The first breaking point in Turkey’s policy against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was the raid on the Turkish Consulate General in Mosul, Iraq on June 11, 2014.
On the afternoon of Jan. 1 a group of young men and women staged a brief public demonstration in a teahouse in Okmeydanı, a working-class neighborhood of Istanbul, declaring that they would struggle to keep Turkey’s secular system alive and not let the propagandists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or similar jihadist organizations recruit people in their area.
Turkey was shaken once again in the first hours of 2017, as one of Istanbul’s jet set nightclubs was raided by a gunman who killed 39 and wounded 65 people, four of whom are in a critical condition.
The Turkish military announced on Dec. 30 that Russian jets hit positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near the Syrian town of al-Bab.
The truce in Syria toward the end of the fifth year of the civil war was announced simultaneously by the Russian and Turkish foreign ministries on Dec. 29.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s statement on Dec. 28 that expanding the cease-fire to evacuate Aleppo across Syria was “at hand” thanks to talks with Russia has raised hopes and questions in equal measure.
A Hürriyet Daily News reader from Santa Barbara has written me a detailed and lengthy letter that actually echoes similar letters from other parts of the world.
Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım had another meeting on Dec. 26 with Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), with whom he is cooperating on the constitutional draft that proposes axing the parliamentarian system in Turkey and ushering in an executive presidency, as targeted by President Tayyip Erdoğan.
As soon as the news that a Russian military transport plane crashed in the Black Sea as it took off from Sochi on Dec. 25, killing all 92 aboard, reached Ankara, the Turkish leadership immediately sent their condolences to Moscow, as they should.
