Ethnic groups in the Middle East

?Turkey and the Rescue of European Jews? by I. ?zzet Bahar (Routledge, 308 pages, £80)

Dear Holy Father,

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group released more than 200 mostly elderly members of northern Iraq's Yazidi minority Jan. 17 who had been held for months, officials and activists said.
      

For centuries, ideologues and politicians in the West have positioned themselves regarding Islam in a defensive way.

Circassians in Turkey are increasingly looking to gain rights from the state amid a process of questioning their identity and their place between Ankara and Moscow, according to a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University.

A new law allowing the Catholic, Anglican and other churches in Greece to administer their affairs without state involvement was passed through Parliament on Thursday.

Education and Religious Affairs Minister Andreas Loverdos described the legislation, which gives the churches similar statuses to state bodies that operate under private law (NPID), as a “big deal.”

Islamic State militants extended their gains in northern Iraq on Aug. 7, seizing more towns and strengthening a foothold near the Kurdish region, witnesses said, in an offensive that has alarmed the Baghdad government and regional powers.

The advance came after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces in a weekend sweep in the north.

Kurds will not surprise Turkey with the establishment of a possible independent state, according to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami.

Few people know how ancient the word paradise is, that it has been traced to the Achaemenid dynasty that ruled the Middle East from the 8th century to the 4th century BC over an area that stretched from the Balkans to the Indus River Valley.