Letters of intention from France and Germany to use Turkey’s strategic İncirlik air base in their operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - or “Daesh” in the Arabic shorthand that governments prefer to use - reportedly reached Ankara this week
At Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport on Nov. 30, Turkish military officers, alongside military attaches of the Russian Embassy in Ankara, saluted the Russian flag-covered coffin of Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov before loading it onto a Turkish military cargo plane bound for Moscow
The Turkish people had not even digested the war plane crisis with Russia which broke on Nov. 24 and then the arrest of two journalists reporting on an intelligence-involved probe in relation to Syria on Nov. 26 when the bad news hit the wires from the predominantly Kurdish populated southeastern Diyarbakır province on Nov. 28
Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of center-left daily Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gül, the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, were arrested on the evening of Nov. 26 by an Istanbul court on heavy charges including military espionage, helping a terrorist organization and revealing state secrets
Turkey is currently going through dire straits - and not only due to ongoing tension with Russia over the downed jet on Nov. 24 near the Syrian border
The shooting down of the Russian war plane by Turkish jets by the Syrian border on Nov. 24 caused many capitals around the world to hold their breath for a few hours
The Russian Su-24 plane downed by Turkish F-16s on the morning of Nov. 24 near the Syrian border was the first Russian (or Soviet) war plane hit and downed by a NATO country since the organization was founded in 1949, after World War II
Combined joint special forces operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq could be a possibility in the coming days, said John Allen, who has just handed over his position as the anti-ISIL coordinator for U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at a security conference in Halifax, Canada on Nov. 21
“The next wave of attack: Terror on the trains” is one of the topics scheduled to be discussed at the International Security Forum in Halifax, Canada, between Nov. 20 and 22
