It’s a joke when President Macron says ‘We are one’ while excluding Muslims, human rights activist tells Anadolu Agency

Two news stories with completely opposite titles appeared in Western media last week. The first story was about Turkey allegedly provoking its NATO allies by testing the S-400 air defense system. The other related to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remarks on the “unprecedented” level of cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine, viewing the Ukrainian leader’s decision to award President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with the medal of honor as problematic for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. That development, The Times argued, could be detrimental to Erdoğan’s relationship with Putin.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened the new campus of Ibn Khaldun University – an amalgam of Seljuk, Ottoman and Republican Turkish architecture. With a greater ratio of international students than any other institution in Turkey, currently 30%, Ibn Khaldun is a next-generation university with a firm commitment to the idea of intellectual independence.

As Turkey grows stronger, it must develop a new kind of relationship with not just the Western alliance but also Russia. The Black Sea may be a geopolitical space where that claim will be put to the test.

Armenia engaged in acts of aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh, days after its attack on Tovuz in western Azerbaijan. That country opened fire on its neighbor’s civilian population on Sunday, which elicited a strong military response from Baku. A number of villages have since come under Azerbaijani control. It would appear that Yerevan made a huge miscalculation in the Caucasus and did not take seriously enough Turkey’s commitment to stand in solidarity with Azerbaijan.

Turkey has been upgrading its status in international politics and has recently achieved a higher degree of autonomy in its foreign policy. The stronger Turkey gets, the more threats it faces from friendly countries as well as adversarial actors, and the more it is otherized by foreign governments.

With the U.S. elections five weeks away, the fight over the presidency keeps getting nastier. This is not your average disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. Even labels like globalist and patriot have long been overused. Nowadays, President Donald Trump’s critics claim that he will destroy American democracy if he gets four more years. If Joe Biden wins, others say, China will own the United States.

The dangerous escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean has given way to dialogue and negotiations.

In the wake of the Arab insurgencies and revolutions, the Arab world lost touch with its role as the main carriers of Arab nationalism. In reality, the process of the dissolution of the Arab world started on 9/11 when some citizens of Saudi Arabia executed the most devastating terrorist attacks in the history of the United States. Shortly after Sept. 11, the U.S. invaded Iraq, claiming that the Saddam Hussein regime was about to produce nuclear weapons.

In this piece, I will attempt to answer the question that I asked in last week’s column, in which I tried to assess the French approach toward Turkey. I will elaborate on the general view of the Western countries toward Turkey by answering the following questions: Why has the West been otherizing and alienating Turkey? What are the main sources of anti-Turkish sentiments in the West? Why is the West concerned about the democratic institutions in Muslim countries? Is the rise of Turkophobia related to the most recent wave of Islamophobia? Why is the West against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government? Are they worried about the rise of the Turkish state?

Western media’s opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is possibly the world’s worst kept secret. Western commentators immediately jump to conclusions about the supposedly expansionist goals of Erdoğan’s Turkey whenever Ankara launches a fresh foreign policy initiative. Experts in Washington, Paris, Athens, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere make the same arguments in an attempt to contain Turkey’s influence to an unbearable extent. At the heart of those comments lies the claim that the Turkish president has isolated his country in the international arena, which will lead the nation to a disaster and that the Turkish people deserve better.

French President Emmanuel Macron has openly had Turkey in his crosshairs for quite some time.

For Western capitals, a Turkey led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a problem they do not know how to manage. It has also been election campaign material for politicians since Brexit. You can be sure that the Erdoğan factor will persist in election campaigns in Germany in 2021 and in France in 2022.

For the last decade, the main concern of Turkish foreign policy has been the crises in the Middle East and North Africa, which include threats emanating from different terrorist groups and state failures as a result of Arab insurgencies. Ankara, however, has been spending its energy on its relations with Western countries, especially France and the United States, rather than on these crises. Nowadays, many observers both from inside and outside the nation have been trying to answer the question, “What does the West want from Turkey?” In this piece, I will try to trace the roots of Paris' approach toward Ankara.

The French president seems to forget that people in the region already know that France is not a regional power and indeed, has colonial fantasies.

Turkey counters encirclement strategy by concluding maritime accord with Libya, unnerving inimical regional, global powers

Taking advantage of an unstable political system and toxic civilian-military relations, FETÖ infiltrated the Turkish military and exploited what it could