In recent months, some media outlets have launched a smear campaign against Turkey by publishing and broadcasting news claiming that Turkey hosted and supported elements of Al Qaeda- linked terrorist groups in Syria. The slander went as far as accusing Turkey of training and allowing passage of those groups into Iraq and Syria through […]
Although they were tried and executed more than half a century ago, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s names remain familiar to most Americans. Executed on June 19, 1953, after their conviction for conspiracy to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II, the Rosenbergs were at the center of one […]
It is arguably the most influential book of the 20th century. It is certainly the most notorious. Should it be able to circulate freely, or is it simply too toxic? And in the era of the internet, can a ban on its publication even work? The book is Mein Kampf; the author, Adolf Hitler. The book has […]
The Turkish parliament on Oct. 2 passed a motion by a margin of 298-88 authorizing its forces to be deployed in Iraq and Syria in the case of a threat to national security. The bill, submitted by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, also allows for foreign troops to transit through Turkey and calls for the establishment […]
They are usually small in area and population, ethnically and religiously homogenous, well-off and situated in a peaceful part of the world, alongside neighbours who have no designs on them. What are they? Countries which go virtually unnoticed internationally. Yet they can be quite interesting. The quintessential example? Uruguay. A settler state like its big […]
On Sept. 20, for the first time in history, two Chinese warships docked at Iran’s principal naval port of Bandar Abbas, in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the gateway for at least 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas shipments. The ships are taking part in four days of joint naval exercises. One of […]
When it comes to its foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine, Israel walks a diplomatic tightrope. The Jewish state must take into consideration all kinds of factors: its relationship with both countries, one of them a great power; its alliance with the United States, which strongly backs Kiev in its struggle with Moscow; and the […]
This autumn marks a quarter-century since the demise of the Communist dictatorships in central and eastern Europe. It all began on Sept. 11, 1989, when Hungary, which had opened its border with Austria four months earlier, gave permission for thousands of East Germans who had arrived on “vacations” to leave the country, in order to […]
There are countries that are known to punch above their weight. For better or worse, one of these of late has been the Gulf state of Qatar. A tiny country of 11,571 square kilometers jutting out from the Arabian peninsula into the Persian Gulf, its only land neighbor is Saudi Arabia. Most of its population is […]
The demise of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 has led to Islamic militias fighting for control of the country. The overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003 has seen the country collapse, as a full-scale insurgency by Sunni Islamists has been mounted against the Shi’ite government in Baghdad. In Syria, a weakened Bashar al-Assad’s regime is […]