Turkey

Updated at 2:37am on February 3, 2013

An extreme leftist group is Turkish security forces’ chief suspect in the February 1 suicide bombing of the US embassy in Ankara that killed two people, and left several others injured.

A bomb was detonated on February 1 at an entrance to the US embassy to Ankara, killing a security guard and a suspected suicide-bomber, Turkish media report. Injuries have been reported, but not specified.

Democratic Turkey may at times be touted as a model for the Middle East to follow, but, when it comes to Turkish prisons, there is little that ranks as exemplary, rights watchdogs say.

Turkey’s multi-billion-dollar gold sales to neighboring Iran could put the country on a collision course with its close ally, the United States, when high-ranking diplomats from the two countries hold talks in Washington.

In most countries, it’s unusual for the looming death of a television character to become a source of official anxiety. In Turkey, however, a hit television series chronicling the 16th century reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent has riled officials, who are looking to that era to help shape their own conservative message.

A tactical alliance in Turkey between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a movement headed by theologian Fetullah Gülen is unraveling. And the break-up is threatening to turn acrimonious.

A loud countdown rang out in the early afternoon on December 21, creating echoes in the sleepy hills surrounding Sirince, an ancient village near Turkey’s Aegean coast. Mayan zero-hour had arrived.

“Five, Four, Three…”

The type of noise that locals normally associate with New Year’s Eve was being made by outsiders who had converged on Sirince’s central square to mark “Judgment Day.”

Health tourism can be a hairy business anywhere, but for Turkey this is literally the case. Hair transplants have been a cornerstone of the country’s billion-dollar-plus medical-tourism market for more than a decade. But recently, a growing number of medical tourists, especially Middle Eastern men, have been traveling to Turkey specifically for facial hair implants.

As close political collaborators for over a decade, President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan built the Justice and Development Party into Turkey’s dominant political force. But now, the two men appear poised to part ways.