The Kurdish resistance in Syria and Iraq has re-energised their community here in Turkey, revived the struggle for a Kurdish identity. And that is at the heart of what they're fighting for in this election.

"How can Italy possibly deal with all of these people by itself?" he asks adding: "You're a journalist, please tell the world, we need help."

the Mamluks eventually forced Shaggar ad Durr to marry their commander Aybeg. Louis’ crusade therefore proved the catalyst for the Mamluks to finally dispense with their Ayyubid overlords. The Bahri Mamluk dynasty was set up in 1250, with Aybeg as its first, though not uncontested, sultan

The Mamluk dynasty was now secure, and it lasted until the 16th century. Power struggles prevented continuity at the centre, and even after the Circassian Burji Mamluks seized power from the Bahri Mamluks in the mid-14th century, factionalism and insecurity continued unabated. The Mamluks managed successfully to re-establish their Syrian powerbases following Timur’s brief but hugely destructive invasion in the early 1400s; but the dynasty had been left weakened by the Black Death which had made repeated onslaughts through the Middle East from the mid-14th century and it soon lost the valuable trade revenues of Syria after the Portuguese had opened up Europe’s Ocean trade and the route to India in the later 15th century. In the end it took two only two brief battles for the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to decimate the last Mamluk army to take the field just outside Cairo near the Pyramids in 1517.

Selim I continued to employ a Mamluk as viceroy, however, and recruitment of Circassians as ‘tax farmers’ continued until the new age arrived in Egypt with Napoleon’s army in 1798. Indeed faction building and Mamluk infighting were still characteristic of Egyptian politics in the early 19th century. 

Officials of the party said the $11.7 million loan would be used to help the National Front’s coming local and regional election efforts as well as a run for the French presidency by the party leader, Marine Le Pen.

While the loan made headlines in France, only a few politicians spoke out against it. The head of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, said: “Why is Mr. Putin playing the Marine Le Pen card? There is a very simple reason. She wants to get out of the European Union, triggering its destruction and weakening France.”

The website said the loan was from an obscure Cyprus-based holding company called Vernonsia Holdings Ltd. via a Swiss bank account. The holding belongs to Yuri Kudimov, the former K.G.B. agent, who ran another Russian bank, called VEB Capital, according to the website. That bank, the website said, was considered the financing arm of the Kremlin.

If there was one winner it was Turkey, which, along with China and other energy-hungry developing nations, has been exploiting the East-West rift to gain long-term energy supplies at bargain prices. Mr. Putin noted that on Monday during a news conference in Ankara with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“If Europe does not want this to be realized, then it will not be realized,” he said of the pipeline during the news conference, which was televised live across Russia during prime time. He said it would be “ridiculous” to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the pipeline to bring it to Europe through Bulgaria only to have to abandon it because of political differences.

“We believe that it does not coincide with Europe’s economic interests and harms our cooperation,” Mr. Putin added. “But such is the decision of our European friends. They are, in the end, customers. It is their choice.”

In addition to food, Russia and Turkey have found other avenues for economic cooperation. Russia is finishing plans to start construction on Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.

Police held the protesters back with water cannon, baton charges and volleys of pepper spray, leaving some unconscious and bleeding, others temporarily blind. Altogether, at least 40 people were arrested and 40 were hospitalised.

„Wir sind stark genug, um der Ukraine den Frieden zurückzugeben“, sagte sie.

The trouble is, the conventional wisdom is wrong. America’s beleaguered working and middle classes have lost their illusions about American goodness and virtue in the world. They just want a raise, and Mr. Obama and the Democrats didn’t deliver it.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war after the Korean War was halted in 1953 in a truce but without a peace treaty. North Korea has long said that it needed to build nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the presence of 28,500 American troops in the South, the Pentagon’s annual joint war games with South Korea’s 650,000-member military and its possession of wartime control of combined forces.

The caliphate was finally extinguished by Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, in 1924. He believed the abolition of the institution was essential to his campaign to turn what was left of the empire into a 20th Century secular nation state. The last Ottoman caliph was expelled from Istanbul to live out a life of cultured exile in Paris and on the Cote d'Azur.

n the early days of the Arab Spring, the revolutions in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were interpreted in Western capitals as evidence that the Muslim future lay with democracy. Then in Egypt came the overthrow of the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood government by the army under General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi - and then came the horrors of Islamic State amid the bloody chaos of civil strife in Syria and Iraq

Many classical Sunni scholars challenge the very notion that the caliphate is a political project. Sheikh Ruzwan Mohammed, for example, argues that the key to the caliphate is really spiritual. "I think the Islamic State should come from within," he says. "It should be an Islamic State first and foremost of mind and soul." And the overwhelming majority, even of those who do believe that a new caliphate is a realistic political objective, completely reject the violence espoused by the self-styled Islamic Stat

But IS has skilfully exploited the elements in the caliphate's history which best serve its purposes. The historian Hugh Kennedy has pointed out, for example, that their black uniforms and flags deliberately echo the black robes the Abbasids adopted as their court dress in the 8th Century, thus recalling Islam's Golden Age. And their original title - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - harks back to the days when there was no national border between the two countries, because both territories were part of the great Islamic caliphate.

It could have been mapping or training, it could of course have been spying. Or is it even possible that it set out to be noticed - just to send a message? Here I am. Catch me if you can.

a coded message in Russian, allegedly intercepted by Swedish intelligence, sent from the archipelago to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea.

f so it would appear to be part of a pattern of Russia trying to probe the defences of some of its near neighbours - both countries like Sweden which aren't in Nato, and countries like Estonia which are. Last month Sweden protested to Moscow after two Russian fighter jets entered its airspace. And across the Baltic in Estonia, an intelligence official working close to the border was abducted by Russian agents and taken to Moscow.

The plot thickens.

A contract was written into the deeds of this old French manor house, stipulating that its future owners keep Hubert's room as it is for 500 years. The contract is not legally binding, and Mr Fabre says he's not sure whether the room will survive another 400 years, but his little grand-daughter, giggling over a ashtray fashioned out of a horse's hoof, tells us she for one would never change it.

The UK forces were part of a US-led coalition which toppled the ruling Taliban in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks in the US. After 9/11, US President George Bush had demanded that the Taliban hand over any leaders of al-Qaeda - the militant group which later claimed responsibility for the attacks - in Afghanistan, but the Taliban did not immediately comply.

"We're not going to send combat troops back into Afghanistan, under any circumstances," he added.

At the height of the war in 2009, about 10,000 UK troops were based at Camp Bastion and the UK's 137 patrol bases in southern Afghanistan.

Rear Adm Chris Parry, who helped plan the role of UK troops in Afghanistan, told the BBC that Britain's involvement had been "worth it", saying the country was now "more stable", was improving economically and had 40% more children going to school. But he said politicians in 2001 had not known what they wanted to achieve, the military had not had enough resources and there had been no "coherent military plan".

The election comes after weeks of intensive campaigning by the two candidates and a presidential race that took a tragic turn after Eduardo Campos, a main opposition candidate, was killed in a plane crash in August.

The permanent headquarters of the UNO will be in the US although it has been revealed that France, the UK and the Netherlands voted against this decision.

In recent years, though, Turks have been engaged in an ideological contest over Gallipoli’s legacy. With the rise of the country’s Islamist government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have come efforts to diminish the role of Ataturk, who established Turkey under secular principles. The military, which once had a predominant role over politics in Turkey, has also been pushed aside under Mr. Erdogan.

In defeat, the Australians gained what many historians have described as the first embers of a national consciousness, apart from their British colonial legacy. “It’s certainly seen today as the beginning of a real Australian self-identity,” Rupert Murdoch said.

In victory, the Turks ended decades of Ottoman defeats on the edges of the empire and emerged with a new sense of nationalism — and a leader, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, who would lead the country to independence after the war ended. Mustafa Kemal, then a young officer, met the invading Australians with his men on the day of the landing and earned a reputation as a military genius for his success.

By now the Haigazian College Rocket Society had become a source of national pride. Manougian was invited to a reception held by President Chehab to be told that the Ministry of Education would provide limited funding for 1962 and 1963. It was renamed the Lebanese Rocket Society and the national emblem was adopted for its Cedar rocket programme.

By the time of the Six Day War in 1967, Manougian was back in the US where he stayed for the rest of his academic career.

"Yes, it was a tiny country, but Lebanon could have done it."