ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

F-511 TCG Heybeliada, the lead ship of the MİLGEM project, near the Prince Islands to the southeast of Istanbul, 2011. DHA photo Turkey has won a tender to build four corvettes for the Pakistan Navy, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said in a statement on July 5. “It is [a] multi-billion dollar project and Turkey has undertaken such a sophisticated project for the first time in the international arena. Negotiations were going on for over six months. They have been completed after a really difficult and exhaustive period, and the agreement was signed today,” Canikli said during an official visit to Montenegro. The defense minister described the deal as “the largest single export in the history of Turkish defense industry”. Turkey and Pakistan signed a goodwill agreement for the construction of four Turkish Ada class (also known as MİLGEM) corvettes in 2015. Under this agreement, two corvettes will be built in Istanbul and two others in Paki...

Written by Elijah J. Magnier:  @ ejmalrai ; Originally appeared at  his blog Russian advisors visiting the Syrian capital Damascus are confident that the US forces will pull out of al-Tanf and will also aim to completely withdraw from north of Syria (al-Hasaka and Deir-Ezzour) in the next six months. According to top decision makers based in Damascus, the US President Donald Trump is pushing his administration to approve an already prepared total withdrawal plan. Despite Trump’s limited knowledge of foreign policy and being unaware of the consequences of his decisions in the international arena, however, he found no convincing elements – said the sources, who asked to remain anonymous – in the presentation by his administration where US forces could benefit from the continuation of their presence in such a hostile environment and without suffering hits in the future. Trump’s biggest fear to see the US special forces deployed in the north of Syria and in Iraq returning ...