Free Republic

ANKARA: A provocative live-fire drill by the Turkish navy off the coast of Cyprus was branded illegal on Saturday, as reports emerged that the US is drawing up plans to withdraw from the strategic Incirlik air force base. “We don’t know what’s going to happen to Incirlik,” Ron Johnson, the US senator who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, told the Washington Examiner. “We hope for the best, but we have to plan for the worst.” US withdrawal would be a blow to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggesting that the US no longer trusts him. “I think,...

Turkey’s decision to veto the latest U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran should be of concern for all those, like me, who desire a peaceful resolution of the international crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme. The Turks are apparently upset that the West has not responded positively to the nuclear deal it recently negotiated with Iran, with Brazil’s assistance, whereby Tehran would ship some of its stockpile of enriched uranium to Ankara in return for fuel rods for its so-called research reactor in Tehran. In fact this deal was nothing more than a watered-down version of the agreement Iran negotiated with...

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis. It isn't that Ankara's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Muslim democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the...

<p>An Algerian man and two roommates who were arrested in Detroit a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were planning to conduct holy war against the United States, a federal prosecutor said in court Friday.</p> <p>Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino said Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 21, of Detroit was trying to smuggle automatic weapons and people into the United States with phony documents to carry out terrorist activities.</p>