Middle Orient

Turkey’s border with Syria has again witnessed tension in the wake of Kurdish forces’ success in driving jihadists from Kobane, with Ankara contrastingly attracting international applause and domestic opprobrium over the affair. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, meanwhile, slammed the Kurdish parties fighting there for ruining the town, once home …

 Kurdish fighters backed by intense U.S.-led airstrikes pushed the Islamic State group entirely out of a key Syrian town on Monday, marking a major defeat for the extremists whose hopes for an easy victory when they pushed into Kobane last year dissolved into a bloody, costly and months-long siege. As …

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said Turkey is unable to close its 510-mile-long border with Syria, which has been crossed by thousands of foreign terrorist volunteers. “We cannot put soldiers everywhere on the border. In any case, there isn’t any state on the other side [of the frontier],” Davutoğlu said on …

The US-led coalition continued to strike ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq, with a total of 19 airstrikes between 8am on January 19, and 8am on January 20, local time, the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said in a statement released Tuesday. In Syria, attack, bomber, …

French and US Presidents, Francois Hollande and Barack Obama respectively, discussed over the phone Tuesday developments in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism. Hollande thanked Obama for the US support following the “terrorist attacks” that took place in Paris recently, the president’s office said in a statement and …

Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State ıf Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria’s Kobane have captured a strategic hilltop, giving them line of fire over the town, a monitor said Jan. 19. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) had seized the …

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is visiting Brussels this week, offered to cooperate more with Europe in the fight against the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Davutoğlu is currently visiting Brussels and trying to highlight common grounds with the EU and expressing Turkey’s readiness to work …

French lawmakers overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday to expand its participation in the airstrike campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants in Iraq. The extension was for another four months. The extension, which came under a vote of 488 ballots to 1, with 13 abstentions, was reinforced after …

A delegation of Syrian opposition groups arrived in Cairo on Tuesday, one day after the arrival of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution. A meeting between the various Syrian opposition entities is scheduled to take place on 22 January at the foreign ministry’s Council of Foreign Relations. Foreign Ministry Spokesman …

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Monday he could not understand why his country has been accused of not doing enough to fighting terrorism. “We will not accept that we are being accused of not doing enough to fighting terrorism. These accusations are false,” Davutoglu told a joint news conference …