Free Republic

Former Arizona Senator and RINO Republican Jeff Flake who earned an appointment by Joe Biden as Ambassador to Turkey for his service to the Democrat Party began his tenure by interfering in the internal affairs of Turkey. His actions provoked a rebuke by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said he will not receive Biden’s appointee. Flake visited Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu at the center-left political party’s Ankara headquarters in late March. The visit conveyed a sense of U.S. support for his candidacy violating normal diplomatic protocol. Kilicdaroglu is Erdogan’s main opponent for the presidency, in the May...

Turkey’s incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared victory Sunday in his country’s runoff election, extending his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade. With nearly 99% of ballot boxes opened, unofficial results from competing news agencies showed Erdogan with 52% of the vote, compared with 48% for his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Much is being reported worldwide about the reelection Sunday of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and its impact on relations between Turkey and the U.S., Russia, China, and other world powers....According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the 40 jailed journalists in Turkey at the end of 2022 is a big increase over the 18 who were in prison in '21....Earlier this month, the Mezopotamya News Agency reported that since June of last year, 34 journalists in 21 counties have been rounded up by the Ankara Chief Public Defender's Office as part of an investigation into their ties...

The Turkish opposition held summit talks ahead of the decisive round of the presidential election today. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP) opposition candidate, performed much worse than they had hoped last weekend. That is why the opposition is now thinking about a new strategy. Kilicdaroglu (74) met with five other leaders of opposition parties about a new approach to defeat President Erdogan. May 28 decisive Kilicdaroglu performed worse in the first round than the polls had predicted. According to the official result he received 44.9 percent of the vote and President Erdogan received 49.5 percent. The opposition...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has addressed his supporters from the balcony of his AK Party headquarters in Ankara, and started off by singing a love song for his supporters waiting for him. He then started his speech by saying: "Someone is in the kitchen, we are in the balcony," as a reference to his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu who has published videos from his modest kitchen during the election campaign. He continued: "Even though the final results are not in, we are far ahead. We still don’t know the final official results, we are still waiting for the will of the nation...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his doors are closed for US ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake following the diplomat's meeting with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the presidential candidate for the opposition alliance. "What is (US President Joe) Biden's envoy doing? He goes and meets with Mr. Kemal. Shame on you, use your brain," Erdogan was quoted as saying by Turkey's Star newspaper on Sunday amid growing tension between Washington and Ankara. "You are an ambassador. Your interlocutor here is the president. How will you ask for a meeting with the president after this," Erdogan asserted, adding that his doors were now...

In an incident that took place less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vessel off the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty. Most of the areas within modern Greece's current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The islands, however,...