All Policy Analysis by Soner Cagaptay

On January 12, Turkish police arrested Mehmet Semih Arikan, a member of Hizballah in Turkey, a group not necessarily part and parcel with Lebanese Hizballah, while he was carrying out a reconnaissance mission near the governor's office of Konya province, ten minutes ahead of a scheduled visit by Gen. Fevzi

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan finished his three-day visit to Moscow today. This trip follows Russian president Vladimir Putin's December 2004 Turkey trip, the first by a Russian head of state since Russia and the Ottoman Empire established relations in the fifteenth century -- excluding a 1972 sojourn by

On December 31, 2004, terrorists belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group on the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terror Organizations (FTO) list, ambushed Turkish security officers in the Sirnak province in southeastern Turkey, near the Iraqi border. Although the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire after Turkey captured its

On January 3, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited Ankara to discuss with Turkish officials Iraq-related issues straining U.S.-Turkish relations, including unforthcoming Turkish support for U.S. operations in Iraq and the fight against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group with 5,500- 5,800 members in northern Iraq. Armitage's

On October 6, 2004, the European Commission released its final report on Turkey's progress toward satisfying the EU's accession rules, known as the Copenhagen Criteria. Although the report stated that "Turkey satisfies the Copenhagen Criteria sufficiently" to enter accession talks, many European counties and the EU itself are still debating

On October 6, the European Union issued its much anticipated report evaluating Turkey's accession prospects. The report said that Ankara satisfies the union's membership rules sufficiently to begin accession talks. However, the report also suggested a special track for talks with Turkey, one with no promise of membership. This sets

On October 6, the European Union (EU) Commission, the executive arm of the EU, issued its report on Turkey's progress toward satisfying the Copenhagen Criteria, the union's membership rules that mandate "rule of law, institutions guaranteeing democracy, and respect for minorities." Although the commission praised Turkey's dramatic reform efforts since

On October 6, the European Union (EU) Commission, the executive arm of the EU, will issue its much-anticipated report on whether Turkey has satisfied the EU's accession rules, the Copenhagen Criteria. The report will serve as a recommendation to the EU Council, the top ministerial body of the union, which

Throughout the 1990s, Turkish foreign policy analysts had an easy job. After all, Turkish foreign policy was predictable. Ankara cooperated enthusiastically with Washington, whether in the Middle East or in the Balkans. Turkey aligned itself with Israel and kept at arms length from Middle Eastern neighbors such as Syria and

These days, pretty much everything in Turkey seems to focus on the European Union. Leaving a friend's apartment in Istanbul on a sultry evening in August, I came across a street quarrel. Istanbulis park literally anywhere, including the sidewalks. A middle-aged man whose driveway had been blocked by an illegally

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's May 20 demarche calling Israeli acts in Rafah "state terrorism" signals that the iceberg awaiting the crash of Turkish-Israeli relations has now surfaced. Jerusalem needs to act immediately to avoid a fallout with Ankara. Turkish-Israeli relations face a potential crisis. On the Turkish side

(translated from Hebrew) Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's May 20 demarche calling Israeli acts in Rafah "state terrorism" signals that Jerusalem needs to act immediately to avoid fallout with Ankara. Today, the Turkish-Israeli relationship faces a potential crisis. On the Turkish side, the readiness of the public to accept

With the U.S. having transferred sovereignty to Iraqis earlier this week, the Kurds find themselves in a more precarious position than at any time in the last year. On June 8, the U.N. Security Council accepted a new resolution dictating the guidelines for post-U.S. Iraq. The resolution did not mention

On June 1, 2004, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- an organization that appears on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and whose attacks caused more than 30,000 deaths in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s -- declared that it had rescinded its unilateral "ceasefire" of February 2000

Will the Transatlantic Split Be Mended? NATO's Istanbul summit, to be held on June 28-29, will be historic, marking the first such meeting in which the organization's seven new Eastern European members will participate. In fact, with these additions, NATO now borders Russia. Despite the organization's enlargement, however, a transatlantic

On April 24, Greek and Turkish citizens of Cyprus voted on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan to resolve the long-standing dispute on the island. The elusive Cyprus issue once again evaded solution: although 65 percent of the Turkish Cypriots voted to accept the Annan plan, 76 percent of Greek

It's not often that William Safire and Al Jazeera agree but, in the last week, both have drawn explicit comparisons between the anti-Western anger rolling through central and southern Iraq and the relative calm of the Kurdish north. In Iraqi Kurdistan, Safire wrote Wednesday, "we can see success: Rival Kurdish

The year 2004 will go down in the annals of history as the year when NATO met the Greater Middle East. In the Istanbul summit on June 28-29, NATO is planning to admit seven Eastern European countries, thereby extending its borders to the Caucasus and the Middle East. Over the

On March 28, 2004, Turks voted in nationwide municipal elections for the mayors of more than 3,000 cities and towns, as well as administrative council members for all eighty-one Turkish provinces. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won an overwhelming victory, increasing its national standing. With 41.8 percent of