Free Republic

While Syria celebrates overthrowing its longtime dictator, it is also being subjected to a new ground incursion and a wave of airstrikes from its neighbor Israel that drew growing international condemnation and concern Tuesday. Saudi Arabia said the actions "confirm Israel's continued violations of the principles of international law," and called upon the international community to respect Syria's "territorial integrity." Iran also condemned the Israeli military's movements, describing them as a violation of the United Nations Charter and calling for immediate action from the U.N. Security Council. And U.S. NATO ally Turkey said Israel was "once against displaying its occupying...

Erdogan said in July that Turkey would extend an invitation to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "any time" for possible talks to restore relations between the two neighbors. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Islamic countries should form an alliance against what he called "the growing threat of expansionism" from Israel. He made the comment after describing what Palestinian and Turkish officials said was the killing by Israeli troops of a Turkish-American woman taking part in a protest on Friday against settlement expansion in the West Bank. "The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state...

Turkey is following an increasingly aggressive policy of getting top museums around the world to return its heritage. Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertugrul Gunay says that in the last decade, more than 4,000 artifacts had been brought back to Turkey from world museums and collections... Gunay says when you visit the world's big museums in the US, England, France, Germany, you see that most of the precious artifacts came from Turkey, Italy, Egypt and Greece. Some of these, he says, were looted, and he is fighting to get back historical artifacts that went to the big museums of the...