Nicholas Blanford | Beirut, Lebanon | Nov 10

CSM - Five months after a Western-backed coalition narrowly beat the Hezbollah-led opposition in in Lebanon's June elections, the two sides reached a deal Monday night.

Lebanon's feuding leaders have struck a deal on the formation of a new government – five months after a Western-backed coalition secured a narrow electoral victory against the Hezbollah-led opposition.

The formation of a national unity government, which includes two members of Hezbollah, could usher in a period of stability for Lebanon as it attempts to chart its way out of five years of political turmoil and bloodshed.

Many challenges remain, however, not least the tensions over Hezbollah's continued armed status, which was highlighted again last week with Israel's seizure of a cargo ship carrying 500 tons of weapons and ammunition allegedly destined for the militant Shiite group. Lebanon also remains caught between regional rivalries and the divergent interests of Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran – factors that analysts say will virtually paralyze foreign-policy decisionmaking by Saad Hariri, the prime minister designate, and his new cabinet.

"There will be a delicate balance in the country," says Sateh Noureddine, columnist for Lebanon's As Safir newspaper. "It will be able to resolve minor issues related to social and economic problems, but will not be able to deal with any big political issues related to Syria, Israel, Iran – anything related to the foreign policy of Lebanon."

The identities of the 30 new ministers were unveiled Monday night following a meeting between Hariri, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, and Nabih Berri, the parliamentary speaker. The ministerial portfolios were split between the leading political blocs, reflecting their respective shares in parliament.

The March 14 bloc, a coalition of mainly Christians and Sunnis that is supported by the West as well as Saudi Arabia, received 15 seats. The Hezbollah-led parliamentary alliance, which includes mainly Shiites and Christians, was handed 10 seats – two of which went to Hezbollah politicians. The remaining five portfolios were filled by people chosen by the politically neutral president.

Erich Follath & Holger Stark | Nov 2

Spiegel Online - How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Nuclear Reactor

In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike?

Mitchell Prothero & Peter Beaumont | Nov 8

The Observer - Fighters rearm and reinforce positions in valleys amid fears that Israel is about to launch attack on Islamic group

Hezbollah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel, fearing that Benjamin Netanyahu's government will attack Lebanon again prior to any assault on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Last week, Israeli commandos seized a ship in the Mediterranean loaded with almost 400 tonnes of rockets and small arms – which Israel claimed was being sent from Iran to its Hezbollah allies. In dramatic further evidence of growing tensions, the Observer has learned that Hezbollah fighters have been busy reinforcing fixed defence positions north of the Litani river.

Having lost many of its bunkers in the south, Hezbollah is preparing a new strategy to defend villages there.

Although the organisation denied last week that the weapons were intended for its use, senior commanders have done little to disguise the scale of rearmament. "Sure, we are rearming, we have even said that we have far more rockets and missiles than we did in 2006," said a Hezbollah commander, speaking on condition of anonymity.

My friend Chuck Spinney writes in from Turkey this morning riffing off a recent op-ed in the Times. I can't quibble with what either of them have to say. Chuck says:

As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion.

It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.

Oct 11

Haaretz - Turkey has dropped Israel's participation in the joint air-force drill planned to take place within the country's jurisdiction, as reported on Israel Radio on Sunday.

The annual drill was scheduled to begin on Monday with air-forces from the U.S., NATO, Italy and Israel but was delayed to an unknown date after the U.S. withdrew its participation following Turkey's request to ban Israel from the exercise.

Israel-Turkey relations have been tense since Cast Lead, especially in light of a televised fracas between President Shimon Peres and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Davos Conference this past January.

JPost - Defense officials told the Post that Turkey informed Israel of the cancellation of the Anatolian Eagle exercise last week, which was to also include US, Italian and NATO forces, saying this was because the planes that Israel was going to send likely bombed Hamas targets during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Mary Beth Sheridan | Zurich | October 10

WaPo - Senior Armenian and Turkish officials traveled to Switzerland on Saturday to sign an agreement that could set them on a course to end a century of hostility stemming from brutal massacres at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

But just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's motorcade arrived at the University of Zurich for the signing of the accord, she got word of a last-minute glitch. The motorcade reversed and sped to a hotel, where U.S. diplomats tried to satisfy concerns on the Armenian side over language in the two countries' statements.

Damascus | Oct 8

DPA - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz left Damascus Thursday ending his two day 'historic' visit to Syria, in which he held political and economic talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia has called on Syria to take part in efforts to solve inter-Palestinian problems, support Iraq and Lebanon as well as cooperating to fight terrorism and extremism in the region, sources in the Saudi delegation told the German Press Agency dpa.

Abdullah arrived in Syria Wednesday, in a move hailed as a 'historical' and 'landmark shift' in diplomacy between the two countries.

Syria and Saudi Arabia are two of the Arab world's longest standing rivals, with the latter having close relations with the US and Damascus having been implacably opposed to Washington's influence in the region for decades.

Robert Fisk | Oct 8

The Independent - A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people

In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers.

The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died.

Subjected to constant rape and beatings, some had already swallowed poison on their way from their homes in Erzerum, Serena, Sivas, Bitlis and other cities in Turkish western Armenia. "Some of them," Bishop Grigoris Balakian, one of Litzmayer's contemporaries, recorded, "had been driven to such a state that they were mere skeletons enveloped in rags, with skin that had turned leathery, burned from the sun, cold, and wind. Many pregnant women, having become numb, had left their newborns on the side of the road as a protest against mankind and God." Every year, new evidence emerges about this mass ethnic cleansing, the first holocaust of the last century; and every year, Turkey denies that it ever committed genocide. Yet on Saturday – to the horror of millions of descendants of Armenian survivors – the President of Armenia, Serg Sarkissian, plans to agree to a protocol with Turkey to re-open diplomatic relations, which should allow for new trade concessions and oil interests. And he proposes to do this without honouring his most important promise to Armenians abroad – to demand that Turkey admit it carried out the Armenian genocide in 1915.

Simon McGregor-Wood | Jerusalem | Oct 6

ABC News - The U.S. ally is being accused by Palestinians of colluding with Israel and the United States in sidelining the controversial Goldstone report on Israel's military operation in Gaza.

The U.N.-sponsored report attracted widespread coverage last month with its stark allegations that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes. Israel launched a concerted campaign to discredit the report. Most Palestinians saw it as a valuable diplomatic weapon with which to pressure Israel.

But, in Geneva Friday, Abbas, under pressure from the United States and Israel, agreed to defer a U.N. Human Rights Council vote on the report until next March, effectively burying it.

The story has outraged Palestinians across the political spectrum. Abbas is being accused of treachery. Even his moderate Fatah colleagues have publicly expressed their dismay

AP - Syria has postponed a planned visit by the Palestinian President amid controversy about his decision to suspend efforts to have Israeli officials prosecuted for war crimes

AFP - Chief Palestinian negotiator Erekat says Palestinian president 'seriously considering' asking Arab and Islamic bloc to officially take UN committee's conclusions on Gaza war to international bodies, in light of controversy raised around report

Originally posted Jan 15, 2008. Recent updates below in the comments ~ editors

A savvy blogger over at DailyKos has discovered an announcement by the Bush Administration, which appears to be pressuring Congress to retroactively approve the sale of nuclear secrets to Turkey.

hmmm...

Siebel Edmonds leaked her story to the UK Times two weeks ago, despite a court order. It was filled with tales of American diplomats acting in a treasonous manner by selling secretes to Turkey. If Bush gets the legislation he wants, then the treason will be authorized, and everything is hunky dory.

UPI | Cairo | Sept 23

UPI - Damascus in a report submitted to the United Nations claims Israel is burying nuclear waste, and possibly more, in the occupied Golan Heights.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry in a report linked to allegations of human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories blames Israel for "the crime" of disposing of nuclear, radioactive and other hazardous waste in tunnels throughout the Golan Heights.

The Damascus complaint says the move is part of an effort to prevent Syria from reclaiming the territory occupied and later annexed by Israel, the government-backed Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram reports.

Sept 10

BBC - Lebanon's Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri says he is to abandon his attempt to form a national unity government and is stepping down.

Mr Hariri has spent more than 10 weeks trying to assemble a government.

Earlier this week a team he put forward was rejected by Lebanon's opposition, led by Shia radical group Hezbollah.

President Michel Suleiman is expected to consult with parliament in an effort to nominate a new candidate for PM, reports say.

"Given that my commitment to forming a government of national unity has run up against difficulties that everyone now knows about, I announce that I have informed the president of the republic that I have abandoned trying to form a government," he said in Beirut.

"I hope that this decision will be in the interests of Lebanon and will permit a relaunch of dialogue," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.

September 1

Al Jazeera - Turkey and Armenia are at the beginning of a "long process" of normalising ties, the Turkish foreign minister has said.

Ahmet Davutoglu's comments on Tuesday came a day after the feuding neighbours agreed to establish relations and reopen their border under a plan to end nearly a century of hostility.

Davutoglu told Turkey's NTV television that the process would be long but that obstacles could be overcome and that the border could be open by the end of the year.

"If everything goes as planned, if mutual steps are taken, the borders could be opened around New Year," he said.

Kenan Guluzade | Baku | Aug 19

Asia Times - Political experts are baffled by a Turkmen announcement that it will take Azerbaijan to court over their maritime boundary, saying the decision does not seem to make political, business or legal sense.

European plans to diversify gas supply, by building the Nabucco pipeline from the Caspian region to Austria, could be under threat from the unexpected Turkmen claim, which would disrupt development of Caspian oil and gas fields and interrupt two years of improving relations between Baku and Ashgabat.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov said just a month ago his country was keen to join the Nabucco project, but the legal challenge could harm the route by blocking production from fields on or near the Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan maritime border.

Hilmi Toros | Istanbul | Aug 12

IPS - Once the worst of enemies, involved in 12 wars in three centuries, Turkey and Russia have suddenly become the best of friends, forging strong bonds that could be a counterpoint to the European Union if it freezes Turkey out of full membership.

The countries call their ties "multi-dimensional co-operation," somewhat short of a "strategic partnership", but that too may be in the offing.

On an eight-hour visit to Turkish capital Ankara last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed 20 deals with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These are mostly commercial contracts in energy, collectively worth some 40 billion dollars.

The two leaders also declared that rival gas pipelines Nabucco and South Stream to bring natural gas to European markets would be "complimentary" rather than "conflicting".

In the end, conflicting or complimentary, if both projects are realised, Russia and Turkey would play a major role in meeting Europe's growing gas needs. For Europe, either an unfriendly Turkey or Russia would endanger energy security - and it would be much worse if both were ever to gang up on the EU together.

Aug 6

BBC - The prime ministers of Turkey and Russia have signed a series of agreements regarding co-operation on major oil and gas projects.

One deal is for the construction of a pipeline through Turkish waters in the Black Sea.

Moscow hopes the South Stream pipeline will become a viable new route to supply Russian natural gas to Europe.

Vladimir Putin sealed the agreement with Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a one-day visit to Ankara.

Among the other accords signed at the meeting was an agreement on peaceful nuclear co-operation, which included a push towards building Turkey's first nuclear power station.

Sami Moubayed | Aug 5

Asia Times - The opportunistic head of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, has again switched sides, this time turning his back on the United States-backed March 14 Coalition to support the Syrian-backed, Hezbollah-led opposition. A full party defection would hand Hezbollah a majority in parliament, casting serious doubt on Saad Hariri's future as premier.

...

The question remains: will the Syrians forgive Jumblatt, who went to unbelievable levels of criticism against Syria, using dramatic insults that remain strongly imprinted in the minds of Syrians, both the government and public alike? In the complex world of Middle East politics everything is possible. Jumblatt's u-turn is testimony to how low regional politics have sunk and how one's word - which meant his pride and honor during the age of Arab chivalry - can now swiftly be broken.

Nicholas Birch | Istanbul | July 21

The Independent - In a case described as the most important in Turkey's history, two retired four-star generals went on trial yesterday at a high-security court outside Istanbul, charged with trying to overthrow the government.

For some, the arrest of the highest-ranking officers in Turkey's 63-year history of multi-party democracy is a critical blow against a once-untouchable military that has toppled four elected governments since 1960.

For others, the charges are an invention of the ruling AKP party to weaken the secular army and open the way for the country's Islamisation

There are 56 defendants in the case, including journalists, university rectors and businessmen. Outside the courtroom in Silivri, hundreds of their supporters waved national flags and portraits of Ataturk, the secularist founder of modern Turkey. "The patriots are in prison," they chanted.
 

• A trial that will define Turkey

I'm not going to get all misty eyed here. I'll just simply announce that the Istanbul 2009 Photo Contest is now accepting submissions. This year's theme is right up my alley and I'm considering making a few submissions of my own. From the site:

The main target of this contest is; living Istanbul with its historical and touristical locations by focusing on the historical city walls including mosques, museums, bridges, towers, churches, synagogues, sufi lodge, cisterns, palaces, people, cats, parks, fountains, baths, grand bazaar, spice market, shopping centers, authentic Turkish cuisine, boutique hotels, handcrafts and shops, artists, carpet sellers , 24 hours living streets etc.

Feel free to head over to my Istanbul Flickr gallery and make suggestions.

Robert Tait | Istanbul | July 1

The Guardian -

_{Most of the ancient city of Hasankeyf, in Batman province, will be submerged if South-eastern Anatolia project goes ahead, critics claim. Photograph: Alamy}

Turkey today announced plans to resume a controversial £1bn dam project in the face of environmental protests that it would displace thousands of people, destroy habitats and drown priceless archaeological treasures.

The environment minister, Veysel Eroglu, said work on the Ilisu hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river in south-east Turkey would restart after a six-month funding suspension ends next week.

Tom Perry | Bnechei, Lebanon | June 13

Reuters - Hezbollah and its allies will not join a new Lebanese government unless they have veto power over its decisions, a leading Christian member of their alliance said on Saturday.

Suleiman Franjieh said that without veto power it would be better to stay in opposition than to join the new government, which is almost certain to be led by a rival U.S.-backed coalition that won a parliamentary election on Sunday.

"Let them rule and take the whole government, but without us as bystanders in it," Franjieh told Reuters in an interview.

"We will not hold things up. But we will refuse to join the government," added Franjieh, whose Marada movement won three of parliament's 128 seats in the election.

June 8

BBC - The leader of Lebanon's governing pro-Western coalition has claimed victory over a Hezbollah-led bloc in the country's parliamentary election.

Saad Hariri said his 14 March alliance would retain its majority in the 128-seat parliament.

A key Christian ally of the Hezbollah-led alliance, which is supported by Syria and Iran, admitted defeat in Sunday's elections.

Official results are due later on Monday. Turnout was more than 50%.

"Congratulations to you, congratulations to freedom, congratulations to democracy," Mr Hariri told a crowd of his cheering supporters in the capital Beirut.

Saad Hariri said "the only winner is democracy in Lebanon"
"There is no winner and loser in these elections, the only winner is democracy and Lebanon," he added.

Mr Hariri's coalition was expected to win 70 seats in the new assembly, while the Hezbollah alliance would get 58 seats, Mr Hariri's Future TV station predicted.

Bethany Bell | Vienna | June 5

BBC - Undated photo released by CIA of alleged nuclear reactor under construction in Syria.
Syria says the al-Kibar site was a disused military building

The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says traces of undeclared man-made uranium have been found at a second site in Syria, at a reactor in Damascus.

The IAEA is investigating US claims that a Syrian site destroyed in a 2007 Israeli raid was a nuclear reactor that was not yet operational.

Separately, the agency says Iran is continuing to enrich uranium in defiance of the UN Security Council.

Both Iran and Syria deny allegations of illicit nuclear activities.

** IAEA Reports on Iran and Syria ~ Arms Control Wonks

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW BEGINNING

Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt

1:10 P.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I'm grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. (Applause.)

Fazile Zahir | Fethiye, Turkey | June 4

Asia Times -
The funeral of women's rights champion and avowed secularist Turkan Saylan, who helped thousands of Turkey's most underprivileged girls access education, was packed with mourners.

Conspicuously absent were members of the Islamist ruling party, who have been lambasted for ordering a demeaning investigation into Saylan's charity while she was on her death bed. Continued after the jump

• Battle Between Pro-Secular and Islamic Government Continues in Turkey