On Nov. 26, the editor-in-chief and the Ankara bureau chief of Cumhuriyet, Turkey’s oldest newspaper, were detained on the grounds that they had “divulged state secrets” after they published articles and videos alleging that Turkey’s intelligence agency smuggled weapons to jihadists in Syria. The editor-in-chief, Can Dundar, had been scheduled to speak at a conference on press freedom in the Middle East at Boston College. He decided at the last minute not to attend, “for fear something might happen at Cumhuriyet while he was gone,” as one of the conference organizers told me. His fears were not unfounded. Turkish Prime [...]
During Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Qatar in early December, Ankara and Doha signed a memorandum of understanding for the long-term trade of liquefied natural gas. While a final agreement has yet to be completed, it was still a significant step for gas-dependent Turkey, which is trying to diversify its sources of imported natural gas and reduce its reliance on Russia, which accounted for 57 percent of Turkey’s gas imports in 2013. With ties fraying between Ankara and Moscow after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet along the Turkish-Syrian border in November, raising the possibility of Russia [...]
More than five years have passed since relations between longtime friends Israel and Turkey unraveled. During that time, diplomats and politicians have made countless efforts to revive what was once a deep and productive bond. U.S. President Barack Obama even interceded personally at one point, a move that seemed to have succeeded in breaking the impasse. That was in 2013, at the end of Obama’s trip to Israel, when he nudged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Erdogan to take the call, in an effort to get the leaders of the two countries [...]
