Published December 22,2025

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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, National Defense Minister Yasar Guler, and intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin are on a working visit to Syria’s capital Damascus on Monday.

Fidan, Guler and Kalin will meet with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and other Syrian officials as part of the visit, according to information obtained from Turkish Foreign Ministry sources.

The meetings are expected to comprehensively assess the trajectory of Türkiye-Syria relations over the past year across political, economic and security dimensions, following the first anniversary of the overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime.

Discussions will also focus on the progress of the implementation of the March 10 agreement, which is closely linked to Türkiye’s national security priorities.

The visit is also expected to address emerging security risks in southern Syria stemming from Israel’s aggressive actions.

In the context of the shared interests of Türkiye and Syria, as well as Syria’s recent accession to the International Coalition to Defeat Daesh (ICDC), cooperation aimed at preventing the resurgence of the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group-which seeks to exploit potential fragilities on the Syrian ground-will also be discussed.

In addition to security issues, which will constitute the main focus of the talks, the agenda includes a review of bilateral projects being carried out for Syria’s reconstruction and an evaluation of efforts to support the Syrian government’s capacity-building initiatives.

Deputy Foreign Minister Nuh Yilmaz, who has been appointed as Türkiye’s ambassador to Damascus, will also be traveling to the Syrian capital.

In the one-year period since the collapse of the Assad regime, Türkiye-Syria relations have gained momentum across many areas, with historic opportunities for bilateral and regional cooperation emerging, particularly in the fields of security and the economy.

While supporting efforts to heal the wounds left by the nearly 15-year Syrian conflict, Türkiye is also working to ensure that new cooperation opportunities are harnessed in a way that serves Syria’s stability and security in line with the interests of both countries.

In this context, Fidan paid his first visit to Syria following the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 22, 2024.

– Mutual visits in 3+3 format

In the period that followed, as a natural outcome of the positive atmosphere that has emerged in Syria’s new era, reciprocal high-level visits between Türkiye and Syria have continued.

Within this framework, meetings held in the 3+3 format between the two countries have taken on particular significance.

Accordingly, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani visited Türkiye on Jan. 15, accompanied by a high-level delegation. During the visit, Fidan, Guler and Kalin met with their Syrian counterparts.

Following that meeting, the Turkish foreign minister, national defense minister and intelligence chief paid a working visit to Syria on March 13.

Another meeting focusing on security cooperation and current developments between the two countries was held in Ankara on Oct. 12, with the participation of Fidan, Guler, Kalin and their Syrian counterparts.

Published December 21,2025

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North Macedonian President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova said on Sunday that she believes relations with Türkiye will continue to grow stronger, citing friendship and mutual respect between the two countries.

“I believe that in the coming period, together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, we will continue to further deepen these relations in the spirit of friendship and mutual respect,” Siljanovska-Davkova said at an event in Skopje.

Her remarks came during a reception marking Turkish Language Education Day on Dec. 21 and the 20th anniversary of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency’s (TIKA) Skopje Program Coordination Office.

Siljanovska-Davkova called the Turkish community in the North one of the strongest links between the two nations.

Türkiye’s ambassador to Skopje, Fatih Ulusoy, said North Macedonia stands out as a country where diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural communities coexist peacefully, noting that within this positive picture, the Turkish community—one of the country’s ancient and founding peoples and its loyal citizens—holds a special place.

Published December 09,2025

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A US federal judge ordered the Trump administration Monday to restore the SEVIS student-immigration database record of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, ruling that authorities likely acted unlawfully when they terminated her status.

Chief Judge Denise Casper of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction, concluding that Ozturk is “likely to succeed” on her claim that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) action was “arbitrary and capricious.” She directed officials to restore Ozturk’s SEVIS record retroactive to March 25 — the day that masked ICE agents detained her in Somerville, Massachusetts.

SEVIS is a federal database administered by ICE and used to track foreign students, and terminating a student’s record prevents them from working and jeopardizes their legal presence in the country.

In a statement released through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Ozturk said she was grateful for the decision, adding: “I earnestly hope that no one else experiences the injustices I have suffered.”

“I hope one day we can create a world where everyone uses education to learn, connect, civically engage and benefit others — rather than criminalize and punish those whose opinions differ from our own. While I am grateful for the court’s decision, I still feel a great deal of grief for all the educational rights I have been arbitrarily denied as a scholar and a woman in my final year of doctoral studies,” she wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately comment.

Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and PhD student in child development at Tufts University, was arrested by plainclothes ICE agents who surrounded her outside her Somerville, Massachusetts home on March 25, which was captured in a viral video.

Her student visa was subsequently revoked by the State Department and she was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, where she spent six weeks before a federal judge in Vermont ordered her release on May 9, citing her asthma and the lack of justification for her continued detention.

Her detention followed online targeting by the pro-Israel website Canary Mission, which targeted her for co-authoring a March 2024 op-ed in The Tufts Daily that criticized the university’s response to student demands for divestment from Israel, calling for the acknowledgment of a “Palestinian genocide.”

The Trump administration has alleged that Ozturk engaged in activities supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, but the administration has not presented evidence to substantiate that claim.

Ozturk was among several international students swept up in the Trump administration’s widening crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists.

Published December 09,2025

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As President Donald Trump says the United States has agreed that chip giant Nvidia can sell AI semiconductors to China, AFP runs down the tussle over the key tech:

Aug 2022: Biden’s Chips Act

Joe Biden, then US president, signs a bill to boost domestic chipmaking — an industry Washington fears China could come to dominate through mammoth state-backed investments.

His Chips and Science Act includes $52 billion to boost the production of microchips, which are vital to almost all modern machinery.

Oct 2022: Export controls

Washington restricts exports to China of some advanced chips used to train and power artificial intelligence, on national security grounds.

It also toughens controls on the sale of chipmaking equipment. China says the country is trying to “maliciously block and suppress Chinese businesses”.

In December, the US blacklists 36 Chinese companies — many with close ties to China’s defence sector — severely limiting their use of US chip manufacturing tech and designs.

Oct 2023: Tighter curbs

A year later, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI tools booming in popularity, Washington tightens the screws.

Attention has so far been focused on Nvidia’s industry-leading H100 chip, but the government widens export curbs to other, lower-performing semiconductors.

Dec 2024 – Jan 2025: Biden’s final moves

Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, Biden imposes a series of new rules on advanced chip exports to China.

“The US leads the world in AI now — both AI development and AI chip design — and it’s critical that we keep it that way,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says.

One rule requires authorisations for re-exports and in-country transfers, a bid to avert any circumvention of chip supply to China.

Jan 2025: DeepSeek shock

Chinese startup DeepSeek stuns the AI industry with the launch of a low-cost, high-quality chatbot — a challenge to US ambitions to lead the world in developing the technology.

Apr 2025: Nvidia’s H20 blocked

Nvidia has developed new H20 semiconductors — a less powerful version of its AI processing units designed specifically for export to China.

But the company says Washington has required it to obtain licences to ship H20s to China over concerns they may be used in supercomputers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang campaigns against the moves, saying he is “willing to continue to plough deeply into the Chinese market”.

May 2025: Trump eases rules

The Trump administration rescinds some Biden-era chip export controls, answering calls from countries who say they are shut out from crucial technology needed to develop AI.

Sep 2025: ‘Nanoseconds behind’

In July, Nvidia says it will resume H20 sales to China because the US government has said it will grant it a licence to do so.

But soon Beijing reportedly bars Chinese firms from buying them — pushing companies to choose domestically produced chips instead.

Nvidia’s Huang warns in September that the combination of US curbs and Beijing’s policies will fuel the rise of China’s chip industry.

“They’re nanoseconds behind us,” he said. “So we’ve got to go compete.”

Dec 2025: Trump-Xi agreement

Trump says he has reached an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow Nvidia to ship H200 chips — a higher-end product than the H20 — to “approved customers in China”.

Trump cites “conditions that allow for continued strong National Security” and citicises Biden’s approach to the chip war.

Nvidia’s most advanced chips — the Blackwell series and forthcoming Rubin processors — are not included in the agreement and remain available only to US customers.

H200s are roughly 18 months behind the company’s most state-of-the-art offerings.