Bahrain's high court ordered al-Wefaq, the main Shi'ite opposition party, to be dissolved, ruling that it had engaged in "terrorism, extremism, and violence."
With a post-coup purge of his enemies now underway, Erdogan is positioned to push through his proposed constitutional change that would establish an autocracy in Turkey.
Erdogan paradoxically summoned his supporters to take the streets to defeat a coup attempt—after crushing the Gezi Park protests and unleashing terror against the Kurds.
The Turkish government is blocking access for independent investigations into reports of mass abuses against civilians across southeast Turkey, Human Rights Watch says.
Egypt's National Security Agency is abducting, torturing and forcibly disappearing people in an effort to intimidate opponents and crush peaceful dissent, Amnesty International charges.
ISIS executed five media activists in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor, warning that anyone who tries to document the group's atrocities will never be safe from retribution.
Obama's proposed agreement with Russia for military cooperation in Syria in exchange for protected zones for US-backed rebels actually means a division of the country.
Armed groups in Aleppo and surrounding areas in Syria's north have carried out a "chilling wave" of abductions, torture and summary killings, Amnesty International charges.
The ISIS attack on Medina, Islam's second holiest city, betrays the group's eschatological imperative and desire to bring about a final conflict that will purge the world of heresy.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly Istanbul airport attack, but this did not prevent President Erdogan from exploiting the terror for anti-Kurdish propaganda.
Russian and US warplanes are each backing rival sides as the Assad regime and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces race to take the ISIS "capital" of Raqqa.
Hundreds were killed in the first week of Ramadan in Syria, as the regime and its Russian allies keep up their relentless campaign of air-strikes on rebel-held towns.
