Iraqi Kurdistan has a new president and prime minister this week as the Barzanis continue to keep it all in the family.

Several terrorist attacks occurred across Iraq during Eid al-Fitr celebrations, raising concerns of a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS).

Someone is setting Syria's crops on fire and there are several suspects: the Islamic State (IS), Syrian regime forces, and/or Turkey and its allied fighters. The problem is especially severe in Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous administration area in northeast Syria, also known as Syrian Kurdistan.

The United States has decided to stop accepting any additional Turkish pilots who planned to come to the United States to train on F-35 fighter jets, US officials say, in a clear sign of the escalating dispute over Ankara’s plans to purchase Russian air defenses.

With less than 20 days to go before the Istanbul re-run elections, the latest decision by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) has created yet another controversy over the safety of polls and has drawn reactions from political parties.

Graffiti denouncing the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is scrawled across the walls in Shuhail, an Arab town in Deir ez-Zor province flanked by golden grain fields near the snaking Euphrates River.

In the coming election in Istanbul, the Kurds will “stand by the victim against the usurper,” the new mayor of Diyarbakir, Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli, says.

<p style="text-align: left;">The Iraqi Civil Defense announced May 28 that 136 fires had occurred in grain fields in the previous 18 days throughout various provinces, including 59 in Saladin, 17 in Kirkuk and 15 in Ninevah. The Islamic State took responsibility for 13 of them.&nbsp;</p>

Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), was elected president by the semi-autonomous region’s parliament in a session that was boycotted by the main opposition party.

You do not have to be a weapons expert to understand that the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles that will be delivered and stationed somewhere in Turkey this summer are targeting Ankara’s relations with the US and NATO. The purchase of these missiles is obviously more complex than just a choice about a defense system. The US and Turkey are experiencing a far-reaching breakdown in their relationship, and it is uncertain if this relationship will ever recover. The dispute over the Turkish regime’s decision to buy these sophisticated Russian weapons is just the tip of the iceberg regarding Ankara’s transition from Turkey’s traditional Western orientation and its role in the Euro-Atlantic defense community. Since a military coup attempt in 2016 by Turkish officials and the state-controlled Turkish media, the US and some other key Western allies such as Germany have been gradually accused of being the real perpetrators of the unsuccessful coup.

Ever since the May 6 annulment of the Istanbul mayoral vote, won by the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu, the debate has raged over how President Erdogan might avoid another defeat in the rerun election on June 23.

During Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s recent visit to Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the prospect of a security and military cooperation accord between the two neighbors, generating some rather splashy headlines in the media. Though Turkey and Iraq have put nothing on paper yet, the mere declaration of intent to resolve problems that have kept them at loggerheads in recent years has created an air of a new beginning. Security cooperation, however, is not a new topic for them. Turkey and Iraq signed a security deal in 2008, but it has had little effect on the ground. And the stumbling blocks in bilateral ties remain tough, calling for more tempered expectations.

The Kurds are creating a state of their own in northern Syria

Member of the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee Hakim al-Zamili announced May 9 that negotiations were underway to buy an S-400 air missile system from Moscow.

Voters in Istanbul are heading to the polls once again on June 23 for a rerun of the mayoral election, which the opposition candidate won the first time around with support from the country’s leading Kurdish political party.