A delegation from Turkey was supposed to start an official visit on May 20 to see how foreign schools function in France with the aim to explore ways to open Turkish schools in the French territories.
When Tansu Çiller was serving as Turkey’s first woman prime minister between 1993 and 1996, the regional agenda between Ankara and Washington was made up of several crucial items. When she would meet the then U.S. President Bill Clinton, their regional agenda would start from the Caucasus, stretch to Kosovo, and with NATO and Middle Eastern issues, there would be little time left to talk about bilateral ties.
“If the Justice and Development Party loses the rerun of the Istanbul elections, it will be like a slap on its face. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would not have favored a rerun unless he was sure of an electoral victory,” a Western diplomat told me last week.
Donald Trump is not fond of Muslims, and every step he took has been detrimental for the Muslims in the Middle East. Likewise, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban is openly anti-Muslim. Russia is responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Syrian Muslims with the support it lends to Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
There are an estimated 1.2 million Syrians working informally in Turkey.
It has been a month since the local elections were held, and we still do not know the official result of Istanbul - Turkey’s most populated and economically-important city. Once again, the governing coalition is missing out on a tremendous opportunity to govern for four consecutive years without the disruption of an election.
Following the first explosion Sunday morning, seven additional bombings took place in a matter of 45 minutes, leaving 359 dead and more than 500 wounded in Sri Lanka. Two Turkish engineers working at the construction of the U.S. embassy were among the dead.
The serious blow dealt to ties with Pentagon as a result of Turkish refusal in 2003 to let U.S. soldiers pass through Turkey to attack Iraq is being retaliated.
For decades military agreements have set the tone in US – Turkish relations. Turkey’s strategic importance during the Cold War outweighed everything else.
