Iraq

Some 49 Turkish consulate staff members in Iraq are still being held hostage, with one month passing since they were kidnapped by militants.

A group of artists have announced they will gather at Turkey’s border with the pre-dominantly Kurdish region of northeastern Syria – known as Rojava – to protest the latest assault of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militants on the town of Kobane.

The wanted deputy of executed dictator Saddam Hussein praised the Islamic State jihadists who took over large swathes of the country last month as "heroes" in an unauthenticated audio message released on July 13.

Presidential candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu has strongly condemned The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has seized parts of Syria and Iraq and has been keeping 49 Turks hostage in Mosul for more than a month.

What an unfortunate coincidence; right at that moment when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants are being monitored, the wiring and tracking system collapses at the Directorate of Telecommunication (TİB). During that time, no monitoring is possible; a “technical” error.

The title above might sound silly to some readers. Because the Caliphate (or the “Successorship” to Prophet Muhammad) is certainly an “Islamic” institution if by that we mean the fourteen centuries of Muslim experience.

On July 9, CNN spread the news that the U.S. is planning to attack the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with drones. The American press has also created the impression in the last few days that Washington might conduct an airstrike soon.

Of the $30 billion Iraqi imports, a third is from Turkey. Gaziantep alone provides around a fifth of Iraq’s imports. So Iraq by itself is important for Turkey. Now two things are happening at once. First of all, it is getting increasingly harder to send trucks down to Iraq. Secondly, Iraqi import demand is declining rather rapidly as Iraq transforms into a war zone.

Abdi Tekin used to spend days waiting to clear this customs post on the border with Iraq, his truck among the hundreds lined up to ferry some $1 billion worth of goods a month to Turkey’s second-biggest export market.

The International Energy Agency cut its forecast for 2014 oil demand to 92.7 million barrels a day due to weaker than expected global economic growth.