The State Department named "bringing peace" to Syria as a 2015 accomplishment—as Russian air-strikes continue on schools, and starvation sets in behind rebel lines.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the use of cluster bombs by the Saudi-led coalition against residential neighborhoods in Yemen may amount to a war crime.
Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi—winner of the EU's Sakharov Prize—has suffered fainting spells and deteriorating health owing to his lengthy hunger strike.
Amid counterinsurgency against Kurds in Turkey, Kurdish opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş is received in Moscow—now executing a grisly counterinsurgency in Syria.
The UN resolution on a democratic transition in Syria assumes this can happen under Assad's rule. The US is now openly blocking with Russia over support for the dictatorship.
Russian naval forces got in a confrontation with Turkish vessels in the Black Sea, with control of contested oil platforms off the Crimean Peninsula at issue.
Turkey's prime minister accuses Russia of "ethnic cleansing" with air-strikes targeting Turkmen in Syria—as Ankara continues to attack Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq alike.
Human Rights Watch called on the US to cancel a pending arms sale to Saudi Arabia in the absence of serious investigations into alleged laws-of-war violations in Yemen.
A growing split between secular and Islamist elements of the FSA is unfortunately mirrored by a breach between Kurds and Ankara-backed Arab and Turkmen forces.
Tahir Elci, a prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer, was gunned down by unknown assailants while delivering a press statement in Diyarbakir, Turkey.
The situation in northern Syria is escalating amid Russo-Turkish brinkmanship, with Turkmen villages coming under intense Russian bombardment.
After Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane over Syria, Vladimir Putin openly accused Ankara of backing ISIS—echoing a charge Kurdish forces have been making for months.
