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Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.

A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey's armed forces' headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.

Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.

How the ISIS fight went global

Just one day before multiple machine gun and bomb attacks in the French capital left almost 500 people from all walks of life dead or wounded, U.S. President Barack Obama said that the U.S. strategy against the jihadist group has "contained" it but not yet succeeded in its effort to "decapitate" the group's leadership.

Two suicide bombers detonated devices in the port city on Thursday, claiming the lives of at least 43 and wounding another 239.

A Syrian suicide bomber is thought to be responsible for an attack which killed at least ten people including foreigners in the heart of Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet tourist district on Tuesday, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

There was a high probability Islamic State militants were behind the blast near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, major tourist sites in the center of one of the world's most visited cities, two senior Turkish security officials told Reuters.

Several bodies lay on the ground in the Sultanahmet square in the immediate aftermath of the blast. A police officer and witness at the scene also reported seeing several body parts.

Donald Trump has announced that the US will lift sanctions on Turkey, taking credit for a ceasefire deal that should end Ankara’s attack on Kurdish-led forces – at the price of ending the Kurds’ dream of local autonomy.

said on Wednesday that a “small number” of US troops would remain in Syria’s oilfields.

Trump emphasized that US troops were “safe” and said America would leave other powers to fight each other in the region.

The Biden administration is weighing a Turkish proposal to buy a fleet of F-16 jet fighters that officials in Ankara say would mend ruptured security links between the countries, but the sale faces opposition from members of Congress critical of Turkey’s growing ties to Russia.

Senior Turkish officials say the deal could be a lifeline for their relationship with the U.S., which has suffered for years over Turkey’s purchases of Russian arms, clashing interests in the war in Syria and U.S. criticism of Ankara’s human-rights record. And in both countries, analysts say blocking the sale could push Ankara closer to Russia.

U.S. arms export control laws require the administration to notify Congress of proposed foreign military sales, giving lawmakers a chance to review and oppose or try to block a deal. The administration hasn’t formally notified Congress about the proposed F-16 sale.

Turkey parliament moves country toward presidential system

Published January 15, 2017 Associated Press Facebook0 Twitter0 Email Print ISTANBUL –  Turkey's parliament has moved a step closer to approving a constitutional reform package that would pave the way for a presidential system. In a session that ended late Sunday in Ankara, a majority of lawmakers voted in favor of the final article in the controversial package presented by the ruling party.

Critics see the changes as a bid to cement outsized powers already exercised by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey detains 9 colonels in north Cyprus for Gulen ties

urkey's state-run news agency says nine Turkish colonels have been detained in northern Cyprus as part of the investigation into the movement allegedly responsible for a failed coup in July.

Ankara accuses the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the violent coup attempt and has launched a sweeping purge of his followers, arresting 41,000 people and purging more than 100,000 from government jobs. Gulen denies the claims. Earlier this week, top diplomats from Turkey, Greece and Britain met in Geneva to discuss ways of providing post-reunification security for the divided island of Cyprus.

What do these statements tell us? That Team Obama defines the struggle against terrorism as a conflict pitting countries of all religious and ideological types against a common stateless foe, while Team Trump defines it as a conflict between Christendom and Islam.

The natural implication of Obama’s worldview is that preventing terrorism requires cooperation between very different nations. The natural implication of Trump’s is that preventing terrorism requires keeping Muslims out. Neither of Trump’s statements acknowledges the possibility that Christians might perpetrate terrorism or Muslims might be victims of it.

The message to Muslims in Germany and the United States is the same one Trump has peddled for more than a year now: You are the enemy within.

it is that people should learn from their history

which is expected to overwhelmingly approve a resolution that officially declares the century-old Armenian massacres to be genocide

warned Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in a telephone call that there could be consequences if the resolution passes

Secret official documents about the searching of three trucks belonging to Turkey's national intelligence service (MIT) have been leaked online, once again corroborating suspicions that Ankara has not been playing a clean game in Syria.

According to the authenticated documents, the trucks were found to be transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he had said, “You cannot stop the MIT truck. You cannot search it. You don’t have the authority. These trucks were taking humanitarian assistance to Turkmens.”

President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he would scrap Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline, a grandiose project that was once intended to establish the country’s dominance in southeastern Europe but instead fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West.

Russia had long presented the $22 billion South Stream project as a sound business move. But Washington and Brussels had dismissed it as a thinly veiled attempt by the Kremlin to cement its position as the dominant supplier in Europe while sidestepping Ukraine, where price disputes with Moscow twice interrupted supplies in recent years.

The Ukraine conflict also helped turn Mr. Putin away from the West. He signed a major and long-delayed deal to provide gas to China and began seeking other, non-European markets for his oil and gas. This, too, made the pipeline seem more expendable.

ISTANBUL — Turkey has confirmed that it struck positions in Syria held by Kurdish militias that over the last year have become the most important allies within Syria of the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.

In an interview on a Turkish news channel Monday night, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey did not specify when the strikes had taken place, but he said they came after Ankara warned Kurdish fighters not to move west of the Euphrates River.

The armed wing of the P.Y.D., the People’s Protection Units, said in a statement that Turkey had struck its positions in Tal Abyad on Saturday and Sunday, and that a separate Turkish attack, on Sunday in the village of Buban, had wounded two civilians.

self-proclaimed caliphate

By comparison, al-Qaida often favored major symbols such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 attacks, and U.S. embassies in Africa in a pair of 1998 bombings.

3. Europe's Vulnerability: The Paris attacks point to weaknesses France and other European countries face in combating terrorism.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey shot down a Russian warplane Tuesday, claiming it had violated Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings. Russia denied that the plane crossed the Syrian border into Turkish skies.

Russia said the Su-24 was downed by artillery fire, but Turkey claimed that its F-16s fired on the Russian plane after it ignored several warnings. The ministry said the pilots parachuted but added that Moscow had no further contact with them.

Video footage of the incident showed a warplane on fire before crashing on a hill and two crew members apparently parachuting safely.

A Syrian man whose wife and seven children drowned as they attempted to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to mainland Europe has warned other refugees that the risks of migration are not worth taking.

hat smugglers had told his family they would not need life jackets because the boat was safe

“I would say don’t take this risk. Don’t go by sea. You will lose your children. The smugglers are traitors. They said we would reach Greece within 15 minutes. I advise everyone: don’t come, stay in Syria, however difficult it is.”

Putin vows 'extremely tough' action on Syria threats

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to take "extremely tough" action against any threat to its forces in Syria.

Turkey said the bomber had entered its airspace, something denied by Russia.

suicide bombing on Sultanahmet Square Tuesday killed 10 people -- all of them Germans, the German Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday.

deadliest attack on Germans abroad in more than 13 years

Turkey detained 68 suspected terrorists in sweeps across seven provinces,

The suicide bomber who killed at least 10 foreigners Tuesday in a popular central Istanbul tourist area belonged to ISIS

pinned blame on the group that calls itself the Islamic State, which has entrenched itself in neighboring Syria and Iraq while proving willing time and again to lash out elsewhere.

at least nine Germans were killed.