The Levant Files

By The Levant Files Editorial Team A woman is killed. Her final moments become headlines. A suspect’s explanation dominates the coverage. Then public attention moves on. The Levant Files insists on covering femicide because this cycle of horror and forgetting must end. The killing of a 25-year-old woman in Igoumenitsa, reported earlier by TLf and the Greek media, brings that responsibility into sharp focus. Across Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and the wider Levant, our editorial commitment is to examine the conditions that allow violence against women to persist—and to keep asking who should be held accountable.  Beyond The Police Bulletin Femicide is the gender-related killing of women and girls. UN Women identifies its underlying drivers as discrimination, unequal power relations and harmful social norms. Together with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, it estimates that approximately 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members worldwide in 2024. These f...

  By TLF Editorial Team Sources in Tehran with close knowledge of government thinking told The Levant Files that President Donald Trump’s latest address has been received in Iran not as an opening for peace, but as an attempt to increase pressure while Washington searches for a way out of the crisis. “This is not the language of peace. This is bullying,” one source said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The source argued that the US position in the war with Iran is becoming increasingly difficult as international and energy markets remain on edge. “The markets are close to the brink, and this is creating immense pressure on the hawks in Washington,” the source said. “Mr Trump is now realising that Iran is not Venezuela — a point The Levant Files underlined yesterday,” the source added. “He is trying to distort the reality and the facts on the ground.” According to the same source, Washington has yet to develop a credible strategy fo...

  By The Levant Files TLF SPECIAL — Israel’s expanding role in Greek and Cypriot air defence is creating a new strategic picture around Turkey. Viral claims that 65% of the country will fall under constant radar surveillance are overstated, but the network now taking shape could still transform early warning across the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. Israel’s defence industry is becoming a central supplier to the two states positioned along Turkey’s southern and western maritime approaches. Cyprus has brought Israeli-made Barak MX air-defence systems into service. Greece has signed a €3.035 billion agreement with Israel to build Achilles Shield, an integrated air, missile and drone-defence architecture. Together, the decisions point towards a future in which Israeli sensors, missiles and command systems play a much larger role from Cyprus to the Aegean and Thrace. The latest debate was triggered by a dramatic claim circulating through Greek media and social networks: that Israeli...

  The US-Israeli war with Iran could spread into a far more dangerous regional confrontation if disrupted trade, soaring living costs and threatened infrastructure push Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia towards military intervention, an editorial in Iran’s Shargh newspaper warns. Its chilling proposition: countries could enter the conflict when remaining outside it becomes economically and politically unbearable. Writing in Shargh, political scientist Kioumars Ashtarian examines that danger in an editorial titled “On the Threshold of a Regional Crisis.” His central concern is how economic suffering beyond Iran’s borders could become a national-security threat to Iran itself. The source matters. Shargh is an established reformist daily, described by the Financial Times as a leading newspaper in that political current. Ashtarian, a University of Tehran academic, is therefore raising the alarm within Iran’s domestic policy debate. His argument offers a significant Iranian perspective...

Eleven students were wounded outside a high school in Manisa on Monday. The attack is not an isolated case: Turkey has now experienced at least three major firearms attacks at schools or in their immediate surroundings in 2026, against a wider background of widespread access to weapons and thousands of incidents of armed violence. A 15-year-old opened fire with a shotgun near a high school in western Turkey on Monday morning, wounding 11 students, two of them seriously — the latest in a series of school shootings that, until recently, were exceptionally uncommon in the country. According to T24, the attack occurred at around 07:59 near the İnci Üzmez Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Turgutlu, Manisa. The initial official count of eight people affected was subsequently revised to 11 wounded, with two reported in serious condition. The 15-year-old suspect was detained, along with his mother, father and grandfather. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said investigators were exa...

  Η δολοφονία της 25χρονης Πηνελόπης από τον πρώην σύντροφό της προστίθεται στον μακρύ κατάλογο των γυναικοκτονιών στην Ελλάδα. Τα νεότερα ιατροδικαστικά ευρήματα αποκαλύπτουν την αγριότητα της επίθεσης. Read the English version of this news article here . Νέα στοιχεία έρχονται στο φως για τη δολοφονία της 25χρονης Πηνελόπης στην Ηγουμενίτσα, η οποία καταγράφεται από ελληνικά μέσα ενημέρωσης ως η 15η γυναικοκτονία στην Ελλάδα από την αρχή του 2026. Ο 27χρονος πρώην σύντροφός της έχει ομολογήσει ότι την σκότωσε το βράδυ της Κυριακής, 20 Σεπτεμβρίου, ενώ σε βάρος του έχει ασκηθεί δίωξη για ανθρωποκτονία από δόλο. Σύμφωνα με νεότερο δημοσίευμα του  Newsit.gr , η ιατροδικαστική εξέταση έδειξε ότι η 25χρονη έφερε επτά έως οκτώ τραύματα από μαχαίρι στην πλάτη, καθώς και δύο διατομές στον τράχηλο. Διαπιστώθηκε επίσης αμυντικό τραύμα στο αριστερό χέρι και άλλα τραύματα σε διαφορετικά σημεία του σώματός της. Το Newsit.gr αναφέρει ακόμη ότι ο 27χρονος έφερε τραύματα που αποδίδονται σε α...

  The killing of 25-year-old Penelope by her former partner in Igoumenitsa has again focused attention on violence against women in Greece. Fourteen femicides had already been recorded by the Greek section of the European Observatory on Femicide by late August. A 25-year-old woman killed by her former partner in the northwestern Greek city of Igoumenitsa suffered seven to eight stab wounds to her back and two deep cuts to her neck, according to new forensic findings reported by Newsit.gr. The victim, identified in Greek media as Penelope, was killed on the night of Sunday, September 20. Her 27-year-old former partner, from whom she had reportedly separated around a month earlier, has admitted killing her, according to Greek public broadcaster ERT. The latest forensic findings underline the violence of the attack. Newsit.gr reported on Tuesday that the examination found seven to eight stab wounds to Penelope's back, two cuts to her neck and a defensive injury to her l...

  Flight suspensions, banking interventions and pressure on energy trade show how US sanctions are narrowing the space between Ankara and Tehran. The disappearance of Iran from the booking systems of Turkey’s three largest carriers is the most visible sign of a much wider shift. Turkish Airlines, AJet and Pegasus have no bookable services to Iran from 21 September. Turkish Airlines and AJet show no flights before March 2027, while Pegasus appears to have removed Iran from its booking system indefinitely, according to a  review by Middle East Eye . One qualification is essential, however. The Turkish carriers had already suspended their Iranian services in late February, when US and Israeli strikes disrupted regional airspace. None has publicly attributed the latest scheduling decisions directly to Washington. This is therefore better understood not as a new cancellation, but as a decision not to resume operations as American sanctions make any return commercially and legally h...

  The Levant Files Editorial Room Mr. President, On Wednesday, Iran will be all but cut off from the world's skies. At 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time, the grace period your Treasury gave Iranian aviation expires. All 27 of Iran's remaining airlines have been on your blacklist since 8 September. Foreign carriers have lost the licences they need to fly into Iran, pay for overflights or carry out emergency repairs. Mahan Air has already abandoned Muscat, Istanbul, Ankara and Georgia. This is what your Iran policy has come to. You are grounding the aircraft of a nation of some 90 million people because your armed forces cannot win the war you started. Seven months ago, hand in hand with Israel, you launched a war that echoes the doomed attempt by Britain, France and Israel to punish Nasser's Egypt in 1956. Seven months later, Iran's undemocratic regime is still standing. It is still punishing its own people, and it is still able to hurt the Levant, the global economy and the energ...

Damascus says it is investigating. The pattern points to deeper problems either way What happened near Aleppo? Before dawn on Monday, 21 September, a series of powerful explosions tore through a Syrian army ammunition depot near al-Eis, south of Aleppo, sending projectiles into the surrounding area. Roads were closed, nearby residents were evacuated, and emergency teams were initially unable to approach the site because secondary explosions continued. At least four people were injured. Syrian authorities have launched an investigation but have not announced a cause. Is this part of a pattern? Yes. Reuters describes the al-Eis explosion as the fourth such incident in Syria this month and reports at least 16 explosions at military storage sites since Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024. The September sequence is striking. On 1 September, ammunition being transported in Binnish, Idlib, exploded, killing at least five people. On 9 September, a temporary ammunition depot near Sarmad...