Tayyip Erdogan

The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday denied allegations that its air strikes had killed civilians in Syria's Idlib province, saying that in recent days it had only bombed Islamist militant fighters in the area, reported Reuters. 

"We warned you that the far right is on the rise," said Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan on Sept. 25, implicitly addressing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as if she was not aware of the rise in xenophobic, even racist votes in her own country. Merkel had lost some votes in Germany's election on Sept.

We do not yet know whether U.S. President Donald Trump's Sept. 21 message - in which he said he had "become close friends" with President Tayyip Erdoğan and relations between the two countries were "at their best level ever" - really is good news for those hoping for an improvement in Turkish-American relations.

The 26th Istanbul Criminal Court on Sept. 19 rejected demands to release a group of journalists and writers who have been in jail for more than a year, in a case into the "media leg" of the Gülen network.

On the same day as the Washington Post published an editorial "unwelcoming" Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan to U.S. soil and urging U.S. President Donald Trump to stop arms sales to Turkey, Trump thanked Ankara for hosting refugees fleeing from the civil war in Syria in his Sept. 19 speech at the U.N. General Assembly.

Turkey summoned Germany's ambassador to its foreign ministry on Monday, Berlin said, amid a mounting row between the two NATO powers.

Der Spiegel magazine said Ankara wanted to raise a German parliamentary motion last year that declared the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide - a description that Turkey has long fiercely rejected.

Upon an order from the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office, Ankara police on Sept. 15 detained Celal Çelik, a lawyer for the leader of the social democratic main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Kemal Kıçıldaroğlu. 

Ankara's relations with NATO ally Germany, hit by a deepening row, are expected to improve alongside a general upturn in ties with the EU early next year, boosting Turkish export and tourism prospects, an adviser to President Tayyip Erdogan told Reuters.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sept. 11 that his government has put all major arms exports to Turkey on hold due to the deteriorating human rights situation in the country and the escalating tension between the two NATO allies. Chancellor Angela Merkel later said this does not mean a total ban on exports.

On his way back from Kazakhstan on Sept. 10, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters on board his plane that his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump would be a good opportunity to cover all the issues between them.