Eastern Mediterranean

Turkey's foreign trade deficit regressed to $4.11 billion in November with a 4.1 percent decline compared to the same month of 2015, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on Dec. 30. 

The country's trade gap declined to $50.4 billion in the first 11 months of the year, with an around 12 percent of drop compared to the same period of 2015, according to TÜİK data. 

Russian rescuers trawling the Black Sea on Dec. 28 found the second black box from a Syria-bound military plane that crashed at the weekend with 92 people on board, authorities said.  

"The second onboard recorder from the Tu-154 plane has been found and raised from the seabed," the Defense Ministry said in a statement to Russian news agencies.

Turkey has the sixth-largest diplomatic network in the world, according to an international global diplomacy index.        

The index published by the Australia-based Lowy Institute for International Policy showed that Turkey has the largest number of diplomatic missions abroad, following the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Turkish Airlines and Pegasus Airlines were named Turkey's top service exporters, followed by Çalık Energy, in a competition by the Turkish Exporters' Assembly (TİM) in coordination with the Economy Ministry late on Dec. 24 in an award ceremony. There were two other Turkish carriers in the top 10 list too. 

With the 2016 tourist season now largely over, it is known that the Turkish international tourism sector's revenues have dropped by over one third over the previous season.

I don't know who invented the term "frenemy" to refer to the implicit alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran in the wake of the U.S.-Iran deal, but it seems well-suited to describing the new Russia-Turkey friendship as well.

A road map with nine steps to make Turkey-China economic relations sustainable and balanced has been released by the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK) and Turkey-China Business Council. 

The report penned by Sabancı University Istanbul Policy Center expert Altay Atlı includes a comprehensive and high-quality road map for decision makers and the business world.

Handcrafts made up the lion's share of Turkish cultural good exports in 2015, according to official data released on Dec. 21.

Handcraft exports made up 70 percent of the country's cultural good exports, totaling 12.48 billion liras ($3.57 billion) last year, followed by audio and visual media with a 26.4 percent share, said the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).        

The fall of Aleppo will not mean the end of the war in Syria and the fundamental aspect of this war has not changed, U.K. Special Representative for Syria, Gareth Bayley, has told a group of Turkish journalists in Istanbul. 

Children who have fled war-torn Syria will be integrated into Turkey's official education system and the government is focusing on Turkish language learning for Syrian students. 

Around 133,400 Syrian students are currently enrolled in public schools run by the Education Ministry, but there are nearly 832,000 school age children between 6 and 18 years old in Turkey.