Free Republic

One of the most influential Arab journalists in the world, Jamal Khashoggi, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have blamed the Saudis, but Riyadh has denied harming the veteran reporter.Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, one of the holiest cities in Islam. Like many Saudis at the time, Khashoggi left to study abroad. He earned a business administration degree in 1983 at Indiana State University in the United States.Career in journalismKhashoggi began his career as a reporter for the English language newspaper Saudi Gazette. He went on to work for...

Turkish police made a hundred arrests across Istanbul and nine other Turkish provinces connected with a wide-ranging investigation of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, 72, currently lives in Pennsylvania, but is considered a powerful “arch-foe” of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the Rudaw news service puts it. Gulen “runs an international Islamic network of schools, businesses, media outlets, and charity organizations from his exile home in Pennsylvania” and is “believed to be deeply influential in the Turkish judicial system and police,” according to Rudaw. In fact, he is so influential that Erdogan has accused him of trying to...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's younger son Bilal Erdogan, who was one of the prime suspects in Turkey's largest corruption case ever which was revealed on Dec. 17-25, 2013, has settled in the city of Bologna in Italy, along with his wife and children following the June 7 parliamentary election in which the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) that President Erdogan founded lost its majority in Parliament, a Turkish daily has reported. According to the Cumhuriyet daily, Erdogan's son moved to Italy following the election to continue his Ph.D. education at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in...