On Thursday, Turkey agreed to a cease-fire in northern Syria on terms decided between itself and the United States. The cease-fire came nine days into Turkey’s military offensive against the Syrian Kurds, who Turkey considers a terror threat based on their ethnic ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party. Over 300,000 are estimated to have fled their homes in the region under attack, and according to the UN 71 deaths have been confirmed thus far. The United States is caught in the middle, as Turkey is a NATO ally while the…
The ruling party in Turkey was dealt a major setback on Sunday as the re-run of Istanbul’s mayoral election showed the same result they had previously contested. The AKP, party of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had contested and annulled the surprise victory by opposition party CHP’s candidate Ekrem Imamoglu in March. Imamoglu’s victory in March, over former prime minister Binali Yildirim of the AKP, had a narrow margin of 13000 votes, and the electoral authority held that the election was invalid due to issues in the staffing at ballot…