Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who is pushing for executive powers, cites Hitler’s Germany as an example of an effective presidential system, in comments broadcast by Turkish media on Friday. Erdogan wants to change the Turkish constitution to turn the ceremonial role of president into that of a chief executive, a Turkish version of the system…
Turkey sees no normalization in ties with Israel unless its conditions for ending the Gaza blockade and compensation for the deaths of 10 Turkish activists in 2010 are met, a presidential spokesman said on Monday. Relations between Turkey and Israel soured when the activists were killed in a raid by Israeli commandos on a Turkish…
Expectations that Turkey and Israel will restore relations after a five-year-old rift have raised hopes of speedy progress in talks to import Israeli natural gas, potentially a multi-billion-dollar project. Israel’s once-strong ties to Turkey soured in 2010 when Israeli commandoes killed 10 Turkish activists when storming the Mavi Marmara, a ship in a convoy seeking…
How about this for a Hollywood script? It’s 1492, and Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expel their Jewish subjects. In response, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II sends ships to Spain to collect them. How nice of him. They flourish under Muslim rule and, centuries later, receive equal rights as citizens. Fast-forward to 2002 and…
I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a turn on the winding, bougainvillea-filled backstreets of Buyukada, an idyllic island about an hour’s ferry ride from Istanbul. A horse-drawn carriage filled with vacationers — some wearing headscarves — whips by. Suddenly, an older man in an immaculately pressed suit and silk tie appears in front of me. Next,…
Israel held unannounced diplomatic level talks with Turkey on Monday to explore prospects, after Turkish polls, of restoring an alliance that was once central to U.S. Middle East policy but has soured dramatically under Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan. The Islamist-rooted AK Party founded by Erdogan, who accused Israel last year of having “surpassed Hitler in…
Every time she prepares her newspaper for print, Karen Sarhon has her pick from dozens of submissions she receives daily from writers around the world. A desirable situation for any editor-in-chief, Sarhon says it is nothing short of unbelievable for her monthly, El Amaneser, which is the world’s only newspaper in Ladino — a Jewish-Spanish…
The political party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost its ruling majority in parliament, apparently setting back the anti-Israel leader’s bid to gain sweeping powers. With most of the votes counted in Sunday’s election, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, had about 41 percent of the vote with projections of about 256…
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט
