Middle East

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the country’s military will end operations against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) forces if the group stops fighting. “If there are no more armed actions our troops will not undertake armed actions,” Erdogan told…

The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan has announced much-expected ceasefire to end the 28-year conflict between the PKK and Ankara. “We are at a stage where guns should be silenced,” Ocalan said in a letter…

Press release from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK, Tuesday, 19 March 2013. A decade on from the bloody and illegal invasion of Iraq on 20th March 2003: a wave of explosions have rocked Baghdad and surrounding towns killing 56…

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) welcomed the activation of the world’s largest operational Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) facility to date, as the Middle East turns to clean energy to fuel future growth. The Shams 1 thermosolar plant – in…

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed this week Iran has not decided to develop a nuclear weapon and that it would be unable to do so secretly. Testifying before the Senate, Clapper said Iran could not divert safeguarded…

A decade of war in Iraq has killed roughly 134,000 Iraqi civilians and potentially contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more, according to researchers at Brown University. Their report was released ahead of the 10th anniversary of…

After a full week of intensive activities in Oslo during the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, major anti-nuclear campaigners moved Monday to the Bahraini capital, Manama, in yet another step towards the abolition of atomic weapons. “Nuclear…

Dozens of people were wounded in Bahrain on Thursday as protesters marked the second anniversary of a Saudi-led intervention that helped crush the pro-democracy uprising. Clashes erupted around the capital Manama with police firing stun grenades and tear gas at…

As the crisis in Syria enters its third year, United Nations officials today warned that civilian suffering is escalating and humanitarian needs mounting, while funds are rapidly running out. “Shelter, water, food, basic supplies, health care – all are precarious,”…

British Foreign Secretary, William Hague has pressed the EU to amend the arms embargo on Syria so that military equipment could be supplied to opposition forces. On 18 February the EU agreed to maintain the embargo, but on 6 March…