If there are no last-minute changes, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission is expected to release its report on Turkey’s constitutional amendment package on March 13.
Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani was in Turkey on Feb. 26 and 27 for meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım. Barzani’s visit followed his meeting with Yıldırım in Germany on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Ankara and Moscow will hold a high-level cooperation council meeting on March 9 and 10 in St. Petersburg. The meeting will be headed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the participation of a handful of ministers from both sides.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will officially launch its campaign for the April 16 referendum in Ankara on Feb 25, kicking off its seven-week-long work aimed at garnering no less than 55 percent of votes to have constitutional amendments approved by the Turkish people. As usual, it is planned to be a massive event with big crowds attending the launch.
The turning point in the years-long Syrian unrest was the launch of a Turkish-Russian cooperation, which evacuated civilians and rebels from Aleppo and saved the lives of around 40,000 people through a cease-fire brokered between the Syrian regime and the opposition groups.
With around two months to go till voting, the million dollar question is whether or not the Turkish public will vote in favor of the constitutional amendments package that overhauls the political system and introduces a Turkish-style presidential model.
Multiple things are happening at the same time in the Syrian theater. In the last week, Turkish troops and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) made important progress in their offensive on al-Bab in a bid to capture the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists. S
Following a two-week recess, Turkish lawmakers returned to their legislative duties on Feb. 7, as the four political parties also brought together their parliamentary groups
A presidential memorandum recently signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to instruct the Pentagon to develop a comprehensive plan to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIL) ignored the group’s attacks in Turkey, as well as its victims, while citing incidents that occurred in the U.S. and in some European countries.
