Turkey

Turkey jailed more journalists than any other country this year. According to the Turkish Journalists' Association, 148 journalists are currently imprisoned and many media outlets have been shut down.

Modern Turkey is a strange amalgam of Western structures underpinned by Ottoman habits. Their various governments, whether military or not, are still heavily influenced by its huge military, and the contradiction between religion and secularism stills bedevils its development. Russia knows this, and knows that the bazaar mentality prevails in Turkish foreign policy. Rather than provoke a collapse of the shaky Turkish state, Russia prefers to weaken a neurotic NATO, and eventually bring Turkey into its sphere of influence, in the interests of Middle Eastern stability.

There is a nasty political game being played against Cyprus and some believe the timing it’s perfect for a “good kill”. Most of the political parties have been questioning the wisdom of Anastasiade’s obsession to negotiate under such treacherous conditions aimed to eliminate the Republic.

In a very rare gesture, the Archbishop of Cyprus Chrysostomos, in his Christmas message, read in all churches, has criticized, in unusually harsh terms, the policy of President Anastasiades and the type of “solution” of the Cyprus conflict he wants to impose on the citizens of the Republic, bypassing the need for a referendum.

Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels. The furthest east of all the EU’s new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them.

Victoria Νuland with the backing of the European Commission are exercising now maximum pressure to the governments of Nicosia and Athens in order to agree into a new version of the Annan plan for the solution of the Cyprus conflicted, which was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Cypriot citizens back in 2004.

The Russian ambassador to Cyprus repeatedly voiced the position that there should be no outside interferences or imposed time limits in the negotiations over Cyprus or foreign guarantees. In fact, he said that it is unheard of in this day in age for a third country (Turkey) to demand to become the guarantor power of a country (Cyprus) that does not wish to have guarantors. Turkey has an atrocious record over Cyprus, having invaded the island militarily 42 years ago on a pretext, and still occupies 37% of the country.

Blood-curdling proposals for the persecution of Muslims played a central role in Trump’s election campaign. At one moment, he promised to stop all Muslims from entering the US, though this was later changed to “extreme vetting”. The use of torture by water-boarding was approved and applauded, and Hillary Clinton was pilloried for not speaking of “radical Islamic terrorism”.

With relations with Europe rapidly deteriorating, Turkey is threatening to send upwards of 3,000 refugees per day to Greece in what intelligence officials in Greece described as “blackmail” against the European Union. According to details uncovered by Greek intelligence officials and published in The Times (of London), thousands of dinghies and motorboats

Turkey’s Prime Minister and armed forces both accused the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad Thursday of conducting an airstrike on Turkish troops in the vicinity of al-Bab in the country’s north, resulting in three casualties. The incident threatens to escalate already sharp tensions between Ankara and Damascus