Free Republic

I have enormous respect for Victor Davis Hanson and read with great interest his account this week that people are fed up with liberal elites. Amid all this leftish high-fiving about court decisions and executive orders, we forget political and electoral reality. Barack Obama has done more to destroy liberal political power in the Congress and in the statehouses than any Democratic politician since the 1920s. His executive orders and neglect of enforcing existing law have green-lighted the executive power of the next Republican president in a way that Richard Nixon could hardly imagine. He has discredited the idea of...

Turkey would rather have an Islamic State on its southern borders than a Kurdish state loyal to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an international security and intelligence services group argued Thursday. The New York-based Soufan group said that recent gains made against the Islamic State (ISIS) by the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (YPG) in Syria has given the Kurdish group control of areas extending more than 400 kilometers along Turkish borders. There is speculation in Turkey that Ankara is considering sending forces into Syria to create a buffer zone along its southern borders, as authorities bolster troops and security along...

Kurdish fighters and leaders are intent on carving an independent state out of Northern Iraq after they wrest back vital territory from the Islamic State "whether the U.S. likes it or not," according to American and international security forces on the ground.

As Kurdish rebels (Kurds) in northern Syria rack up wins against the Islamic State group, Turkish media is abuzz with talk of a long-debated military intervention to push the Islamic militants (Kurds) back from the Turkish border.

After more than a week of sustained protests over increasing electricity prices, Armenian activists have demonstrated a new sense of empowerment in the face of an increasingly embattled government. But it is actually the broader implications of this unrest in Armenia that is much more significant, for two distinct reasons. First, although this wave of protests is clearly rooted in a set of underlying problems reflecting the unique socioeconomic and political conditions of Armenia, the discontent and dissent in Armenia have already reverberated well beyond the borders of this small, landlocked country. More specifically, the trajectory of the protests have...

The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, The Telegraph has learnt. Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades. They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad. High level officials from Gulf...

<p>U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday the world should be ashamed that three years after major powers approved a blueprint in Geneva to bring peace to Syria the suffering of its people is reaching new depths and the country is "on the brink of falling apart."</p>

Turkish forces are reportedly forcing refugees fleeing the chaos of the Middle East to turn back from the border with Bulgaria. According to reports, as many as 600 refugees, including women and children, are being forced to return to their camps in Turkey now. One refugee told media that the Yazidis left their camp because conditions are unbearable. “All that matters now is to move on, we don’t even care where we go,” one female refugee said. “We are dying daily, and I can’t stand it anymore.”

Turkey has sent shock waves through the Middle East by preparing plans to send troops into Syria for the first time, turning the civil war into an international conflict on Europe’s borders. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has authorised a change in the rules of engagement agreed by the Turkish parliament to allow the army to strike at Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), as well as the Assad regime, according to local newspapers. The aim is to establish a buffer zone for refugees and against Isil, but Mr Erdogan has also suggested that the main target of the...

We have been saying for the last two years that Turkey will invade Syria and now the media is all over the issue of a serious possible invasion by the second most powerful army in NATO: Turkey. The spark and excuse for this invasion is simple. As Kurdish rebels in northern Syria rack up wins against ISIS, Turkish media is abuzz with talk of military intervention guised under the claim to push ISIS back from the Turkish border. Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains...

The Turkish military is not enthusiastic and Washington may have its doubts, but President Erdogan appears determined to set up a buffer zone.ISTANBUL—Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a military intervention into northern Syria to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming their own state there, despite concerns among his own generals and possible criticism from Washington and other NATO allies, according to reports in both pro- and anti-government media. In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains by Kurdish fighters against...

The Yezidis are now on the move. This has been secretly planned for months. What we now have is a potentially mass exodus from ISIS-controlled Iraq. They have reason to believe that Bulgaria will grant them asylum. However, Turkey, which they must enter and exit on their way to Bulgaria, is giving them trouble. According to my informant Ghulie Khalaf, “There have been clashes between the refugees and the Turkish police. Ten buses are on their way but there are seventeen more buses to be packed but the Turkish guards are stopping them at the border. We want media attention.”

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered for gay pride parades, parties and celebrations around the world Sunday. Most events were peaceful, but in Istanbul, Turkish police fired water cannon and rubber pellets to disperse a crowd. It was not immediately clear why Turkish police stopped marchers in Istanbul, where gay pride parades have been held in previous years. Turkish media reported that police said people would not to be allowed to march this year. In New York, massive crowds gathered ahead of the city’s annual gay pride parade, which was first held in 1970. Organizers said they expected a record...

Istanbul (AFP) - Riot police in Istanbul used teargas and fired rubber pellets to disperse thousands of participants in the city's Gay Pride march after some began chanting slogans against the president, an AFP reporter said. The scene turned violent when participants -- many brandishing rainbow flags -- denounced "the fascism" of the conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Police then began to forcefully break up the crowd, with some officers firing rubber pellets into the crowd.

BEIRUT — The Islamic State was routed Monday from one of its key strongholds on Syria’s border with Turkey after its defenses crumbled and its fighters either defected or fled, raising new questions about the group’s vaunted military capabilities. The fall of the town of Tal Abyad to a Kurdish-Syrian rebel force backed by U.S. airstrikes came after just two days of fighting during which the militants appeared to put up little resistance, focusing instead on escaping to their nearby self-styled capital of Raqqa or fleeing across the border to Turkey. The force — led by Kurdish units of the...

Kurdish forces battled Monday to cut a key Islamic State supply line by seizing the border town of Tal Abyad, as terrified Syrians poured into Turkey to escape the fighting. Forces from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) backed by Syrian rebels advanced on the southeastern edge of the border town overnight, backed by US-led strikes against IS fighters, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish forces had seized the Mashur Tahtani area on the southeastern edge of Tal Abyad, with the US-led coalition carrying out at least five strikes overnight. "The strikes are paving the...

Syrian refugees today broke through a barbed wire fence in a desperate bid to flee from the ISIS-held border town of Tal Abyad and cross into Turkey. Turkish troops had watched on helplessly yesterday as heavily-armed ISIS terrorists blocked the border crossing at Tal Abyad, where some 13,000 civilians have crossed over the past ten days. The men, women and children were stopped at gunpoint almost within touching distance of the border town of Akcakale. However, today - backed by allied rebels and air strikes by a U.S.-led coalition - Kurdish forces pressed forward with their offensive on Tal Abyad...

ISTANBUL — A battle in the northern Syrian border town of Tal Abyad has inflicted a potentially crippling defeat on ISIS that could impede the jihadists’ rampage through Syria and Iraq. But U.S. ally Turkey is not happy about it. In fact, Ankara is accusing Washington of foul play. Some in Turkey want their own military—which is part of NATO—to intervene on Syrian soil, and not against ISIS.

VIDEO: 6 minutes After the Islamist AKP party cruised to defeat in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government announced the border would be closed to Syrians fleeing ISIS as “there is no longer a humanitarian tragedy,” in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş. Kurtulmuş further claimed Wednesday that people were “fleeing strikes by coalition forces and the progress of Kurdish fighters in the region.” He laid blame not on the Islamic State but on the anti-ISIS coalition for driving Syrian refugees into Turkey with “reasonless and meaningless” airstrikes. More than 13,000 Syrian refugees fled across...

This is a highly contentious issue for Turkey which has refused to recognise the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. Ankara insists that between 250,000 and 500,000 Armenians as well as thousands of Turks were killed when they clashed during World War 1. Armenians say that their people died or were deported under Turkish Ottoman rule.