Category Archives: Turkey

Turkey accused of using Interpol summit to crack down on critics

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Campaigners claim Ankara is abusing its position as host, by pressuring the police body to harass dissidents living abroad

Human rights activists have accused Turkey of using its role as host of Interpol’s general assembly to push for a crackdown on critics and political opponents who have fled the country.

The alert came after the Turkish interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, said his government would use the three-day event in Istanbul to persuade the international criminal police organisation’s officials and delegates to find, arrest and extradite Turkish dissident citizens – particularly those it labels terrorists – abroad.

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Erdoğan gambles on economy amid protests and rocketing inflation

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Analysis: push for interest rate cuts has divided party and left Turkish president in precarious position, say experts

Turkey’s president is gambling that a strong economic recovery from the pandemic will stay on track despite rocketing inflation that has hit living standards and sparked protests in major cities.

The $750bn economy is on course to expand by 9% this year following a return of tourism and a surge in demand for exports that has pushed factory output to pre-pandemic levels.

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups

Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.

The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Omar Souleyman: singer held by Turkey over alleged militant links is freed

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Syrian questioned by police after reports he has ties to banned Kurdish People’s Protection Units

Celebrated Syrian singer Omar Souleyman, who has performed at festivals around the world, has been released after being detained over alleged links to Kurdish militants.

Souleyman was freed at 10.30pm (19.30 GMT) after a confusing day during which he was released in the morning before being taken back to a detention centre.

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Syrian musician Omar Souleyman held on terrorism charges in Turkey

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Arrest relates to alleged membership of Kurdistan Workers’ party, which is proscribed by Turkey and the west

The Syrian musician Omar Souleyman, who has performed at festivals around the world, has been arrested in Turkey on terrorism charges related to alleged membership of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).

The singer and DJ was taken into custody by officers who searched his home in the south-eastern province of Şanlıurfa, his son Muhammad told a Syrian news outlet on Wednesday. An official in the Şanlıurfa governor’s office confirmed the arrest to the Guardian.

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Turkey jails Kurdish politician’s wife over miscarriage form ‘typo’

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Başak Demirtaş and her doctor sentenced over ‘falsified’ medical report on her miscarriage

The wife of a jailed Kurdish politician has been sentenced to two and a half years in a Turkish prison over a typo in a medical report on a miscarriage, in a case denounced as an “appalling” political persecution.

A court in Diyarbakır handed down sentences of 30 months each for Başak Demirtaş, a teacher, and her doctor on Thursday for submitting a falsified medical report, a local Kurdish news agency reported.

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‘Killing us slowly’: dams and drought choke Syria’s water supply – in pictures

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The dwindling flow of the Euphrates River combined with Turkey’s occupation of Alouk water station has disrupted access to water for 460,000 people

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‘A moment in history’: making a perilous sea-crossing with refugees – photo essay

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Ahead of a UK exhibition of her photo series Journey in the Death Boat, Güliz Vural describes travelling with Syrians being smuggled to Greece from Turkey

Standing on a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, the photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the people traffickers organising the illegal crossing would not let her onboard.

If she had known that within a few hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of people trafficking herself, she would have thought twice about the journey.

The migrants carry the inflatable boat they will travel in down to the beach. They had to leave all their possessions as they crammed themselves in. Nearly 50 Syrians made the crossing in a boat designed to carry 12 people, adding to the anxiety felt by the children in particular.

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Greece accused of ‘biggest pushback in years’ of stricken refugee ship

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Cargo ship, carrying 382 migrants, was towed across the seas for four days before Athens was forced into a rescue after mayday call

It was hailed as the biggest search-and-rescue operation in the eastern Mediterranean for a decade. But the bid to save hundreds of refugees on a stricken ship in the Aegean Sea has led to allegations that the operation bore all the hallmarks of an illegal pushback before the Greek coastguard was forced to change tactics.

Only days after 382 asylum seekers disembarked on the island of Kos, criticism has mounted over their “unnecessarily prolonged” ordeal at sea.

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Ethiopia-Turkey pact fuels speculation about drone use in Tigray war

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Reports say Ethiopia wants to buy Bayraktar TB2 drones after military cooperation agreement was signed with Ankara

Ethiopia’s government has forged an alliance with Turkey, amid reports that it wants to deploy armed Turkish drones in its bitter war against forces from the region of Tigray.

Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, signed a military cooperation agreement on a visit Ankara in August with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

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Turkey backs down on threat to expel foreign ambassadors

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President Erdoğan de-escalates diplomatic spat after declaring 10 envoys ‘persona non grata’

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has backed down from a threat to expel 10 ambassadors – including those from seven Nato allies – over their demands for the release of a prominent pro-democracy activist.

In comments on Monday Erdoğan said statements issued earlier in the day by the embassies in question, reaffirming that they will abide by a diplomatic convention not to interfere in a host country’s internal affairs, “show they have taken a step back from the slander against our country” and “they will be more careful now”.

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Turkey’s move to expel ambassadors over activist’s jailing risks widening rift with west

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Envoys from 10 countries – including US, Germany and France – to be declared persona non grata

A decision by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to declare 10 ambassadors – including those from seven Nato allies – as persona non grata threatens to open the biggest rift with the west during his two decades in power.

Representatives from the US, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand issued a joint statement earlier this week demanding the urgent release of Osman Kavala, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who has been held in pre-trial detention for more than four years on charges related to the 2013 Gezi park protests and the 2016 coup attempt.

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Turkey threatens to eject 10 western diplomats over support for activist

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President Erdoğan says ambassadors from US, Europe and elsewhere are not welcome after call for freeing of Osman Kavala

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he has ordered the foreign ministry to declare 10 ambassadors from western countries persona non grata for calling for the release of philanthropist Osman Kavala.

Kavala has been in prison for four years, charged with financing nationwide protests in 2013 and with involvement in a failed coup in 2016. He denies the charges.

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Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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Why are Britons so much more relaxed about Covid than Europeans?

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UK residents abroad are shocked at the lack of mask wearing back home, and point fingers at the government’s blase approach

Compared with some other countries, along with high numbers of Covid cases and deaths, the UK has relatively relaxed Covid restrictions, with no mandatory vaccine passports, no social distancing measures, and no mask mandate in England.

Four people from the UK and in Europe share their views on the country’s approach to Covid restrictions compared with others they are visiting or living in.

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Afghan refugees accuse Turkey of violent illegal pushbacks

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Migrants, many fleeing the Taliban regime, claim they are being beaten, harassed and turned back by Turkish border forces

As the sun sets over a dusty ravine on the outskirts of Van city in eastern Turkey, Muhammdullah Sangeen and dozens of other Afghans are preparing for another night sleeping rough.

The 22-year-old, who has a bruised left eye and fresh cuts all over his arms, arrived from Iran a few days earlier with the help of smugglers. “I am not OK,” said Sangeen, his legs trembling. “I’m not feeling human.”

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Saudi aide accused of directing Khashoggi murder edges back to power

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Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media

Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.

Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.

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Erdoğan and Putin hold face-to-face talks over Syria ceasefire

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Turkey’s president wants to shore up the truce because it has been ruptured repeatedly in the last 18 months

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian president Vladimir Putin have held face-to-face talks for the first time since the pandemic in which they discussed the future of the last pocket of Syria outside regime control.

The leaders met in Russia’s Black Sea resort town of Sochi for Wednesday’s summit, Erdoğan sought to shore up a March 2020 ceasefire deal which ended a bruising assault by Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies on Turkish-backed fighters in north-west Syria. The fighting last year brought Ankara and Moscow close to direct confrontation and threatened Turkey – which is already home to around four million Syrians – with a new wave of refugees.

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