Empowering, fun, and a great way to stay in shape — Ellie O’Byrne found much to love at a belly dancing class in Cork

November 3 is National Sandwich Day.

The problem with Brexit is that it seems to restate the choice: are you Irish or are you British? says Victoria White

Once upon a time, everyone assumed that there was a single phenomenon called globalisation, whereby cross-border flows of financial capital drove innovation, industrialisation, development, and trade, writes Harold James.

The West’s failure to support Kurdish independence will condemn this people to further oppression by hostile forces, writes Shlomo Avineri.

Here are the top three films you don’t want to miss this week, writes Declan Burke.

Here's your morning news bulletin.

2016 was a year of commemorations, writes Josephine Fenton, but one was overlooked, at least in Ireland, if not in the Middle East: the hundredth anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement signed on May 16, 1916.

JP O’ Malley speaks with Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran about the increasing dangers in Turkish society.

When a game series becomes primarily known, and bought, for it's deep and dense multiplayer mode the incentive to continue to provide a single player alternative must be increasingly small.

Not all countries in the Middle East aspire to a western-style democratic model and it is this misunderstanding of people’s needs that has led to the inexorable rise of IS, writes JP O’Malley.

Pope Francis wrapped up his trip to Armenia with an open-air liturgy and a visit to the Orthodox country’s closed border with Turkey amid new tensions with Ankara over his recognition of the 1915 “genocide”.

The Soviet leader did not bang his shoe on the desk at the UN, says granddaughter  ,but few nations are immune to diplomatic blunders

In this ‘Titanic enterprise’, Simon Sebag Montefiore is not afraid to suggest that something of what made the Romanovs powerful remains in the Russian psyche and Russian leadership today, writes Mary Leland.

Nina L Khrushcheva says the Russian president has an unlikely bedfellow in Donald Trump, whose bullying style from the stump is similar to his own

Had the Ottoman empire survived World War I and come to dominate western powers we would be living in a very different, far less tolerant world, suggests Andrew Melsom.

In Lawrence of Arabia, Omar Sharif is first seen in the distance, a speck in the swirling desert sand. As he draws closer, he emerges first as a black figure on a galloping camel, slowly transforming into a handsome, dark-eyed figure with a gap-tooth smile. It wasn’t unlike the Egyptian-born actor’s debut in Hollywood.

Since Saudi Arabia's foundation, its leaders have tried to keep a friendly regime in power in Yemen to prevent it from posing a threat. However, Mohamad Bazzi says this time the stakes are higher

Stephen Sandford Irish Academic Press, €24.95 

The tone, as well as the content of much of what passes for discussion on Israel, is too often a feral legitimisation of anti-Semitism, writes Gerard Howlin

Victoria White (Opinion, November 13) says that the EU should allow Turkey to accede as a member state and that Europe needs Turkey more than Turkey needs Europe.

THIS WEEK’S Remembrance Day acknowledged the fallen of the First World War nearly a century ago but you only have to turn on the news to find out that war is still going on.

Gone Girl *****

They were created by imperial powers, but war and terrorism is posing risks to the shape and future of many nations, writes Shlomo Avineri

WE have been here before.

Every week we pick our top interiors sites. If you have a favourite

Even at this time of great difficulty most Greeks will, rightly, react with vehemence when the Parthenon Marbles are mentioned.

Hundreds of police have begun moving past barricades in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, which protesters have been occupying for more than a week.

Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan condemned the “burn and destroy” tactics of some of those involved in days of violent protests, and promised to press ahead with plans to build on an Istanbul park which triggered the unrest.

The casually intertwined lives of Haratun Batmazian and my grandfather show us a Cork throbbing with opportunity as part of the British Empire.... Irish independence was terrible for Cork. From then on Dublin... sucked the energy out of the rest of the country.

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

THE horse chestnut is one of the largest flowering trees growing in the temperate zone, often exceeding 30 metres in height with a huge, domed crown.

Greece has always looked at its classical age as a usable past but there is no solace in the classics to inspire the country out of its financial and economic woes. What Greece needs is a cultural revolution, writes Fouad Ajami

Busy Angelina Jolie is set to star in ‘Gertrude Bell’ - and at least three other movies.

TURKEY is to build a “crazy and magnificent” canal to bypass the tanker-clogged Bosphorus in a massive feat of engineering.

Turkey is to build a new waterway to bypass the heavily congested Bosphorus.

IT IS a while since trainer James Toller had a nice juvenile to look forward to, but thoughts of Loving Spirit could keep him warm this winter.

IF Queen Elizabeth deigns to come to Cork during her State visit to Ireland, they may have to do a bit of heavy lifting at UCC. A statue of her predecessor, Queen Victoria, once held pride of place on the roof of the college’s Aula Maxima when it was Queen’s University Cork.

Turkey and Armenia agreed on a roadmap for normalising relations and reaching reconciliation, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

A TURKISH nationalist party leader, a veteran journalist and an academic have been arrested over an alleged plan to kill author Orhan Pamuk, the country’s first Nobel laureate, media reported yesterday.

Turks took to the streets today in protest at an American decision to continue with a bill which describes the 90-year-old mass killings of Armenians as genocide.

Hundreds of thousands of pro-secular Turks flooded central Istanbul today to demand the resignation of the government, which they fear is leading Turkey toward Islamic rule.

LUNAR eclipses have signalled the collapse of the Roman armies, the Ottoman Empire and the reign of Mary Harney.

Thousands gathered outside the bilingual Turkish and Armenian newspaper Agos early today to mourn its editor, murdered in an attack that has shocked Turkey.

THERE’S a touch of the Ottoman Empire or the eastern exotic about the front of this Glasheen Road, suburban Cork house, thanks to something as simple as the ground floor window and door treatment.

OUR CHRISTMAS traditions often have rather strange and obscure origins.