Middle East, Turkey | featured news

Secretary of State John F. Kerry scolded Turkey’s leader Friday for likening Zionism to a “crime against humanity. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment worsened his country’s rift with Israel and further complicated the U.S. relationship with Turkey, a key Muslim ally straddling the Middle East and Europe.

The U.S. will send two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 troops to Turkey as part of a NATO force meant to protect Turkish territory from potential Syrian missile attack, the Pentagon said Friday.

A NATO official says the military alliance has approved plans to send Patriot anti-missile systems to southern Turkey to bolster its defense against strikes from neighboring Syria....

Over the last six months, Iran has evaded U.S. sanctions by importing Turkish gold to pay for billions of dollars worth of energy sales to Turkey.

Syria on Friday condemned Turkey's request for NATO to deploy Patriot defense missiles near their common border, calling it "provocative", after a spate of fighting there that has raised fears of the Syrian civil war embroiling the wider region.

Turkey has asked NATO to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory, the alliance said on Wednesday, to help it defend itself against any Syrian attacks.

The turrets of Turkish armored vehicles rise from the cotton fields outside this border village, guns trained toward Syria. Infantry units flank the banks of the Orontes River as Syrians escaping the fighting in their homeland maneuver across its muddy waters in rowboats. Overhead, Turkish fighter jets periodically buzz the skies.

A journey through the borderlands found that the slow-boiling resentment over the troubles wrought by Syria’s war may be a mere prologue to the danger that lies ahead.

Turkish forces fired across the frontier into Syria on Sunday after a shell launched from Syria landed in Turkey's border town of Akcakale, underlining Ankara's warning that it will respond with force to any violence spilling over into its territory.

Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth day of retaliatory artillery fire from Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported... The latest shelling came a day after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Syria not to test Turkey's "limits and determination."