TEL AVIV – Backed up by U.S. drones and American military advisers, Turkey on Wednesday launched a major military incursion across the border into neighboring Syria, deploying special operations ground forces and tanks while simultaneously launching airstrikes targeting Islamic State strongholds.
The Turkish government has been stepping back from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s claim that the suicide bomber who killed 54 people at a Kurdish wedding on Saturday, many of them children, was a child aged 12 to 14 himself.
The crackdown on journalists and media outlets with unfavorable outlooks towards the Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues in Turkey, where a Hurriyet reporter has been arrested for tweeting a rumor that the head of Turkey’s intelligence agency had been a suspect in last month’s failed coup.
Bomb blasts in two cities in southeast Turkey killed nine civilians and wounded dozens on Wednesday, security sources said, blaming the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the coordinated attacks targeting police.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London has published a report asserting that over 100 Americans are fighting alongside anti-ISIS militias in Iraq and Syria, making up over a third of the foreign recruits for those militia groups.
The victory clinched by the Syrian army in Aleppo on Wednesday is a turning point in the Syrian conflict as well as global diplomacy at large, according to the assessment of an Arab diplomat speaking to Breitbart Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, American military officials announced that U.S.-backed Arab and Kurdish fighters in Syria have seized an enormous trove of data from various Islamic State strongholds, weighing in at over four terabytes in size. The data is now being analyzed by the United States and other anti-ISIS coalition nations.
The first rule to building a wartime alliance is not to lose the allies you already have. Sadly, that rule seems unknown or is being willfully ignored by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.
Contents: Hard issues prevent full reconciliation between Turkey and Russia; Turkey’s reconciliation with Egypt appears to be unlikely
In a special parliamentary session to address terrorism following a suspected Islamic State attack on Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport, Turkey’s Interior Minister unveiled a plan to destroy Kurdish separatist marijuana fields.
A group of 137 women, part of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, graduated from military training under the Kurdish Peshmerga militia. The women are expected to join the front lines in the war against the Islamic State.
Islamic State militants kidnapped dozens of Kurdish civilians Tuesday in the region around Aleppo in northern Syria, in response to major losses suffered to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in recent days.
Saudi Arabia’s official daily Okaz published an article attacking the U.S. for allowing the “great terrorist Satan” Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force – the covert external wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – to attack the Islamic-State-controlled city of Fallujah in Iraq.
British soldiers working to dislodge the Islamic State from Libya are using loud Bollywood music — the percussion-heavy genre popularized by Indian films — to annoy and disorient the enemy, according to multiple reports.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Russia of using Iraqi and Syrian pipelines to smuggle weapons to the Kurdish separatists of the PKK. The next day brought a demand from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Turkey remove all its troops from Iraq.
The Rudaw news service reports that provincial authorities in Erbil expect up to 900,000 refugees to flee the war zones of Fallujah and Mosul into Iraqi Kurdistan, but the central government in Baghdad has been slow to coordinate with the Kurds.
Contents: Downed EgyptAir flight an economic disaster for Egypt; A dark shadow looms over EU-Turkey refugee deal, as Turkey passes harsh anti-Kurdish law
JAFFA, Israel – Washington’s hands-off approach to the Middle East has never been as apparent as during the last few weeks, an Arab diplomat told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Following a week that has seen multiple fistfights erupt in the Turkish Parliament, minority party co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş has threatened to take his Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and form a separate governing legislature.
A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed when the Islamic State broke through Kurdish lines to attack a Peshmerga position “approximately three to five kilometers behind the forward line of troops,” according to Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook.
The Turkish parliament dissolved into shoves, punches, and even a few wrestling-style dives during a debate over proposed changes to the national constitution.
Christian Assyrian forces launched a counterattack against the Kurdish police Asayish in northern Syria’s Qamishli.
Four Turkish academics go on trial Friday for “terrorist propaganda” in the latest of a series of court cases that have highlighted growing restrictions on free speech under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Across town, journalists accused of divulging state secrets
On Tuesday, Germany’s Der Spiegel published a lengthy interview with Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Kurd-aligned HDP Party of Turkey. Demirtas leveled some serious allegations against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying the Kurds stood in the way of Erdogan’s creating an Islamic State-style (ISIS/ISIL) “Caliphate” of his own, and warning that Erdogan’s war against the Kurds could make the already-fearsome refugee crisis in Europe even worse.
Kurdish women continue to pick up arms in Iraq to fight against the Islamic State, emboldened by the fact that jihadis believe being killed by a woman means Allah will not reward them with virgins.
Fox News reports that “members of the broad coalition poised to retake the key city” of Mosul have admitted the long-awaited decisive battle against the Islamic State has stalled because Iraqi forces broke and ran from battle again.
Turkish nationalists have marched through a major Germany city, allegedly inciting sectarian hatred towards Kurds and chanting: “With Allah’s help, we shall conquer you”. The 400-strong group was identified as the Grey Wolves Pan-Turkist group, which has a long history
An explosion some outlets are attributing to a car bomb has struck the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir, the nation’s largest Kurdish population center.
A fighter for the Kurdish Peshmerga named Ferhang tells Breitbart News Daily with host Stephen K. Bannon: “We are very determined to fight the evil that is in front of us. The Peshmerga are fighting this evil for the world. That’s why I think it’s important for the world to support the Peshmerga against this evil.”
Iraqi army troops, due to bad weather conditions, were forced to suspend their offensive to seize back Mosul, northern Iraq’s largest second city that was conquered by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) last year, according to the Iraqi peshmerga forces commander.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces fighting alongside the Iraqi military on the mission to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State warn that the Iraqi army is “too weak” to fight ISIS, even with its advanced weaponry, while the peshmerga is better trained but ill-equipped to fight alone.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The ultimate decision of whether or not Kurds should be allowed to establish their own region in northern Syria lies with the Syrian people, according to the U.S. Department of State (DOS).
As the Kurds of Syria are moving ahead with plans to create their own federal region, the speaker of the Kurdistan parliament suggested partitioning Iraq might resolve its “age-old fears and tension.”
Mohamad Jamal Khweis, the Virginia resident taken into custody by Kurdish fighters after he bailed on the Islamic State, delivered the understatement of the year when he told a Kurdish TV interviewer that he “made a bad decision” by joining ISIS and “was not thinking straight.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary of State John Kerry, under mounting pressure, has determined that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, Shiite groups, and other minorities in areas it controls.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned that “Armageddon” could begin in Syria if a satisfactory peace agreement is not worked out soon. He proceeded to make it clear Iran will not accept the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, making such a peace agreement much more difficult to negotiate.
Turkey bombed camps in Iraq belonging to Kurdish separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Monday, after declaring the PKK complicit in last weekend’s devastating car bomb attack on Ankara.
Kurdish peshmerga fighters say they have detained an American, 27-year-old Virginia resident Muhammad Jamal Amin, after he defected from the Islamic State and tried to escape into Turkey.
The Turkish government has made increasingly confident declarations of responsibility for the deadly Ankara car bomb attack this weekend, which is now said to have killed at least 37 people.
A Turkish court has issued a gag order, banning Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets following a bombing in the capital, Ankara, which killed 37 people and injured dozens others.
