Portside

President Obama speaking at the Air Force Academy in 2012, told the assembled cadets that they should "never bet against the United States of America... [because] the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs." On that basis, he suggested, the twenty-first century, like the twentieth, would be an American one. You get idea. We are... go ahead, chant it: indispensable! (Tom Engelhardt)

The involvement of Turkey -- NATO's second largest military force -- in support of Syrian and other Islamist forces is of long-standing. One part of Turkish territory along Syria's border has served for the past two years as a fallback zone for DASEH (ISIS) Islamists as well as to Al Qaeda. However, neither the US or French governments have asked Turkish authorities to stop helping the Jihadists.

The national association of electrical engineers said the disaster represented "murder, not an accident". It accused the mine operators of neglect and using obsolete equipment. Inadequate ventilation systems meant carbon monoxide and other toxic gases could spread more quickly, it said.

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the 'red line' he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.

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In short, from Washington’s point of view, Erdogan has gone off the reservation.

Turkey’s Regional Politics – Old Wine, New Bottle – actually the bottle isn’t that new...After the Egyptian military coup, a number of reports surfaced on Turkey's indignation on the turn over the events there. Yeni Shafak the newspaper close to the Turkish prime minister published a scathing article against the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, UAE as well as Palestinian Mahmud Abbas calling them the "the axis of evil" in the Middle East.