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During a high-profile October press conference in Cairo focused on a Gaza ceasefire deal, a small but symbolic moment laid bare a quiet shift in geopolitics. As U.S. President Donald Trump gathered regional and European leaders to stand behind him for photos, French President Emmanuel Macron rejected the role of a backdrop prop. Instead, he invited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to join him at a table in the audience – an arrangement the 72-year-old Turkish leader readily accepted.

This quiet act of defiance against the U.S.-led event staging capped years of frosty relations between Paris and Ankara, and it may signal the start of a new chapter for the two NATO allies, multiple sources with knowledge of internal negotiations told Middle East Eye. For years, the pair have been locked in bitter disagreements over the Syrian civil war, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and competing territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. Today, shifting global alignments and overlapping security interests have created unprecedented momentum for a full reset.

“France is envisaging the future of European security with Turkey as one of its pillars,” one senior Western source close to diplomatic talks explained.

This potential new partnership is not happening in isolation. It comes amid a noticeable cooling of relations between Turkey and Russia, a shift that has not gone unnoticed in Paris. There have been no bilateral presidential visits between Ankara and Moscow since 2023, and the frequency of high-level engagements between Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped sharply. Turkey has also increasingly aligned with Western sanctions regimes targeting Moscow, and it has declined to renew its long-term major natural gas purchase agreements with Russia.

Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador, said many French policymakers have been impressed by Turkey’s deft navigation of the war in Ukraine. “Turkey has succeeded in antagonising almost no one while, at the same time, effectively siding with Kyiv,” he noted. Araud argued that as France prepares for long-term Russian pressure on the continent, Ankara has emerged as a critical geopolitical player. “We think that in Paris there is a strong feeling that, on one side, the Americans are gradually reducing their security commitments to Europe; that whoever is elected in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, we will not return to the close transatlantic security cooperation of the past,” he explained. “We will be facing Russian pressure. And in this equation, I think Turkey is obviously an important factor.”

Overlapping regional priorities further underpin the push for closer ties. In Syria, both France and Turkey have thrown their support behind interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s new administration. In Lebanon, both countries back the creation of a strong central government and oppose aggressive Israeli military actions in the country. On the Iranian nuclear file and regional tensions surrounding Tehran, both Paris and Ankara favor a negotiated peaceful resolution. As Israel adopts an increasingly hardline stance toward Turkey, it has also sparked repeated diplomatic crises with France over Lebanon, reinforcing shared interests between the two countries.

Beyond geopolitics, a major partnership in the defence and arms industry is emerging as a cornerstone of the reset. Last week, Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler confirmed Ankara is deeply interested in purchasing SAMP/T air defence systems, manufactured by a French-Italian defence consortium. For years, Paris blocked the sale over political tensions and disagreements over Ankara’s demand for joint production rights. But intelligence outlet Intelligence Online reported in May that Macron has ordered a full review of the SAMP/T deal to find ways to accommodate Turkish co-production demands, ahead of his planned visit to Ankara for next week’s NATO summit. Senior French diplomat Alice Rufo, a recent member of Macron’s inner circle, has already traveled to Ankara to hold talks with top Turkish defence officials, boosting expectations that an agreement could be announced during the summit.

Private defence firms have already begun building ties. Leading French aerospace and defence group Safran recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Turkey’s top drone manufacturer Baykar, focused on co-developing integrated systems combining optronic sensors, navigation technology, and guided weapon capabilities for unmanned aerial and air-to-ground missions. Under the deal, Baykar’s popular TB2 combat drones will be outfitted with Safran’s Euroflir electro-optical surveillance system. French government sources also confirm Paris is considering expanding defence dialogue to cover partnerships in drone and helicopter development.

Turkey’s defence industry has grown into a global powerhouse in recent years, with national defence exports hitting $10 billion in 2024. Ankara now exports warships, combat drones, and ammunition to countries across the world, including many NATO allies. Araud noted that Europe’s own defence industrial sector has faced major setbacks, pointing to the recent collapse of the €114 billion Future Combat Air System programme earlier this month over intractable disagreements between French and German defence contractors. “Turks have been quite good in this field,” he said. “What the Turks are doing, first, is cheaper; second, it is more robust. While some Turkish weapons may not match the highest sophistication of Western systems, the war in Ukraine has proven that this affordability and durability is a major advantage. Tomorrow’s war will require the ability to produce large volumes of reliable, low-cost weaponry.”

Still, not all analysts are optimistic about the pace of a Franco-Turkish reset. Dorothee Schmid, head of the Turkey and Middle East Department at French leading think tank IFRI, warned that deep structural divisions remain. “France considers that Turkey has embarked on an autocratic course and is pursuing a power-based policy centred on its own interests, which are not compatible with those of Europeans,” she said.

Longstanding frictions continue to complicate negotiations. Macron has declined all invitations to visit Ankara from Erdoğan since 2022. Sources say a full state visit by Macron could only move forward if Turkey reopens its border with Armenia, a step that would be politically popular with France’s large Armenian diaspora community. Another persistent irritant is Ankara’s decision to bar Turkish citizens from attending French embassy-operated schools in Turkey. Turkish officials argue they need reciprocal legal arrangements approved by parliament to resolve the issue, while French officials say the policy has poisoned bilateral relations. The dispute has lingered in bureaucratic gridlock, and the schools have gradually lost students and fallen into decline.

“In short, the two sides are continuing to negotiate, but against a backdrop of low levels of trust,” Schmid said. “The NATO summit in Ankara is expected to provide an opportunity for Turkey to showcase its power, which never fails to surprise the French: the two countries have entered into a sort of systemic symbolic rivalry.”

The Eastern Mediterranean remains another core point of contention. France has a bilateral defence treaty with Greece, and during a visit to Athens earlier this year, Macron publicly reaffirmed the pact during an event at the Roman Agora, emphasizing Paris’ commitment to defending Greek sovereignty against any potential Turkish aggression. Araud argued that this strong show of support for Greece ran counter to Macron’s own signature foreign policy doctrine of *en meme temps* – “at the same time” – which holds that seemingly contradictory initiatives are used to maintain ties with competing regional actors.

“Senior French officials agree with me that Paris should improve its ties with Turkey, and Macron went a bit overboard in his overtures to Greece. Macron is aware of it, and he wants to improve the relationship with Turkey,” Araud said. “Macron has a very good analysis of foreign policy, I think, but when implementing it, from time to time, he ends up reaching the opposite goal.” Turkish officials dismiss Macron’s rhetoric around defending Greek sovereignty as a sales tactic to boost French arms exports to Athens, noting that Turkey has no plans to attack Greek territory. “It is a nothing burger, really,” one senior Turkish official said.

A final wildcard is French domestic politics: Macron is set to leave office in April 2025, and his potential successors could adopt a far different policy toward Turkey, particularly if right-wing National Rally leader Marine Le Pen or her protégé Jordan Bardella win the presidency. However, multiple sources confirmed that Turkish diplomats have already engaged in quiet outreach to Le Pen’s team for months, laying groundwork for continued cooperation regardless of the election outcome.

As Andy Burnham prepares to take office as Britain’s next prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, one of his first major policy shifts is set to target a controversial contract between the National Health Service and American technology and data surveillance firm Palantir, multiple sources confirm.

Per reporting from The Telegraph, Burnham’s incoming administration is currently conducting a full review of the UK government’s existing artificial intelligence strategy, a process that is expected to result in Palantir being dropped from its NHS contract. The current £330 million seven-year deal between Palantir and the NHS has only been active for two years, leaving five years remaining on the original agreement if it is not terminated early.

Palantir’s footprint across UK public institutions extends far beyond the health service. The firm already holds a £240 million contract with the UK Ministry of Defence, a £15 million agreement tied to Britain’s nuclear deterrent program, and at least 34 additional uncovered contracts across sectors including law enforcement, child social care, refugee support services and environmental regulation. Many of these agreements have been marked by a lack of public transparency around the scope of Palantir’s data access and work.

The push to oust Palantir from the NHS comes amid growing global outrage over the firm’s documented ties to military operations in Gaza. In January 2024, Palantir publicly announced a partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to deploy its technology to support so-called “war-related missions”, which include drone missile strikes targeting civilian areas in Gaza that have killed dozens of journalists and humanitarian aid workers. When confronted with accusations that Palantir’s technology enabled the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in April 2025, Palantir CEO Alex Karp responded by claiming the targets were “mostly terrorists, that’s true”.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Karp’s comment confirms the firm has “executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-a-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel” in occupied Palestinian territories. Additional scrutiny has emerged after reports that the U.S. Pentagon is investigating whether Palantir’s AI-powered target identification system Maven was involved in a February 2025 U.S. “double-tap” missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed more than 170 people, the vast majority of whom were children.

Founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a controversial figure who once famously stated “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”, Palantir received partial funding from the Central Intelligence Agency at its launch. Thiel has also drawn fierce criticism in the UK for his previous comments attacking the National Health Service, claiming the beloved public institution “makes people sick” and framing British public support for the NHS as a case of “Stockholm syndrome”.

Burnham’s long-standing stance on Palantir predates his expected ascension to Downing Street: during his tenure as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2025, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority never awarded any public contracts to the firm.

The proposal to terminate Palantir’s NHS contract has drawn immediate pushback from the Conservative opposition. Stuart Andrew, the Conservative shadow health secretary, argued that “if Andy Burnham tears up a programme that is improving patient care, he will have to explain why he chose politics over patients.” Andrew added that the NHS should leverage the best available technology to cut waiting lists, save lives and support frontline staff, and that barring leading global firms for political reasons would undermine confidence in NHS technology partnerships. “Patients should never pay the price for Labour’s political posturing. Lives are too important to be sacrificed for Andy Burnham’s political beliefs,” Andrew said.

Despite Conservative opposition, discontent with Palantir runs deep even within the Labour Party, and public opposition to the firm’s UK public sector contracts has grown steadily over the past year. Last month, a cross-party group of MPs issued a formal call for the incumbent government to activate the 2027 break clause in Palantir’s NHS contract and pursue either an in-house UK-built alternative or a domestic provider. The cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology Committee’s report warned that growing reliance on Palantir across the UK public sector represents an “unacceptable point of weakness” that could leave critical public services “at the mercy” of foreign actors.

Palantir’s UK CEO Louis Mosley has pushed back against critics, accusing opponents of the contract of prioritizing “ideology over patient safety”. However, multiple NHS hospital trusts have already rejected Palantir’s technology, reporting that adopting it would cause them to “lose functionality rather than gain it”.

With the upcoming termination of Palantir’s NHS contract expected, scrutiny is now growing over the fate of the firm’s dozens of other public sector contracts across the UK. The debate over Palantir’s UK presence already made headlines in recent months, after London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a proposed £50 million contract between the Metropolitan Police and Palantir in May, citing a “clear and serious breach” of public procurement rules. Khan’s office noted that the deal would have left London police locked into a long-term relationship with Palantir without demonstrating value for taxpayer money, and Khan had previously stated he had “concerns about using public money to support firms who act contrary to London’s values”. Khan later reversed his veto after Palantir launched legal action against the decision, granting the firm a 12-month pilot project that could be extended.

This reporting was originally published by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet providing dedicated coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

Fragile diplomatic efforts to end a months-long joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran have been thrown into turmoil by new reports revealing that senior Trump administration officials detected Israeli plans to assassinate Iran’s top negotiating leaders to sabotage any potential peace deal. Two leading US outlets, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have corroborated the claims, citing unnamed current and former American officials and on-the-record confirmation from a senior Iranian aide.

According to the Times’ reporting published Thursday, US intelligence concerns over planned Israeli targeting of two senior Iranian figures—Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—grew sharply amid sensitive ceasefire negotiations that launched in April. The alarm was so severe that US officials went so far as to coordinate with regional third countries to relay explicit warnings to Iran about the looming threat to the two negotiators.

The timeline of the crisis dates back to late February, when the US and Israel launched a joint offensive campaign that has already killed dozens of high-ranking Iranian officials. By late March, both countries had temporarily removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their official target lists, a step that opened the door for high-level talks to end the ongoing conflict. But the Times reports that Israeli leadership remained determined to eliminate the negotiators, a finding later confirmed by independent reporting from The Washington Post.

One dramatic April incident laid bare the severity of the threat. Ghalibaf had planned a trip to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with US Vice President JD Vance, and Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian aircraft carrying the 70-member delegation from the Iran-Pakistan border to the capital and back after the meeting concluded. However, as the plane began its return trip to Tehran, Israeli security threats emerged. Two unnamed American officials confirmed that Iranian security intercepted intelligence indicating Israel planned to target the plane, and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iranian airspace through the western border near Iraq.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Ghalibaf who accompanied the delegation on the Islamabad trip, later confirmed the entire account on his public social media page. To avoid the imminent threat, the plane made an emergency landing in Mashhad, the closest major Iranian airport to the Pakistani border, and the entire delegation completed the remaining journey to Tehran over an eight-hour land trip.

The revelations have further exposed growing rifts between US and Israeli strategic approaches to the conflict, rifts that first emerged after Israel assassinated top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March. Speaking to reporters in late March, former President Donald Trump himself acknowledged that Israel’s widespread assassination campaign had complicated efforts to find viable Iranian negotiating partners, noting “They’ve wiped out everybody.”

Analysts say Israel’s efforts to derail peace talks align with long-standing strategic goals and the immediate political interests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued that while Israel is formally classified as a US partner, its leadership is so committed to undermining US-led diplomacy that it is willing to assassinate the very Iranian officials Washington is negotiating with.

“I can’t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,” Parsi wrote in response to the new reporting.

Netanyahu has already escalated tensions in the region through his ongoing military occupation and assault on southern Lebanon, a core issue that Iran has identified as a non-negotiable point in the ongoing ceasefire talks. During a visit to occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu told Israeli troops that “our insistence is that we will not leave … until the threat is removed,” a statement that further weakened trust ahead of negotiations.

Parsi added that beyond Netanyahu’s long-stated goal of leveraging US power to bring Iran under Israeli dominance and reshape the regional balance of power in Israel’s favor, the Israeli prime minister faces urgent personal and political incentives to disrupt any peace deal. The emerging US-Iran memorandum of understanding on a ceasefire has already come at a major political cost for Netanyahu, whose chances of winning re-election in October’s national vote are now weaker than they have been in months. Once positioned as the only Israeli leader capable of maintaining a strong alliance with the Trump administration, Netanyahu now faces the prospect that a successful peace deal will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position, undermining the core justification for his leadership.

Most critically, if Netanyahu loses the October election, he will lose his legal immunity as prime minister and faces ongoing corruption trials that could result in years of prison time.

A high-profile arrest of one of Turkey’s most popular stand-up comics has reignited fierce debate over freedom of expression in the country, after authorities took Deniz Goktas into custody on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and violating Islamic religious values.

Goktas was detained upon his arrival at Istanbul’s main airport on Thursday, just after returning from an overseas vacation, according to an official statement released by the Istanbul public prosecution service. He was formally placed under pre-trial arrest following initial processing. The charges stem directly from a 1 June stand-up set he performed in Istanbul, which was later uploaded to YouTube and has accumulated nearly 9 million views to date.

During the widely circulated performance, Goktas wove sharp satirical commentary on Turkish politics and society, targeting not just President Erdogan, but also imprisoned main opposition Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, and two of Erdogan’s sons-in-law: former finance minister Berat Albayrak and leading defense industry figure Selcuk Bayraktar. One of Goktas’s most talked-about quips described Erdogan’s political evolution as shifting from a “shy dictator” to a leader who is now “at peace with his own identity.” He also joked that he would like to work as Erdogan’s personal therapist, noting the role would come with generous pay, extensive job security, and substantial perks, calling it a “perfect fit” for him.

The controversial jokes that triggered the religious value charges centered on a quip about the Quran, the central religious text of Islam. Goktas framed the Quran as the fourth and final holy text in the Abrahamic tradition, saying “The first three books were good, but the translation was weak in the fourth. I think it was the best of the four books.”

Appearing before a court on Friday for his formal arraignment, Goktas pushed back against all allegations, emphasizing he has performed the same stand-up routine since 2023 without incident, and never held any intention to insult either religious communities or the Turkish presidency. “The word ‘dictator’ is a political characterization. It is also a subject that is frequently debated in public,” Goktas told prosecutors. “I had no intention of insulting or denigrating anyone.”

According to prosecution records, the performance drew 185 separate formal complaints from members of the public. Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), the country’s top digital regulator, has already moved to block public access to clips of the set shared across major social media platforms.

News of Goktas’s arrest has quickly sparked widespread condemnation from Turkish opposition politicians and human rights organizations, who frame the arrest as a deliberate attack on artistic expression and the latest in a long string of government crackdowns on public criticism of Erdogan’s administration. Murat Emir, a Member of Parliament from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), accused Turkish courts of acting in bad faith to “invent a crime to arrest someone.” “You folks gripe about comedians, but the real improv show in this country is happening in the courthouse hallways,” Emir wrote on the social platform X, formerly Twitter.

The Turkish Human Rights Association called Goktas’s arrest a “severe blow to freedom of expression.” In an official post on X, the group stated “We demand that this judicial harassment against Goktas be immediately ended and that he be released.”

Goktas’s case is far from an anomaly in modern Turkey: thousands of people are arrested and prosecuted annually across the country under charges of insulting the presidency, outlined in Article 299 of the Turkish penal code. Convictions under the statute can carry prison sentences of up to four years.

A leading British non-governmental organization focused on combating Islamophobia has launched a formal regulatory complaint against X, the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, over Musk’s decision to host and promote a full-length feature film widely condemned for spreading anti-muslim and anti-migrant hate speech. The complaint, submitted by Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), targets the controversial production *Citizen Vigilante*, directed by Uwe Boll and starring Armie Hammer – an actor who faces multiple sexual assault allegations from different women.

The film’s plot centers on a wealthy American landlord living in an unnamed European nation, who takes up vigilante violence to target people he labels as criminals, rapists and corrupt public officials, eventually being celebrated as a folk hero by the public. Throughout most of the runtime, Hammer’s brooding protagonist repeatedly berates immigrants and working-class people for minor offenses, from evading public transit fares to falling behind on rent payments to him. In one particularly extreme sequence, the main character breaks into a Muslim family’s home and kills every member, including unarmed civilians. Dialogue in the film falsely ties the abuse of women to the teachings of the Qur’an and core Islamic values.

Film critics have widely panned the production, with industry publication Variety’s critic Todd Gilchrist describing it as “a violent, incoherent, morally bankrupt slice of exploitation.” Other reviewers have echoed this criticism, noting that the movie relies on overused, harmful stereotypes to build a false narrative about European communities, leaning into anti-migrant tropes that have gained traction in far-right spaces internationally. Already, the film has been blocked from formal distribution in Germany, where regulators declined to issue an age rating – a move that bans it from theatrical screenings and most retail sales over evidence it incites violence against immigrant groups. Despite this ban, U.S. producers Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman acquired distribution rights through their company Quiver, and the film gained unprecedented visibility when Musk posted the entire feature for free to his personal X account, where it remained accessible for two full days.

In the complaint filed with UK media regulator Ofcom, Mend’s Chief Executive Abdullah Saif emphasized that the film’s bigotry is specifically targeted at Muslim communities, rather than being a generic take on crime. Since Musk’s original posting, the content has continued to spread across X, including via reposts from accounts based in the United Kingdom, bringing unregulated, age-unverified hate content directly to a mass British audience. Saif wrote that the film’s core narrative “endorses, incites and valorises the killing of Muslim families.”

Mend argues that Ofcom has clear authority to intervene under the 2023 UK Online Safety Act, which grants the regulator power to act against content that stirs up racial and religious hatred. The complaint raises particular red flags over the fact that the content was amplified not by an anonymous user evading platform moderation, but by the platform’s owner himself. This situation, Mend notes, forces urgent questions about whether X’s content safety systems operate fairly, consistently, and without granting preferential treatment to high-profile users – including the platform’s own owner.

The risk posed by the film’s distribution is amplified by current social context, the complaint adds. Just weeks before Musk posted the film, the United Kingdom saw a wave of anti-migrant rioting across Belfast and multiple regions of Scotland. Mend also references separate research from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which found that Musk’s own posts about the Belfast unrest reached extremely large audiences and amplified harmful narratives that carry a clear risk of inciting real-world violence.

Against this tense backdrop, the mass distribution of a film that celebrates the murder of Muslim people is far more than a distasteful creative choice, the organization argues: it carries a foreseeable risk of normalizing and encouraging offline hostility and violence against a clearly identifiable protected community. Mend is calling on Ofcom to open a formal investigation into whether X violated the Online Safety Act, and to compel the platform to explain whether it conducted required risk assessments for content targeting Muslim and migrant communities. The group has requested a formal response from the regulator within a 28-day window.