Barack Obama administration

Just as expected, it has been a week of wonders in the U.S. capital for civil servants who have struggled to keep pace with new President Donald Trump's executive orders, which have included his infamous campaign pledge to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The first concrete words that Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan wants to hear from the Donald Trump administration, scheduled to take office on Jan. 20, came from Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, during his Jan. 11 testimony to the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

The Turkish military announced on Dec. 30 that Russian jets hit positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near the Syrian town of al-Bab. 

It is one thing not to believe your eyes. It is another thing to ignore it, deny it and live in constant delusion. A majority of Turkey is in the second group. For them, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is God's gift to earth and to all Muslims, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can do no wrong. Sadly, this delusional insistence is becoming an existential danger.

The tragic terrorist attack last Saturday in Istanbul was claimed by the outlawed Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a subgroup responsible for organizing the suicide attacks of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). As such, the PKK is the true perpetrator. 

The timing of this suicide attack is quite meaningful, and was mainly determined by the transition period in the U.S.

The whole Syrian affair deserves to be defined as a "crime against humanity." The "intervention in Iraq" was another one, even if the chief conspirators, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, were able to get away with it given that they were the leaders of two powerful countries.

The international system has been evolving ever since the bipolarity of the Cold War ended. As the unipolar U.S. moment was short lived, and none of the international powers has enough capacity to unilaterally dominate its peers, a somewhat multipolar world system is slowly emerging.

A revised effort to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels for the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) will not repeat the same mistakes that doomed a similar program last year, according to the prospective next U.S. commander for the Middle East, Army Gen. Joseph Votel.

The U.S.-led battle against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants controlling parts of Iraq and Syria is gaining steam and will show more progress by year's end, Vice President Joe Biden has said. 

The Russian military build-up and bombing in Syria has added to the already existing tension between Russia and the West since the former's occupation of Crimea, and has prompted a new confrontation area on NATO's southeastern flank in addition to difficulties on the eastern flank.