Free Republic

Already suffering under sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of previous adventures, Russians will now be forced to endure additional strictures after Vladimir Putin issued a weekend directive slashing business ties with Turkey. Putin is said to be "incandescent" that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hasn't seen fit to apologize for the downing of a Russian jet that Ankara says violated Turkish air space. He refuses to take calls from Erdogan, has ignored a request to meet in Paris at the UN emissions summit, and vows that Turks will be made to suffer. Tourist packages and charter flights to...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Powerful Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim armed groups on Tuesday rejected and pledged to fight any deployment of U.S. forces to the country after the United States said it was sending an elite special operations unit to combat Islamic State. Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered few details on the new "expeditionary" group, but said it would be larger than the roughly 50 U.S. special operations troops being sent to Syria to fight the ultra-hardline Sunni militants there. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new force will be based in Iraq. "We will chase and...

Putin also extended his good wishes ahead of the "very bright" Jewish holiday of Hanukkah Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit on Monday. The two leaders, who last met in Moscow in September have reportedly agreed to deepen military coordination in order to avoid unwanted clashes in Syria, an Israeli official told i24news diplomatic correspondent Tal Shalev. During the meeting, Netanyahu told Putin that the "events of recent days prove the importance of our coordination, our de-confliction mechanisms, our attempts to cooperate with each other to prevent...

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet DavutoÄŸlu is one happy man. The reason is that the European Union is set to give in to every single one of his country's demands in order to do something about the refugee crisis. The EU wants Turkey to stem the refugee flow into Europe by taking care of them in Turkey. In return, Turkey wants 3 billion euros (around $3.2 billion US) in extra aid, visa-free traveling for Turks in EU-countries, and a re-launch of EU-accession talks. In other words: Turkey demands fast-track membership: "Today is a historic day in our accession process to the...

Erdogan more isolated than ever on Syria Erdogan’s "feel good moment" backfires The most notable consequence so far of Turkey’s shooting down a Russian fighter Nov. 24 has been a possible opening for a deepening of Russia’s cooperation with the US-led coalition against the Islamic State and a free fall in Turkish-Russian relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande agreed Nov. 26 to share information about targets in Syria and to strike “only terrorists.” Putin added that Russia is “ready to cooperate” with the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition. Credit for the inspired diplomacy of turning crisis into...

Russia is striking back after a "stab in the back by an accomplice to terrorists" by changing the "game" in Syria. Moscow's retaliation is not just about severing economic and diplomatic ties. It is pursuing a policy that could tie Turkey's hands in Syria. Ankara never received international backing for a safe zone across its border, but Russia has now ruled that out. The deployment of S-400 anti-air missiles means Russia has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over Syria. And now, Moscow seems to be moving closer to a group that has been the US-led coalition's main ground force in...

Terroist group Islamic State earns millions of dollars selling oil on the black market in Turkey, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie told RT. He also revealed that wounded terrorists are being treated in Turkish hospitals. “In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price,” Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an...

Airstrikes believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes killed at least 18 civilians and wounded dozens more on Sunday in a northern Syrian town held by insurgents, Syrian opposition media reported. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes struck the town of Ariha, killing at least 18 people, including four children, and wounding dozens more. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist collective, said the airstrikes struck a busy market, inflicting heavy casualties. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said the airstrike destroyed three buildings in the center of Ariha. Ariha...

We are at war, but life goes on in the US as if nothing is different. We are in a world war and yet the President of the United States can’t even acknowledge who and what we’re fighting. We are in a clash of civilizations and the West seeks leadership and a war strategy from the US and finds nothing. President Obama has signed off from reality like a TV station that broadcasts only static at 2 AM. We are at war and the US refuses to throw out a lifeline to the one country and leader that could help...

Israeli defense minister Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon confirmed Sunday that Russian military aircraft, on at least one occasion, have breached Israeli airspace–without confrontation. “When we understood that the Russians were planning to act inside Syria, we immediately met–also the prime minister–with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, including the [Israeli] chief of staff and the assistant chief of staff…we created an open channel for coordination so as to prevent misunderstandings, because Russian planes are not trying to attack us and therefore it is not necessary to automatically–even if there is a mistake–to shoot them down,” Ya’alon said, according to the Times of Israel....

Russia ups retaliatory action after downing of jet by Turkey; looks to ban Turkish agricultural imports amid other 'restrictive measures.' Russia is preparing a raft of retaliatory economic measures against Turkey after Ankara downed one of its warplanes, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday - with Israel among several countries likely to benefit as Moscow looks for alternative trading and tourism partners. "The government has been ordered to work out a system of response measures to this act of aggression in the economic and humanitarian spheres," Medvedev told a cabinet meeting in televised comments. He said under Russian law the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a series of economic sanctions against Turkey following the downing of Russian figher jet by Turkish forces earlier this week. A decree published on the Kremlin's website on Saturday came hours after Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced "sadness" over the incident, saying he wished it had not happened.

Ever since the Russian military launched its various airstrikes and ground activities in Syria all experts have warned of the possibility of provoked or unprovoked clashes. The recent downing of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet by Turkish F-16s must be evaluated through a regional perspective, and not a mere dispute between two countries. This incident has the potential to involve the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as many members of the powerful bloc have expressed their support behind Ankara. However, the most critical result of this significant change of events is the very important message received by Iran. Turkey is...

Israel's Ministry of Tourism is incentivising Russia's travel trade in a bid to redirect Russian tourists who have been deterred from travel to Turkey and Egypt to come to its Eilat resorts on the Red Sea primarily, but also to the Mediterranean in the Tel Aviv region. The Ministry has earmarked an extra ILS10m ($2.6m) to an existing campaign targeting Russians, according to Michal Gerstler, a spokesperson for the ministry. The additional funds follow the latest developments of a Russian fighter jet downed this week affecting travel to Turkey and a ban on Russians going to Egypt after a Russian...

Continued low oil prices and the war in Yemen have hit Saudi Arabia's budget so hard it is creating a special office to oversee government spending and cut waste. On Monday, the Saudi Press Agency published an item noting that Saudi Arabia was "willing to cooperate with OPEC and non-OPEC producers" to maintain a "stable" oil market. WTI retook $42, however analysts remain pretty pessimistic about hopes that the Gulf OPEC nations are in any mood to restrict production, which is hurting budgets but helping with certain political objectives, such as killing US shale and hurting arch-enemy, Iran. In a...

While Putin was shelling the terrorists on Thanksgiving, president Barack Obama signed the Pentagon funding bill which allows $500 million in aid to the very terrorists in Syria that Putin is frying. Obama couldn't find a better time to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2015 except on the eve of Thanksgiving. So while Obama funds terrorists on Thanksgiving to aid his 'Turkey' friend, Putin slaughters her little chicklings at Turkmen Mountain in Syria. On the 25th, Russia also destroyed Turkish convoy crossing the borders into Syria at Azaz which is a hub, where Turkish aid (weapons, ammunition,...

Turkish news editor prosecuted for blowing whistle on Turkey's alliance with ISIS The incident involving the shooting down of a Russian warplane by the Turkish military may have had to do with Turkey’s cooperation with the radical Islamic fighters in Syria and Russia’s decision to help the Arab dictator Bashar al-Assad fight both the Islamists and the secular rebel fighters attempting to over-throw Assad. In the aftermath of the Turkish military shooting down a Russian air force plane, the killing of its pilot, and the attack on a Russian rescue helicopter, the violence between those two nations is becoming more...

A Turkish official says a prominent lawyer, who faced a prison term on charges of supporting Turkey's Kurdish rebels, has been killed in attack. Firat Anli, mayor of Diyarbakir city, said Tahir Elci was shot on Saturday while he was making a press statement. Elci, the head of the bar association in the mainly Kurdish city, was detained last month for saying during a live news program that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is not a terrorist organization.

ISTANBUL--A prominent human-rights lawyer was shot dead on Saturday after wrapping up a news conference in which he had appealed for calm, sparking fresh protests across the country and clouding efforts to bring a halt to continuing violence in Turkey's Kurdish southeast. Tahir Elci, one of the country's best-known advocates for Kurdish rights, was shot in the head during a chaotic gunbattle in Diyarbakir, the de facto capital for Turkey's Kurdish minority, which broke out after the killing of a policeman. It was unknown who fired the shot that killed Mr. Elci, though Kurdish politicians believe he was shot deliberately.

A day after Turkey arrested two journalists for their report exposing Erdogan's weapons deliveries to "extremist groups" in Syria, confirming that no dissent to the president's foreign policy would be allowed, today a new riot has erupted in Istanbul following the dramatic murder in broad daylight of Tahir Elci, the president of the Turkish bar association in southeastern Diyarbakir province, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while giving a public speech. A campaigner for Kurdish rights, Elci had been criticized for challenging Turkey's official stance of calling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist organization. A Turkish prosecutor last...