The financial technology sector in Turkey has grown significantly, and is looking to Qatar for further expansion.
Turkish fintech companies met with Qatari investors this week in a webinar. The Turkish presidency’s finance office organized the event along with the private Qatar Financial Center on Feb. 23-24, Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency reported today.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has chided NATO for failing to do more for Ukraine but remains averse to antagonizing Russia.
Faced with a tough balancing act, Turkey has been sending mixed signals on its position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has angered Moscow by developing military ties with Kyiv, has called for NATO action on the one hand, while stressing the importance of preserving ties with Russia on the other.
The success of Turkish-made drones in Ukraine is the most obvious sign of Ankara’s backing for Kyiv, but fear of Russian backlash is making Turkey tread lightly.
Imagery of a burned-out Russian military convoy in Ukraine shared on social media over the weekend credited its destruction to Turkish-made drones.
NATO member Turkey changed its rhetoric to call Russia’s assault on Ukraine a “war” on Sunday and pledged to implement parts of an international pact that would potentially limit the transit of Russian warships from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, Reuters reported.
That the ruling mullahs are asking the Biden administration for guarantees that the US will never be able to leave the new nuclear deal, even after President Joe Biden leaves office, should signal that the mullahs want this deal badly and set off all sorts of alarms.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham cracks down and arrests Salafists who support anti-HTS protests.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which controls Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, has stepped up its security measures as protests escalate.
Abstract: On January 20, 2022, the Islamic State launched a complex assault on Hasakah’s Ghwayran prison, a place in which thousands of its fighters had been held since the ‘defeat’ of its territorial caliphate in March 2019. The attack was the first time that the group had directly targeted a major detention facility in Syria since losing its last significant territorial toehold in Syria, notwithstanding the consistent calls for prison breaks that have been uttered by its leaders during the last three years.
Abstract: Over the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted dissidents, Western opponents, Israelis, and Jews in assassination plots, abduction plots, and surveillance operations that facilitate both. Iran has carried out such external operations around the world, in countries with both strong and weak law enforcement agencies, border crossings, and intelligence services. It has done so consistently over the years, including at times and in places where carrying out such operations could undermine key Iranian diplomatic efforts, such as negotiations over the country’s nuclear program. This study, based on a dataset of 98 Iranian plots from 1979 through 2021, maps out key trends in Iranian external operations plotting.
In early January… in a bolder, less expected and potentially damaging geostrategic move that angered all four of Turkey’s Mediterranean rivals (Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt), the Biden administration silently abandoned an eastern Mediterranean pipeline project (EastMed) that would carry Israeli gas through Cyprus to Europe.
Prominent Arab political analysts, commentators and journalists are continuing to express fear about Iran’s “expansionist” schemes in the Arab countries, especially Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They say that they are worried that a return to the JCPOA would further embolden the mullahs in Tehran and the Iranian-backed terrorist groups.