Turkey

Wednesday

Ben Clerkin

How Trump inadvertently boosted Europe’s defense industry

With all the Hollywood drama and heart-pounding music of a Mission: Impossible trailer, NATO screened a short promotional film at its Ankara summit to showcase the military hardware it plans to buy to hit Donald Trump's defense spending target. One of the aircraft featured in the mini-movie was even an A400M – the heavy-lift plane that Tom Cruise clung to the side of in the fifth installment of his action film franchise. When the lights came back up, NATO’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, shook hands, slapped backs and made clear that NATO had not only chosen to accept Trump’s mission to boost spending, it was now delivering.

Mark Rutte NATO

Wednesday

Dot Wordsworth

Why should we call Turkey ‘Türkiye’?

From our UK edition

Thank heaven my husband doesn’t even pretend to like football. Indeed he emphasises his indifference by making ironic remarks like: ‘Poor old Ivory Coast was robbed.’ The World Cup has brought out the Babel in naming countries. Do we call them by the established English names or by what they call themselves? Ivory Coast, which has French as its official language, calls itself Côte d’Ivoire. (Diacritics cause online complications, as with plucky little Curaçao, which I heard referred to as ‘Cure-a-cow’.) Fifa too employs the home-grown Côte d’Ivoire, but BBC News and BBC Sport call it Ivory Coast. To us it is obvious that Germany is not Deutschland and Spain is not España. As names used by those outside, Germany and Spain are known as exonyms.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Will Turkey intervene in Iran?

With the exception so far of a single missile intercepted over Turkish airspace and a strike on an Azeri-controlled territory near the Iranian border, Tehran has so far declined to mess with the Turks, and for good reasons. Turkey is a member of NATO and attacking it would trigger Article 5 mutual defense measures. And it is NATO’s leading member, the United States, which is attacking Iran in the first place. A more serious restraining factor is Turkey’s own large and highly effective army – and its proven willingness to use it against weakened neighbors. Over recent decades Ankara hasn’t hesitated to send troops and launch bombing raids into both Syria and Iraq, occupying border regions when it decides that Turkey’s internal security is threatened.

Tuesday

Daniel Thorpe

Why Turkey wants to help Iran

The Iranian regime remains firmly in the crosshairs of American bombers. As President Trump mulls whether to strike, Turkey is using every available channel to halt a military intervention. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has personally offered to mediate between Tehran and Washington. At the same time, Turkish authorities have tightened their grip on exiled Iranian opposition figures. Turkey’s sudden support for Iran is not born of friendship. Over the past two decades, the two countries have repeatedly found themselves on opposing sides. In the Syrian civil war, Iran sent Shi’a proxies to prop up the dictator Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey armed and trained Sunni rebel groups. Ankara’s push for dialogue is driven by a fear of regional destabilization.

erdoğan turkey