Back in early May of 2020 Israel’s Interior minister urged ‘soul-searching’ in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community citing the very high coronavirus infection rate [60-70% of the sick in the entire country were ultra-Orthodox whereas only 10-12 percent of the general population is ultra-Orthodox]. Now in early September 2021only some 20 …

On July 10, 2020, Turkey’s high administrative court annulled a 1934 cabinet decision that had turned Istanbul’s famous Hagia Sophia mosque into a museum, dealing a further blow to the secularist legacy of modern Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Shortly afterward, a presidential decree transferred the site’s ownership from …

While the West views the fall of the US-backed government as a strategic disaster, Ankara plans to turn the crisis there to its own advantage. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on August 29 that Turkish diplomatic activity will continue in Kabul and all its embassy staff had returned to …