Category Archives: Turkey

Turkey’s plan to forcibly relocate Syrian refugees gains momentum

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President Erdoğan presses on with move by leveraging his Nato veto over Nordic states’ accession

Turkey’s plan to expand a buffer zone inside northern Syria and use it to relocate large numbers of refugees has gained momentum after officials endorsed a military push that analysts from both countries say will force demographic shifts inside Syria.

Though a timeline has not been decided, military and political leaders have confirmed that an extensive operation is being prepared to move Kurdish populations away from Turkey’s southern border and assert Turkish control as deep as 18 miles into northern Syria.

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Guinea junta allows former leader Alpha Conde to leave country

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84-year-old who was ousted last year boards plane for Turkey to receive medical treatment

Guinean ex-leader Alpha Conde boarded a plane for Turkey on Saturday after the junta that toppled him authorised his travel abroad for medical treatment, officials said.

The 84-year-old Conte, who was ousted last year, has been allowed to travel out of respect for his “dignity and integrity” and for “humanitarian reasons”, the junta’s governing body said.

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Why has Erdoğan doubled down on threat to veto Nordic Nato bids?

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Analysis: By demanding extradition of alleged PKK members, Turkish president could have one eye on elections

After initial hesitation about the seriousness of Turkey’s objections, its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has doubled down on his threat to veto Finland’s and Sweden’s applications for membership of Nato, saying there is no point in either country sending delegations to Ankara to persuade him otherwise.

On Wednesday, he also extended his demands from the two he outlined on Monday to 10, leading to claims that he is using blackmail.

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Khashoggi row goes unmentioned as Erdoğan seeks to boost Saudi trade ties

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Analysis: regional rivals reconcile in Jeddah while reason for three-year rift remains elephant in the room

With awkward embraces and fixed grins, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mohammed bin Salman struck a pose of reconciliation. For the past three years, the presence of the Turkish leader and the Saudi crown prince in the same room would have been unthinkable, but in a drawing room of a Jeddah palace on Friday, both tried to signal a new beginning.

There was no sign of the acrimony that had set the regional rivals apart and – most definitely – no mention of the reason for the rift: the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

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Turkey to send case against Khashoggi’s alleged killers to Saudi Arabia

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Suspension of trial reflects President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s desire to strengthen trade and political links with Middle East

A Turkish court has confirmed a request from prosecutors to transfer the case against the alleged assassins of Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, shutting down a trial that had been a centrepiece of attempts to cast light on the plot and expose the hit squad’s ultimate leader.

The move ends any meaningful hope of securing justice and paves the way for a political reset between the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler whose security aides were on trial in Istanbul and who is widely believed to have ordered the murder.

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London-based port operator accused over Abramovich $600m superyacht

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Global Ports Holding facility in Turkey may be breaching UK sanctions by letting vessel dock, say lawyers

A London-headquartered port operator could be breaching sanctions laws by allowing Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to dock his $600m (£460m) superyacht Solaris at a port that it operates in Turkey.

Legal experts said Global Ports Holding, which has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2007, was taking “a very big risk” by allowing a superyacht owned by a sanctioned individual to use one of its ports.

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Turkish prosecutor asks to halt trial for the murder of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi

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Istanbul is seeking to mend ties with Saudi Arabia to bolster a struggling economy as it looks for foreign trade

A Turkish prosecutor has moved to end the trial of the killers of Jamal Khashoggi nearly four years after aides to Saudi Arabia’a Crown Prince murdered and dismembered the dissident in the Kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, shelving the chance of convictions as Ankara seeks to mend ties with Riyadh.

The move has been broadly seen as a political offering ahead of a mooted visit by Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Saudi Arabia in search of renewed trade and investment to boost Ankara’s ailing economy.

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‘The world is waiting for good news’: Russia-Ukraine peace talks press on in Turkey

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Politicians from the warring countries descended on Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace for another round of negotiations

Sipping on a tulip-shaped glass of Turkish black tea, Roman Abramovich sat on the sunlit terrace of Istanbul’s Shangri-La hotel on Tuesday afternoon and talked intently with the Ukrainian negotiating team.

Despite the seafood and burger restaurant’s extensive menu and large fridge advertising its stock of dry-aged meat, the Russian oligarch did not appear to eat during the entire meeting. Less than 24 hours had passed since he was reported to have suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning.

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Russia vows to ‘radically reduce’ military activity in northern Ukraine

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Experts and western diplomats voice caution over pledge on first day of face-to-face talks in Istanbul

Russia has pledged to drastically cut back its military activity in northern Ukraine to help advance peace talks, but experts and western diplomats expressed doubts that the move was more than a ploy to dress up setbacks on the ground.

Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, said after talks in Istanbul on Tuesday that Moscow wanted to “increase mutual trust, create the right conditions for future negotiations and reach the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”, and that the Kremlin would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 23 of the invasion

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Food supply fears as Biden plans to warn Chinese president against providing military support for Russia

Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the streets of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water, Russia’s armed forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, a spokesperson for the Russian defence ministry said. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multistorey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, and a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

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Ukraine says talks in Turkey with Russia fail to make progress towards ceasefire

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As first high-level diplomatic meeting between combatants continues, EU leaders prepare to meet at Versailles

High-level talks between Russia and Ukraine ended without a ceasefire, as violence continued across the country, with conditions in the besieged city of Mariupol described as “dire and desperate” as residents run out of food.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said there had been no progress to achieving a ceasefire in talks in Turkey with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in the first high-level meeting between the two countries since the Moscow-ordered invasion of its neighbour two weeks ago.

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Turkey’s trade in counterfeit goods booms, fuelled by falling lira

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Value of country’s fakes tripled from 2019 to 2020 as it became main source of counterfeit designer clothes stopped at EU borders

Photos of fake Gucci bags, Louis Vuitton sweatpants and Nike sneakers are flaunted on the social media accounts of a Turkish store with more than 155,000 followers on TikTok. There are thousands of comments under the posts in English, Italian, Bulgarian, Polish, German, Spanish and French.

Turkey is the third biggest exporter of counterfeit products to the EU after China and Hong Kong, according to data on the value of goods seized. Falls in the value of the Turkish lira and the deterioration of the Turkish economy are further fuelling demand as such items become cheaper to traders buying in euros.

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The world leaders pushing for peace in Ukraine, and their motives

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They claim to be honest brokers, but is that just a fig leaf to cover their moral bankruptcy?

How blessed are the peacemakers? After the first wave of intermediaries led by Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, a new group have beaten their way to Vladimir Putin’s long table since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or at least sought to intervene by phone.

The current crop includes Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed of the UAE and now the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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Iranian refugees face deportation from Turkey for attending demonstration

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Lawyer says refugees, who were protesting against Turkey leaving Istanbul convention on violence against women, are at risk in Iran

Three Iranian refugees are facing deportation from Turkey after taking part in a demonstration against Ankara’s withdrawal from the Istanbul convention on violence against women.

Lily Faraji, Zeinab Sahafi and Ismail Fattahi were arrested after attending a protest in the southern Turkish city of Denizli last March. A fourth Iranian national, Mohammad Pourakbari, was detained with the others, despite not attending the protests, according to Buse Bergamalı, their lawyer.

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Flying high: how a photo of a Syrian father and son led to a new life in Italy

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A tender moment captured by Mehmet Aslan of Munzir al-Nazzal and his son, both survivors of the Syrian war, prompted Italian organisations to act. A year on, they are settling into life in Tuscany

In January last year, while working on the Turkish-Syrian border, photojournalist Mehmet Aslan photographed a Syrian man, Munzir al-Nazzal, who had lost a leg in a bomb attack. Munzir was playing with Mustafa, his 5-year-old son, who was born without limbs, and the shot portrayed the father, propped up on a crutch, raising his smiling child into the air.

Aslan entitled his photograph Hardship of Life.

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Snowstorm blankets eastern Mediterranean closing airports, schools and vaccination centres

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Istanbul airport was forced to shut down while motorists were trapped in cars around Athens as rare heavy snow falls across southeast Europe

Europe’s busiest airport shut down in Istanbul on Monday while schools and vaccination centres closed in Athens as a rare snowstorm blanketed swathes of the eastern Mediterranean, causing blackouts and traffic havoc.

The closure of Istanbul Airport – where the roof of one of the cargo terminals collapsed under heavy snow, causing no injuries – grounded flights stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and Asia.

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Increased repression and violence a sign of weakness, says Human Rights Watch

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Watchdog’s latest report argues autocrats around the world are getting desperate as opponents form coalitions to challenge them

Increasingly repressive and violent acts against civilian protests by autocratic leaders and military regimes around the world are signs of their desperation and weakening grip on power, Human Rights Watch says in its annual assessment of human rights across the globe.

In its world report 2022, the human rights organisation said autocratic leaders faced a significant backlash in 2021, with millions of people risking their lives to take to the streets to challenge regimes’ authority and demand democracy.

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Rising anger with Turkey drives calls for reunification in crisis-hit northern Cyprus

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With the economy in freefall and allegations of political interference, people have taken to the streets to advocate for federal future

In his sun-filled office in north Nicosia, Şener Elcil is plotting his next protest. Anger, he says, is in the air in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.

The economy is in freefall, thanks to the self-declared republic’s financial and political dependence on Turkey. Thousands have taken to the streets, spurred by inflation rates that have left many struggling to make ends meet; ahead of parliamentary polls later this month, calls for a boycott are mounting, while a blacklist of Turkish Cypriot dissidents, reportedly drawn up at the behest of Ankara, has spawned consternation and fear.

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