk region and former Minister of Agriculture and Food Igor Brylo, as well as dozens of other people. "There are 36 people on the list. Sorry, I don't consider myself antisemitic, but more than half of them are Jewish. Do they have a special, privileged role, that they steal and do not think about their future? Do they have privileges? All peoples...

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The leader of Armenia on Wednesday declared his intention to pull out of a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet nations as tensions rise between the two allies. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a grouping that includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia earlier froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed CSTO summits. Pashinyan said Wednesday for the...