Sun 30 August 2020: Last Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in Istanbul that the Fatih drilling ship has discovered reserves of 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas in the Black Sea, and that Turkey will start using this in 2023. This is also when the country will celebrate its centenary as a republic. Turkey […]
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Sun 16 August 2020: The expiration of the treaty of Lausanne by 2023 has triggered a new debate among the global geo-political and geo-strategic thinkers about how Turkey would respond to this tectonic development. Will Turkey resurrect the Ottoman Empire? Will the geopolitical and geo-economic map of the region change? Will Turkey re-assert herself by […]
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Sat 15 August 2020: The controversial American journalist who sued the US government for putting him on a “kill list” in war-torn Syria, was arrested yesterday by a Sunni Islamist militant group in rebel-held Syria, sparking outrage both in the Middle East and across the West. Yesterday’s arrest came hours after Bilal spoke to Middle East Monitor about […]
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Thu 13 August 2020: The Emirati foreign minister called his Iranian counterpart last week, in a further sign of the UAE and Iran’s fledgling relations as Abu Dhabi seeks to step out of Saudi Arabia’s shadow. They discussed cooperation over the coronavirus pandemic while consolidating their ties. “Just had a very substantive, frank and friendly video conversation with UAE […]
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Tue 04 August 2020: Hagia Sophia Mosque and Babri Mosque-turned-Temple essentially different cases from historical and legal perspectives Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul was reverted to its original position as a mosque decreed by the Honorable President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 10, 2020. And the world witnessed its formal […]
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Sun 02 August 2020: The Hagia Sofia Grand Mosque was opened for public worship last Friday for the first time in 86 years following a top court’s ruling that the historic building, originally a church, had been converted into a museum illegally by the founder of modern Turkey’s secular state. I had expected a favourable result before the landmark […]
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Fri 31 July 2020: Increasing surveillance on Muslims will only serve to further estrange Muslims from the government and the state institutions in Austria The integration minister of the Austrian government has set up a unique new center to document what it calls “political Islam”. But the attempt to “fight the dangerous ideology of political […]
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Thu 30 July 2020: None have right to dictate to us whom we talk or meet, says Bangladesh’s foreign minister DHAKA, Bangladesh/KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) – Recent contacts between Pakistani and Bangladeshi leaders have provided a rare glimpse of a possible, if not yet probable, detente after years of strained ties between the two countries, according […]
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Tue 28 July 2020: Faced with a domestic catastrophe in the form of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, and a foreign policy crisis in the form of 24 dead Indian soldiers killed earlier this month by Chinese forces in the Ladakh region, the Narendra Modi Hindu-led nationalist government has never felt more humiliated and defeated during its six-year hold […]
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Sun 26 July 2020: Regional powers on their respective turfs, the increasing bellicosity between Addis Ababa and Cairo has been affecting both countries adversely in multiple ways. They should be encouraged to carry on the African Union’s (AU) proceeding course and a tremendous deal is achievable by pushing the UN, the World Bank and US […]
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