Fazil Say, Turkey's most famous concert pianist, is no stranger to controversy. But he has rarely ruffled as many feathers as he did recently, when he launched into a searing attack on one of Turkey's most popular forms of music.
An unprecedented thing happened last year in Konya, the capital of the province where Turkey's mould-breaking foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu was born in 1959. For the first time in its recent history, this agricultural center-turned-industrial boom town exported more goods to the Middle East than to Europe.
Turkish authorities on February 24 jailed 12 senior military officers, both active-duty and retired, on suspicion of plotting a coup. The jailings offer the clearest sign yet of the rapidly declining political influence of the Turkish military, which has overthrown four governments since 1960.
The future of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process appears increasingly fragile amid growing Turkish objections to a decision by Armenia's Constitutional Court on protocols the two countries signed last October.
Mehmet Savasir was 24 when he learned he was dying. His treatment for what a local doctor had assumed was tuberculosis wasn't working. The pain in his lungs was getting worse, he found breathing increasingly difficult, and he had lost 20 kilograms in two months.
Mehmet Savasir was 24 when he learned he was dying. His treatment for what a local doctor had assumed was tuberculosis wasn't working. The pain in his lungs was getting worse, he found breathing increasingly difficult, and he had lost 20 kilograms in two months.
Turkey's political leaders are taking to the road to explain their plans to end a 25-year Kurdish war to the people. The PR offensive is opening amid rising political tensions and dwindling hopes of a multi-party accord on the initiative.
Looming on a hilltop overlooking the eastern Turkish city of Kars, the Monument to Humanity seems like a perfect symbol for the on-going Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.
