The photos taken during Erdoğan’s meeting with Putin at the Shanghai Summit reveal a lot about Turkey-Russia relations and, beyond that, East-West relations. (Photos: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) I obtained the photos from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Telegram page. They are from the meeting between President Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin on
Türkiye’s ongoing peace process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) holds the potential to end one of the country’s most destructive conflicts of the past four decades. Yet a lasting settlement cannot be achieved in isolation. Unless the Kurdish question in northern Syria is addressed, any peace at home will remain fragile. Instability in
August 18, 2025, may go down in history as a dark day for European diplomacy. Three days after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, U.S. President Donald Trump, outmaneuvering European leaders, summoned them to his doorstep, saying, “Come, let me explain.” Putin had not wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the
The three-hour meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 at the Elmendorf–Richardson Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska, bore some resemblance to the Yalta Conference of 1945, which marked the end of World War II. Eighty years ago, the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR), and the United
The agreement reached on August 8 in Washington by Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan, facilitated by US President Donald Trump, has the potential to reshape not only the Caucasus but also the political and economic balances in Central Asia and the Middle East. Notably, the mutual pledge of non-aggression and the
The Cyprus issue has remained stuck in conceptual traps for decades, unable to move beyond being a diplomatic headline. Concepts such as “two-zone, two-community federation,” “two sovereign states,” and “confederation” have become not the solution itself but the terminological cloak of the lack of a solution. Today, the issue is no longer “how to name
It is understood that the meeting on June 29 between MİT President İbrahim Kalın and Hamas Shura Council President Muhammed Ismail Darwish, as announced by Turkish security sources, was conducted under four main topics: 1- The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, 2- Turkish efforts with the international community to end Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and destruction, ensuring
After five years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had the opportunity to meet face-to-face again with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he calls his “friend,” at the NATO Summit held in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 24-25. However, unlike Erdoğan’s meetings with leaders from Germany, France, the UK, or the host Netherlands, which were held with
In the theater of Middle East geopolitics, a U.S. strike is rarely just a regional act — it’s a signal to markets, rivals, and allies alike that the temperature just went up. But let’s be clear: this wasn’t a bold initiative from Donald Trump. It was, somewhat predictably, the next act in a script sketched
“You are not a global leader, you are a local dictator,” Turkish main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel said to President Tayyip Erdoğan at a rally in İzmir on May 19, adding, “You will leave the way you came in.” Addressing nearly two million people on the 106th anniversary of the beginning