Rapid Fire News=Ankara - Baghdad - Teheran Watch - Opening Moves of Turkey's Action Plan Offensive - Istanbul to Host Major International Conferences Nov. 1-3 - Trilateral Meeting Between Foreign Ministers of China-Russia-India

Turkey's upcoming election could be the end of Turkish secularism -- unless the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated against Islamic Sharia rule in Ankara, Istanbul and elsewhere recently can pull off an electoral victory, which looks doubtful. "The Upcoming Elections...

A woman falsely claimed there was a bomb on board a Turkish airliner to try to delay the flight so her husband could catch it, Turkey's Onur Air says. Both of them were arrested. Airline staff found out the bomb warning was a hoax in time to stop the plane from making an emergency landing in Ankara and it was able to continue to Istanbul as planned

Istanbul, 1 June (AKI) - Turkish police have arrested eight al-Qaeda suspects in the capital Ankara. The sweep which comes after another 11 suspects were picked up Wednesday in the Sultanbeyli and Fatih districts of Istanbul. The operation follows last week's warning from Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a man identifying himself as the new leader of al-Qaeda

Turkey's Radio-Television Supreme Council (RTUK) has determined that some Istanbul and Ankara radio stations have been broadcasting programs with Islamist content, and has issued warnings to three of them.

Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Thrace (Rumelia) in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west, Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhichevan), and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea and Archipelago are to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. Separating Anatolia and Thrace are the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), which are commonly reckoned to delineate the border between Asia and Europe, thereby making Turkey transcontinental.Because of its strategic location astride two continents, Turkey's culture has a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition. A powerful regional presence in the Eurasian landmass with strong cultural and economic influence in the area between the European Union in the west and Central Asia in the east, Russia in the north and the Middle East in the south, Turkey has come to acquire increasing strategic significance.Turkey, classified as a developed country by the CIA, is a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Since then, Turkey has become increasingly integrated with the West while continuing to foster relations with the Eastern world.