Months of confidential diplomatic contacts and exchanges of unusually cordial statements have left Armenia and Turkey on the verge of an historic rapprochement that would have far-reaching ramifications for regional security. This weekend President Abdullah Gul will become the first leader of modern-day Turkey to... MORE

On September 3 Turkish President Abdullah Gul announced that he had accepted an invitation from Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian to attend the soccer match between the two countries in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on September 6 as part of the qualifying group stages for... MORE

Last month's confrontation between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia has cast a media spotlight on a previously obscure 72-year-old treaty, earlier the purview of historians and specialists, the Montreux Convention. On August 27 Russian Deputy Chief of General Staff Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said... MORE

Turkey’s shuttle diplomacy to manage the aftermath of the conflict in Georgia has kept Turkish foreign policy in the spotlight. During a series of visits to Tbilisi, Moscow, and Baku in the first half of August, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed Ankara’s proposal for... MORE

The aftershocks of the conflict in Georgia continue to dominate regional politics, highlighting the difficulties Turkey encounters in conducting its foreign policy in dangerous neighborhoods. The latest U.S. move to utilize military vessels to provide humanitarian aid to the war-torn areas of Georgia demonstrated starkly... MORE

The Georgian-Russian military conflict has created new security dilemmas in the South Caucasus. Not only has the fragile stability established since the chaos of 1990s been ruined, but the East-West energy and transportation corridor has also been made vulnerable. Turkey, as one of the largest... MORE

In its last meeting the Supreme Military Council selected General Ilker Basbug as the new Chief of General Staff of Turkish military (August 3). As a son of Macedonian immigrants, Basbug was born in a central Anatolian town of Afyon in 1943 and following his... MORE

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Turkey on August 14 in the latest in a series of high level contacts between the two countries against a backdrop of growing international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. Both the United States and Israel have expressed... MORE

With Western eyes fixed on the clash between Russia and Georgia over the disputed enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the conflict is affecting neighboring countries’ oil shipments, particularly Azerbaijan and transit nation Turkey. There was a terrorist attack on August 5, two days before... MORE

On August 11 nine Turkish soldiers were killed when the truck in which they were traveling was struck by a mine laid by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Kemah county in the province of Erzincan in southeast Turkey. It was the largest death toll... MORE