Turkey - Page 6

A fire raged through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey early Tuesday during a school holiday.

United Nations refugee commissioner Filippo Grandi reported on Saturday that almost 200,000 refugees have returned to Syria since Iran- and Russia-backed dictator Bashar Assad was overthrown by a jihadi insurgency in early December.

An attempt was made to destroy the final working pipeline carrying Russian gas energy into Europe, Moscow claims.

Leaders in Syrian Kurdistan asked the United States this week to provide protective troops and become more involved in keeping the peace as they face an ongoing campaign by Turkish proxy forces to eradicate them.

Multiple reports from northern Syria on Thursday indicated that the U.S. military is reinforcing its presence in Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava, potentially building a new base in the city of Kobani.

Syrian Kurds find themselves in a difficult position after the fall of dictator Bashar Assad, as Islamists seize power in Damascus and Turkey seeks to carve out a slice of Syrian territory along its border.

An explosion killed 11 people and wounded 7 at an explosives factory in northwestern Turkey, prompting an investigation.

Iraqi parliamentarian Habib Al-Halawi, leader of the Al-Sadiqoon parliamentary bloc in Iraq, declared in a recent interview that his forces would kill Americans “like we killed this fly,” while invoking the deaths of key figures as a rallying cry for jihad and martyrdom.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey repeated a pledge Saturday to conquer Jerusalem during a speech in Mardin, Turkey, raising eyebrows and signaling new tensions in the relationship with Israel.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is urging governments to rescind their terrorist designations of Syrian insurgents Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Western powers, including the United States, are tentatively opening lines of communication to the new rulers of Syria — an alliance of Islamists led by an al-Qaeda splinter group whose boss is, inconveniently, a designated terrorist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

President-elect Donald Trump described the collapse of the Bashar Assad regime as the culmination of years of interference by Turkey.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia allied with America, confirmed on Monday that a short-lived truce with Islamist Turkish proxies in the country had collapsed due to Turkey’s intransigence.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya claimed on Sunday that 7,621 Syrian refugees “returned voluntarily” from Turkey between December 9-13.

A senior official within the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas admitted to a Saudi media outlet that the October 7 terror attack caused the destruction of the organization because of the ferocity of Israel’s response.

Selcuk Bayraktar, chief technology officer of Turkey’s drone powerhouse Baykar, said on Thursday that Turkish companies now control 65 percent of the worldwide market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia in northern Syria that played an instrumental role in toppling the Islamic State “caliphate,” said on Thursday that it was preparing to send a delegation to the Sunni jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group currently in charge of the country.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a brief visit to Turkey on Friday to meet with Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his counterpart Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, intended to discuss the collapse of the Assad dynasty in Syria and the ongoing war between Israel and the genocidal jihadists of Hamas.

The head of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia in the country allied with the United States, said in an interview on Wednesday that his fighters had stopped their efforts against the Islamic State in light of the ongoing assault against Kurds by a Turkish proxy force.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will begin a brief trip to the Middle East on Wednesday with stops in Jordan and Turkey.

The Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy force in the neighboring country, captured the Kurdish-held city of Manbij, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw confirmed on Tuesday, a day before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claimed to take the city of Deir ez-Zor.

Archbishop Boutros Marayati of Syria’s second city, Aleppo, told his congregation last week the city’s Islamist conquerors provided “assurances” Christians and other religious minorities could “continue living normally.”

Russia may lose its base at the Syrian port of Tartus after the fall of dictator Bashar Assad, which would deprive the Russians of their only fueling port on the Mediterranean Sea and cripple Moscow’s ability to threaten the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from the south.

Syrian rebels who overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday are reportedly executing their opponents, imposing Islamic sharia law, and threatening non-Muslim minorities, including the Kurdish population in the north.

Turkish mayors belonging to the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) are offering Syrian refugees free one-way tickets back home, now that dictator Bashar Assad has been overthrown.

Three young men arrested in Germany for allegedly holding strong sympathies with the Islamic State and making preparations for an attack.

Russia’s top Kremlin spokesman confirmed on Monday that strongman Vladimir Putin made the ultimate decision to grant political asylum to former Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and his family.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday urged the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to consider teaming up with Turkish forces against the Kurds.

The Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) notified the Islamist government of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan six months ago that it had a plan of conquest to overthrow former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Reuters reported on Monday.

Two Turkish military helicopters collided in midair on Monday, causing one of them to crash and killing five military personnel on board, an official said. The second helicopter landed safely.

The foreign minister of Iran traveled to Baghdad on Friday for a meeting to discuss, alongside his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts, how to address the surging campaign by Sunni jihadists to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

oth Kurdish forces in Syria and humanitarian organizations on the ground warned this week that militias backed by Turkey are seizing territory in northern Syria and endangering Kurdish civilians, including potentially engaging in “ethnic cleansing.”

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed Syrian militia group led by Syrian Kurdish forces, said on Tuesday that its fighters clashed with Syrian government troops and took control of seven villages near Deir al-Zor, potentially opening a new front against the regime of dictator Bashar Assad.

Hundreds of Iran-backed Shiite militia fighters from Iraq have reportedly crossed the border into Syria to help dictator Bashar Assad battle a surprise offensive from Islamist insurgents in Aleppo.