Turkey

Kurds
Turkey's 15 million Kurds identified closely with their Syrian Kurdish kin, who proved to be capable allies on the ground of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State.

Refugees
Since early 2011, Turkey had an open door policy for Syian refguees, spending more than $8 billion on humanitarian aid for Syrians. It built refugee camps considered to be among the best in the world and provided healthcare and education, even as most refugees lived outside the camps, where they were not permitted to work legally.

As the European Union struggled to cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees after September 2015, they asked Turkey to tighten its borders and limit departures in return for aid and renewed talks on admitting Turkey to the EU. Turkish authorities rounded up scores of Syrian migrants off the streets in the latter half of 2015, sometimes targeting beggars, and sent them to detention centers, resulting in the deportation of some back to Syria against their will.

Government and Politics
Turkey's strongman president, Erdogan, tightened his grip on power decisively as his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) swept back to a single-party government with a convincing majority in national elections on November 1, 2015. Before the vote, many Turkish Kurds believed that Erdogan had engineered the PKK conflict in July 2015 to win over nationalist voters. Hailing the result as a "victory for democracy," the Leftist pro-Kurdish HDP surpassed the 10% threshold to win seats in the new Parliament; the vote of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) secured about the same as it did in June with about 25% of the vote.

Iraq
In December 2015, Turkey deployed hundreds of troops in the Bashiqa area of Iraq, with the stated aim of protecting its military personnel training Iraqi militia to fight against the Islamic State. After criticism from Baghdad and calls from President Obama, some troops were withdrawn in mid-December to another base inside Iraq's Kurdistan region. Despite the Iraqi base coming under fire from Islamic militants on December 16, Turkish armed forces acknowledged the demands and continued moving out after Iraq took its criticism to the U.N. Security Council on December 18.

Russia and NATO
On November 24, 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that flew into Turkish airspace, the first known incident of its kind since the Cold War. Moscow retaliated with sanctions and hostile rhetoric. To avoid more shoot-downs of Russian planes, NATO allies agreed on December 18, 2015 to send aircraft and ships to Turkey to strengthen Ankara's air defenses on its border with Syria; the ships were provided by Germany and Denmark, exercising in the eastern Mediterranean. Concerned with a military build-up in the region, NATO was keen to engage both Russia and Turkey in talks to avoid incidents that could flare up tensions.

PKK Conflict
Some 40,000 people died since the autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 to adopt a program of greater political rights and cultural autonomy for Kurds. The conflict between Turkey and the PKK spiraled following the July 20, 2015 Suruc bombing attack on progressive activists. Turkey bombed alleged PKK bases in Iraq, following the PKK's unilateral decision to end the ceasefire. Violence soon spread throughout the country as many Kurdish businesses were destroyed by mobs. The rebellion by the PKK abandoned the traditional rural battleground to take the fight to the city, recruiting a new generation of militants who dug trenches and used heavy weapons in populated areas to keep police at bay. In response, authorities imposed curfews and cut power, water, and phone coverage to root out militants. The PKK, which had launched its insurgency in 1984, was designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

After the November 1, 2015 general election that achieved a majority for the AKP, swathes of Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast remained under curfew. The spasm of violence wrecked peace talks once touted by the AKP as the best chance yet to end one of Europe's longest-running insurgencies. Armed clashes persisted across Turkey's southeast, where an operation intensified and resulted in the death of 127 Kurdish militants by December 22, 2015, in towns near the Iraqi and Syrian borders. As Turkey was alarmed by territorial gains by Kurds in Syria's civil war, which it feared could stir separatism among its own Kurdish minority, Kurdish groups meeting in southeastern Turkey called for self-rule on December 27, 2015, escalating tensions. The declaration called for the formation of autonomous regions, including several neighboring provinces of Diyarbakir, to take account of cultural, economic, and geographic affinities.