For The Los Angeles Times: It is dawn and the streets of Ankara’s Kizilay district are empty, strewn with rubbish and glass. A man casts a solitary figure, sweeping shards into piles after a night of bracing violence. Little else moves. On Ankara’s main boulevard, mangled cars sit at intervals. Some trees have been uprooted and shattered by the force of the previous night’s brutality. There is the vague howl of a jet high above. Gunfire occasionally rattles. Only a few hours earlier, fighter jets…Continue Reading “In Ankara, a night of fear as battling Turkish jets screamed through the skies”
For The Los Angeles Times: ISTANBUL — Nearly two years after shrapnel from a mortar shell hit his family’s Gaza Strip home and wrecked his upper body, Rami Abdusallam can finally move his right arm thanks to a team of Turkish surgeons. Abdusallam, who is from Rafah, at the southern edge of Gaza, said he had been sleeping in his bedroom when an Israeli shell crashed through the home’s roof. “One piece of shrapnel entered my shoulder and came out from my chest, and here…Continue Reading “Residents of impoverished Gaza Strip turn to Turkey for lifesaving medical care”