In the context of the current refugee crisis, leaders of the European Union reached an agreement on the deal with Turkey. The package of measures agreed on Friday morning is now awaiting approval by the Turkish government, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) reported, referring to Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. [...]

Throttling Turkey’s democracy, President Erdogan seized an opposition newspaper that dared reveal his clandestine arming of jihadists seeking to overthrow neighboring Syria, as Alon Ben-Meir explains. Only a few months after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raided the offices of the Koza Ipek Media Group, the Turkish police assaulted early this month the offices of Feza Publications, [...]

An Islamic State fighter from the US was arrested in Iraq after emerging from territory controlled by the militant group in Syria, a local commander told Kurdish media. The man reportedly mistook the area for the Turkish border. A local commander told Kurdish news outlet Rudaw that the arrested man was 27-year-old Muhammad Jamal Amin, a Virginia-born US citizen of a Palestinian father and an Ir [...]

An explosion that hit the center of Ankara on Sunday killed at least 27 people, 75 injured. An explosion at a bus stop in Ankara caused at least 27 people killed and multiple wounded, according to reports. Some 27 people were killed and 75 injured in an explosion that struck the Turkish capital on Sunday evening, the office of the mayor of Ankara confirmed. [...]

Austria’s interior minister signaled its opposition towards a mooted but not yet finalized EU-Turkey refugee deal. The minister says she is “extremely critical” of the agreement, citing the situation with freedom of speech in Turkey. "I am extremely critical. I am seriously wondering whether we are taking ourselves and our values seriously or if we are throwing them overboard," Johanna Mi [...]

According to German politician and member of the European Parliament Angelika Niebler, Turkey is not yet ready to join the EU and European countries need to think carefully about providing the Turks with any benefits. The EU should not forget about its own interests in order to please Turkey, the politician said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk. [...]

Several top Christian Social Union officials have said their party, an ally to Angela Merkel’s CDU, is against a visa-free regime with Turkey and the prospects for its EU bid because Ankara plays “cat and mouse” and raises demands “like at a bazaar.” [...]

Erdogan’s Turkey this week diversified its rogue-state conduct from terror sponsorship to international bribery. The proceeds? Not bad earning, with $6.6 billion in “aid” extracted from the European Union. It’s supposed to be part of a groundbreaking deal to end the refugee crisis in Europe. [...]

Despite criticism from European officials over its crackdown on opposition media, the Turkish government has reportedly taken control of another news agency. It comes days after the seizure of the popular opposition newspaper Zaman. The news agency Cihan is believed to be close to US-based [...]

The EU-Turkey summit, held in an amicable atmosphere and resulting in an agreement to put an end to illegal immigration to Europe via Turkey, has been hailed as a major success. Not everyone is thrilled, however; journalist Paul Mason argues that "the sight of Europe's leaders kowtowing to the [...]

The EU is ready to overlook the problems of Erdogan's Turkey because of its desperate desire to stop the flow of migrants into Europe, the Financial Times reported. The EU is willing to make a deal with Turkey at any price to stem the flow of migrants into Europe, despite misgivings about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's autocratic government, crackdown on the opposition and human rights abuses [...]

Jabhat Al-Nusra terrorists have pitched their camps right next to the border and receive regular supplies from the Turkish side, Syrian Kurdish forces told RT’s Lizzie Phelan, who traveled with YPG to investigate suspicious activity there. [...]

A Russian TV crew has managed to obtain video proof of Turkey’s increased military presence on the Syrian border, as it filmed fortifications and tanks on the frontier. The lodgments are heavily fortified by tanks and self-propelled guns, REN-TV crew reported from the scene. [...]

Turkey’s “provocative” military buildup on the border and shelling of the Syrian territory could thwart the truce and disrupt the peace process in the Arab Republic, said the head of the Russian ceasefire monitoring center Lt. Gen. Sergey Kuralenko. [...]

Facing an increase in domestic terrorism, Turkish President Erdogan's government is scrambling to fine-tune its terrorist prevention methods and plans to purchase a number of new intelligence and surveillance systems. Last October, suicide bombers killed over 100 peace activists in Ankara. In January, a radical Islamist killed ten in Istanbul. Earlier this month, an attacker killed nearly 30 pe [...]

The ceasefire deal worked out by Russia and the United States indicates that Washington does not intend to help Turkey, should it decide to send ground forces to Syria and accidentally clash with Russia, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT. [...]

Turkey's Erdogan should come to terms with the "stark reality" that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not fall anytime soon, former senior CIA official Graham E. Fuller notes, stressing that Erdogan's personal interests are not synonymous with Turkey’s national interests. Ankara is faced with the dilemma of choosing between pursuing its present foreign policy and returning to the more pea [...]

By adopting terms for a cessation of hostilities together with Russia, the US showed Turkey it is not going to support Ankara’s efforts to send troops into Syria and NATO won’t come to rescue them later, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT. How confident can we be that this new agreement will hold?   [...]

Further proof of ties between the Turkish military and Islamic State fighters operating on the Syrian-Turkish border has been revealed in the Cumhuriyet newspaper, which published more transcripts of telephone calls between the jihadists and officers. The documents are said to come from an ongoing court case on Islamic State at the Ankara 3rd High Criminal Court. [...]

A spate of atrocities over the past week suggests that the Erdogan regime in Turkey is desperately trying to goad Washington into a wider Syrian war. Who’s giving the orders here? The evidence points to Washington losing control over its regional underlings. That in turn makes the situation all the more volatile and dangerous. [...]

The risk that the multi-sided Syrian war could spark World War III continues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and U.S. neocons seek an invasion that could kill Russian troops — and possibly escalate the Syrian crisis into a nuclear showdown, amazingly to protect Al Qaeda terrorists, reports Robert Parry. When President Barack Obama took questions from reporters on Tuesday, [...]

NATO keeps backing Turkey, one of its members, despite its aid to the Islamic State and other jihadists fighting Syria’s secular government — and even though Turkey’s erratic President Erdogan may be leading NATO into a risky showdown with Syria’s Russian allies, writes Jonathan Marshall. [...]