Syria

Peace is there, the process is there, the resolution is there…

Those men, in such an environment, at such a time, cowardly and viciously fire bullets at three soldiers in plainclothes who were unarmed, who were strolling in the city center. There cannot be any lower act than this.

Militants from Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Oct. 27 hijacked a truck, seizing 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of the explosive substance ammonium nitrate, the Turkish army said.

The commander of the Turkish Air Force, Gen. Akın Öztürk, inspected a military exercise on Oct. 21 aimed at protecting frontier military posts, including the Tomb of Süleyman Şah in Syria.

The tomb has recently come into focus as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) made incursions into the region, according to both Turkish and U.S. officials.

Damascus has provided military support to Kurdish forces to help them battle Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Syrian media has reported, in a move that would mean President Bashar al-Assad and his Western enemies could be backing the same forces against Islamist militants.
   

The Turkish ceramic sector’s exports to the Middle East and North Africa decreased by around 30 percent in the first nine months of the year from the same period of 2013, mainly due to rising instability in its key markets of Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Syrian rebels led by Al-Qaeda loyalists launched a major assault on the government-held city of Idlib on Oct. 27 in a bid to consolidate their control over the northwest, a monitoring group said.
     
Rebels seized control of most of Idlib province early in the three and a half year old civil war but troops have held out in the provincial capital, resupplied by air.

Some 73 illegal immigrants have been captured off of Turkey’s western coast during operations conducted by the Coast Guard to halt human trafficking in the Aegean Sea.

Washington called Oct. 27 for the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to be extended to the Internet, as coalition partners met for talks on how to stop the jihadists' online propaganda.
      

The US economic interest in Turkey remains strong despite political strains, says Turkish American Chamber of Commerce head Beşir Kemal Ustaoğlu.

The leftists’ traditional opposition to Western powers has always been as a matter of principle in the name of “anti-imperialism”; now the neo-Islamists express opposition whenever the Western powers fail or refuse to support and help them when necessary.