Turkey

On March 3, 1999, Hikmet Sami Turk, Turkish minister of defense, addressed The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. The following is a rapporteur's summary of the forum's question-and-answer session. Read his opening remarks. Relations with Iraq The Iraqi question can only be resolved peacefully, but Iraq must comply with all

Seemingly on the verge of hostilities with Turkey in mid-October 1998, President Hafez Assad of Syria did what almost nobody expected. He backed down, and quickly. Assad pledged to meet most -- though not all -- Turkish demands that he end support for the Turkish-Kurdish separatist group known as the

The arrest of Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan in Italy last week was a rare example of the capture of a major terrorist group leader. In contrast, an Italian court's decision today to release him under a loose form of "house arrest"is widely seen as a prelude

On October 14, 1998, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott delivered The Washington Institute's Second Annual Turgut Ozal Memorial Lecture at the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel. The following are excerpts from his remarks. Read a full transcript. "The association of this event with the name of Turgut Ozal made this truly

On September 2, 1998, H.E. Baki Ilkin, Turkish ambassador to the United States, addressed The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. The following are excerpts from his opening remarks and a rapporteur's summary of the subsequent question-and-answer session. Read a full transcript. Transformation of Bilateral Relations "We are no longer only

The December 1997 European Union (EU) summit in Luxembourg accepted the membership candidacies of ten Eastern and Central European countries and Cyprus. Contrary to Turkish expectations, however, Turkey was not accepted as a "candidate." This disappointing result -- known in Turkey as ''the Luxembourg shock'' -- was the result of

The Israeli-Turkish-U.S. trilateral search-and-rescue exercise taking place this week near Israel's Mediterranean coast highlights the thickening network of ties between Washington's two major non-Arab, Middle Eastern allies. A plus for U.S. interests in the region, Israeli-Turkish relations are watched with growing unease in Damascus, Baghdad, and Tehran, on the one

For the past three decades, Turkey's political establishment has equated success in its quest for full acceptance as a Western state with admission to the European Union (EU)-a goal likely to be dealt a severe, if not crippling, blow at an historic EU summit that starts tomorrow. The EU's implicit

During the Cold War, Turkey played a vital role as the southeast bastion of NATO. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a new configuration in the Middle East has emerged, one that has actually increased Turkey's importance in the region. The