On January 15, 2011, an announcement was posted on the Al-Qaeda affiliated forum Shumoukh Al-Islam about the launch of a new Turkish-language forum, the Islamic Jihad Network, by the new forum's operators. The forum has the Al-Qaeda emblem on the upper right-hand corner and appears to be Al-Qaeda affiliated.

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The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban's shadow government in the country) has dismissed the recent Istanbul Conference on Afghanistan as a "useless effort," according to a Pakistani daily.

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In a two-part column titled "Recalling Terrorists and 'Lesser Terrorists,'" published October 25 and October 27 2011 in the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News, Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil, referring to a column he wrote five years ago when Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, discussed the hypocrisy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on "terrorism" - with one standard for the PKK and another for Hamas. Noting that Erdogan has consistently defined the PKK as "terrorist" and Hamas as a "freedom fighter," Bekdil said that he would "keep on reminding the prime minister and the foreign minister that if [Palestinian prisoners released in exchange deals] are not terrorists, no PKK member could or should be considered a terrorist."

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Iran's ambassador to Turkey Bahman Hosseinpour said that the trade volume between the two countries was expected to hit $15 billion by the end of the year. He said that the volume of bilateral trade stood at $10.561 billion during the first eight months of 2011 and was projected to reach $30 billion by 2015.

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Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoglu told Iranian Deputy FM Mohammad Ali Fathallahi at their meeting in Ankara that Turkey would not permit anyone to attack Iran from its soil, and that no one will defend Israel from its soil either.

Fahallahi called for stronger relations between the two countries.

Egypt's minister of industry and external trade Mahmoud Issa said that his Iranian counterpart has proposed a tripartite cooperation between his country and Egypt and Turkey to exploit the human and economic resources available to them. The Egyptian minister confirmed his country's desire to strengthen the economic cooperation with Iran.

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Following an agreement with the "Republic of North Cyprus" [recognized by Turkey only] and in response to exploration activities carried out by the Greek side of Cyprus [internationally-recognized independent Cyprus] Turkey's news agency quotes Hussein Owni. Owni is in charge of a research institute responsible for explorations that a Turkish exploration ship has begun and is in the initial stages of gas exploration in the Mediterranean.

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