The Turkish government on Oct. 20 strongly reacted against photos of militants standing in the Syrian city of Raqqa in front of a giant poster of Abdullah Öcalan, the founding leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU and Turkey.
Without even mentioning a parliamentary vote the night before that approved giving authority to local muftis to conduct official marriages, Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya said on Oct. 19 in a meeting in Istanbul that the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) had “upgraded the status of women” in Turkish society and would never let it deteriorate.
How many times will Kurds revolt for independence, thinking that either Britain, France, or especially the United States will support them? How many more times will they fail to draw the lesson that they will eventually inevitably be abandoned?
President Tayyip Erdoğan has been in serious rifts with Turkey’s Western allies the U.S. and the European Union for some time. “We don’t need you” rhetoric is heard increasingly frequently, despite the desperate efforts of Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek and Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekçi trying to persuade investors abroad that everything is OK in Turkey and problems are only temporary.
One day after telling the U.S. that “we do not need you” on Oct. 12, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan gave the European Union the same message: “We do not need you.”
Dialogue between Turkey and the U.S. started a night before work started for a telephone rendezvous between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Oct. 11.
Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s words in his Oct. 10 address to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) group in parliament regarding the ongoing crisis with the U.S. were unusually strong.
The closure of the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey in 1975 to non-NATO U.S. flights was considered the lowest ever point in relations between Ankara and Washington.
President Tayyip Erdoğan received applause last week in parliament when he recited the lyrics of a famous Turkish love song - “I may come without warning, one night” – referring to a possible military operation into northern Iraq if the Kurdish autonomous government there does not step back from its decision for independence from Iraq.
