Iranian FM Amirabdollahian to visit Turkey tomorrow

No regional power has tried to oust the Syrian regime as openly as Turkey. Since the start of war in Syria in 2011, Turkey trained and armed opposition groups, hosted millions of Syrian refugees, and in 2020 even directly clashed with regime forces. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called Syrian President Bashar al Assad a “murderer” and called on the international community to hold him accountable.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani removed on Monday Central Bank of Iraq Gov. Mustafa Ghaleb Mukheef and head of the Trade Bank of Iraq Salem Chalabi.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday that Ankara dropping its objections to the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO should not be a precondition for the US sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

The White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, Brett McGurk, will visit Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) on Monday to meet with senior Iraqi and Kurdish officials, Kurdish officials told Kurdish media outlets.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is the subject of a closure case, has submitted a petition to the Constitutional Court requesting that the court conclude its case after the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for June, the Gazete Duvar news website reported.

A French political analyst Fabrice Balanche believes that the recent attack of a French citizen on Ahmed Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris is more related to the hatred of immigrants.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has rebuffed Russia's efforts to arrange a meeting with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, citing Turkey's upcoming elections and the presence of Turkish troops on Syrian soil.

In his first interview with international media following Tuesday's drone strike on his main headquarters in northeast Syria, Mazlum Kobane (also known as Mazloum Abdi), the commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that the most likely target of a potential Turkish ground offensive against the Kurdish-controlled areas would be his native city of Kobani.

The Joint Chairman of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of the Euphrates Region condemned the drone attack of the Turkish army on the building of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration and considered these attacks to be aimed at destroying the autonomous administration and the democratic experience of northern and eastern Syria.

Prof Birgit Ammann believes it has to be made clear that there is also a lot of serious critique against both the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the People's Defense Units (YPG) and their political environment- within and outside the Kurdish communities and that that the ban of both groups is totally outdated in Germany. A professor from the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, she also said it is virtually impossible and unnecessary to figure the number of the Kurds in the world because Kurds do not need a number to justify their claims.

Saying that Iraq has become a meeting place for the parties with different views, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani stressed that Baghdad will try to improve relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that Sweden should not expect backing from Turkey for its NATO membership bid. The Turkish president made the comments on Monday, following a protest in the Swedish capital which angered Turkish officials.

Finland’s defense ministry said Wednesday the country had issued the first commercial export license for military materiel to Turkey since 2019 — a key demand for Ankara to approve Helsinki’s NATO bid, Agence France-Presse reported.

A member of the political office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) revealed the details of the differences between the two parties of the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and announced: "We are not enemies with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, both sides are trying to attract the largest number of voters."

Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said on Tuesday that his country will not pull out its troops from Iraq, claiming that Amsterdam will continue to train Iraqi forces.