Defense Minister Yaşar Güler made significant statements about Türkiye’s armament program during his ministry’s 2025 budget defense at the Parliamentary Planning and Budget Commission on November 26. According to his statements, the United States, which had previously expelled Türkiye from the F-35 fighter jet program over its purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems, has apparently
The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Britain met in Warsaw on November 19th, hosted by Poland’s foreign minister. This followed an EU Foreign Ministers meeting the previous day. Although Britain is no longer an EU member, Europe’s most influential members chose to include Britain in making a joint statement against Russia. The
When asked what would change for Türkiye if Donald Trump or Kamala Harris won the presidential elections in the US on November 5th, I can hear many of you saying “Nothing”. To understand, we need to look at which of today’s problems in Türkiye-US relations would be “normalized” – let’s not say solved – under
Turkish security sources have confirmed that a large-scale international prisoner exchange took place in Ankara on August 1. The swap, orchestrated by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), involved 26 individuals from seven countries, including Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich. According to sources, the exchange involved prisoners from the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway,
At the recent NATO leaders summit in Washington, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea were described as the “hostile camp” to the Alliance in harsher terms than ever before, sharpening fault lines. The decision to hold the 2026 NATO Leaders Summit in Türkiye was perhaps the most important decision for us. The joint statement also
What put Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s trip to China on the global agenda was neither Türkiye’s desire to attract investment and economic cooperation from China nor the fact that he was the highest-ranking Turkish official to visit Uyghur Turks in China’s Xinjiang province after 12 years. It was the BRICS issue, sparked by a report
Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told the Financial Times on April 28 that negotiations were continuing with the US energy giant Exxon Mobil for 2.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) worth 1.1 billion dollars. The Minister was talking about Türkiye’s need to diversify its resources to avoid being dependent on “a single supplier”;
Very early this morning, I talked to the Dubai-based Gulf Intelligence, one of the world’s leading energy think tanks, about the latest developments in the world, our region and Turkey. What follows is a succinct summary of what I elaborated. Accelerating the energy transition is a “fantasy” Green energy transformation is, of course, a process
Since the bloody attack on the concert hall in Moscow, I have been speaking with sources from the intelligence, security, and diplomatic circles. The point they all converge on is that the March 22 attack of the ISIS Khorasan province branch, (ISIS-K) which killed 139 people in Moscow, differs from known ISIS actions in terms