Category Archives: Turkey

UN chief expresses shock at discovery of mass graves in Libya

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Fears grow of further atrocities in areas controlled by Khalifa Haftar forces

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed deep shock at the discovery of mass graves in Libyan territory recently recaptured from forces commanded by Khalifa Haftar, and called for a transparent investigation.

Guterres also called on Libya’s UN-backed government to secure the mass graves, identify the victims, establish the causes of death and return the bodies to the next of kin. He offered UN support in carrying out the measures, his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

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Alarm at Turkish plan to expand powers of nightwatchmen

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Critics see move as attempt to create auxiliary police force loyal to president

The Turkish parliament is considering a bill that would greatly expand the powers of a 28,000-strong network of nightwatchmen across the country, a move viewed by critics as an attempt to create an auxiliary police force loyal to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

A draft law discussed by MPs on Monday would allow bekçiler, or night-time community officers, to carry out identification checks and body searches and would authorise the use of lethal force. A vote expected this week is likely to pass the measures.

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Global report: China hails coronavirus response as world death toll tops 400,000

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Beijing denies cover-up or delay, while countries easing lockdowns face spike in cases

The number of confirmed deaths from coronavirus globally has topped 400,000, as the Chinese government released a report lauding its own response to the pandemic that emerged in the city of Wuhan six months ago.

As more countries prepared to continue easing their lockdowns from Monday, Singapore’s prime minister warned the city-state’s citizens that they were entering a tougher world of slowing demand and travel restrictions for the foreseeable future.

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Khashoggi sons’ pardon is step towards killers’ release, says UN investigator

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Agnès Callamard says Saudi authorities playing out ‘final act in their parody of justice’

A UN investigator has predicted Saudi Arabia will eventually release the convicted killers of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after the killers were said to have been forgiven by Khashoggi’s sons in a move she said represented the kingdom’s “absolute impunity”.

Agnès Callamard, the special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings who has said the 2018 murder was committed at the behest of the Saudi state, said on Friday that the message of forgiveness represented the “first steps towards their eventual release” under Saudi and sharia law.

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Turkey detains man for hanging union jack towel outside building

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Iranian man held by police after neighbours said display of UK flag a provocative act

Authorities in Turkey have detained a man for hanging a towel emblazoned with the British union jack flag from a building during a public holiday.

The Iranian man was detained on Tuesday in the central Turkish city of Kayseri following complaints from neighbours who deemed the display of the design to be a provocative act.

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Turkey’s lockdown rainbows have become another symbol of division

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In a country highly polarised along political and religious lines the symbol has become another cultural battleground

Like many children across the world sent home from school, youngsters in Turkey were encouraged to draw pictures of rainbows and place them in windows to cheer up the country in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Orders to teachers from some local education boards to stop because the rainbows were part of a “plot” to turn children gay were met with surprise.

Instead of boosting morale, the lockdown rainbows have become yet another symbol of division, the latest cultural battleground in a country highly polarised along political and religious lines.

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Coronavirus leaves Turkey’s president with nobody else to blame

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Collapsing economy and rising death toll could prove downfall of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is a populist juggernaut, fond of suggesting that his leadership is the only way to protect the country from enemies both real and imagined. The coronavirus pandemic, however, is an existential crisis unlike anything he has faced before.

“Erdoğan has gradually managed to reform Turkey’s constitution, consolidating power into the presidency’s hands,” said Nate Schenkkan, the director for special research at Freedom House, a US-based democracy watchdog.

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‘There is no future’: the refugees who became pawns in Erdoğan’s game

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First the asylum seekers were used to further Turkey’s regional ambitions, now they are made to suffer in quarantine camps

At the beginning of March, thousands of refugees gathered in the shadow of the Pazarkule border gate in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he would “open the gate” to Europe.

The move was a reaction to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib province on 28 February and designed to exert pressure on the EU and Nato to support its military operation in northern Syria.

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All 400,000 gowns flown from Turkey for NHS fail UK standards

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Health department understood to be returning shipment of PPE and seeking refund

Last month, amid dire warnings of shortages of personal protective equipment for health workers, ministers publicised the imminent arrival from Turkey of a fleet of RAF cargo planes bringing in a “very significant” shipment of PPE for the NHS.

Related: Picnics and sunbathing on cards as PM expected to allow more time outside

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Turkish students increasingly resisting religion, study suggests

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Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generations

Twenty-two-year old Esra, from Mersin, is even more bored than usual this Ramadan. Universities are shut and Turkey has taken the unusual step of placing under-20s, as well as over-65s, under a night-time curfew, because many Turkish families live in intergenerational households.

As a result, Esra can’t see any of her friends. And a few days into the Muslim month of fasting, like many young people, she is now feeling even more suffocated by the religious restrictions imposed by her pious parents.

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Fuel truck bomb kills more than 40 in northern Syria

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The blast in a market in Afrin came as people went shopping in preparartion of breaking the Ramadan fast, says US and Syrian Observatory

A fuel truck bomb in a market in northern Syria killed at least 46 people including Turkish-backed rebel fighters, according to US officials and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The blast on Tuesday in Afrin, a city controlled by Ankara’s proxies, came as people went shopping in preparation to break the Ramadan fast, according to the US state department, which condemned the attack as a “cowardly act of evil”.

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Independent caught in tit-for-tat Turkey-Saudi media battle

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Ankara bans UK publication’s Turkish-language site over its links to Riyadh

The Independent has found itself caught in a bizarre tit-for-tat press freedom war between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, after the British publication’s Turkish-language site was banned by authorities in Ankara over its links to Riyadh.

The move comes shortly after Turkish authorities charged 20 Saudis over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an incident that soured relations between the two countries.

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Coronavirus live news: Europe fatalities pass 100,000, but death rate slows in Spain and Netherlands

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Saudia Arabia religious body urges all Muslims to pray at home during Ramadan; Spanish PM seeks lockdown extension

Lockdowns across Europe have had a dramatic impact on air traffic, with 90% fewer flights taking off from the continent’s largest airports compared to a year ago

Wearing face masks, waving black flags and keeping two yards apart, thousands of Israelis demonstrated against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu under strict coronavirus restrictions on Sunday.

Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, is under criminal indictment in three corruption cases.

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Mediterranean shipwrecks reveal ‘birth of globalisation’ in trade

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Preserved cargoes of vessels linking eastern cultures with western Europe show ‘the barbarian Orient’ was a trendsetter

For almost seven decades archaeologists have searched the eastern Mediterranean in vain for wrecks that sank along antiquity’s mighty shipping lanes.

Now, though, a British-led team can reveal a spectacular discovery – a fleet of Hellenistic, Roman, early Islamic and Ottoman wrecks that were lost some two kilometres below the waves of the Levantine Basin between the 3rd century BC and the 19th century.

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The Observer view on the smoking gun that should force Assad to face justice

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For the first time, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog has directly accused Syria’s leadership of ordering illegal attacks on its people

There is a temptation, to which some European governments and politicians are prey, to imagine that Syria’s civil war is over. It would, after all, be politically convenient if the millions of refugees languishing in Turkey and Jordan were to go home, rather than serve as a constant reminder of the EU’s chronic fear of migrants.

An end to the war would remove a prime cause of instability in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean region. Russia and Iran would have less excuse to play games of geopolitical chance with civilian lives. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s irascible president, would have less to complain about.

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Member of banned Turkish folk group dies after hunger strike

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Singer Helin Bolek, 28, of Grup Yorum, was protesting against government’s treatment of group

A member of a popular folk music group that is banned in Turkey has died on the 288th day of a hunger strike. The singer and a colleague had started the strike while imprisoned to protest at the government’s treatment of their band, according to a post on the group’s Twitter account.

Grup Yorum, known for their protest songs, said Helin Bolek, 28, had died on Friday at a home in Istanbul where she had been staging the hunger strike in an attempt to pressure the government into reversing its position on the band and its members.

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Outrage over denial of amnesty for Turkish political prisoners

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Government’s critics not among 90,000 inmates eligible for early release due to coronavirus

Anger is growing in Turkey that while the government is preparing to grant amnesties to up to one third of the country’s prison population in order to combat the coronavirus pandemic, jailed human rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians will not be among those considered for early release.

The Turkish parliament discussed a legal amendment on Tuesday which should make 90,000 of the country’s approximately 300,000 prisoners eligible for either house arrest or parole by halving sentences for offences including non pre-mediatated murder and organised crime. Early drafts of the bill, which would also have covered sex offenders and those convicted of gender-based violence, were dropped after being met with outrage from women’s rights groups.

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Turkey charges 20 Saudis over Jamal Khashoggi murder

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Two allies of crown prince among suspects charged over killing of dissident journalist

Turkish prosecutors have formally charged 20 Saudi nationals over the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018, including two men close to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

The former royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani and former deputy head of intelligence Ahmed al-Asiri were among the suspects charged with “instigating a premeditated murder with the intent of [causing] torment through fiendish instinct”, the office of the Istanbul chief prosecutor, Irfan Fidan, said on Wednesday. Assisted by three intelligence officers, a team of 15 men then travelled to Istanbul and carried out Qatani and Asiri’s orders, the statement said.

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Erdoğan in talks with European leaders over refugee cash for Turkey

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Border issue and other matters discussed in conference call with Germany, France and UK

Turkey has pressed European leaders to make fresh cash pledges to prevent tens of thousands of refugees from leaving the country and trying to reach Europe amid a Russian-Syrian offensive in north-west Syria.

After intense bombardment in Idlib province last month, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, encouraged thousands of refugees in the country to move on towards the Greek islands and the Baltics, in a repeat of the surge to Europe in 2015.

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Greece hopes EU-Turkey talks will ease tension over refugee crisis

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Greek PM tells the Guardian planned talks including Merkel, Macron and Erdoğan are an opportunity to ‘set the record straight’

Greece is hoping critical talks between the EU and Ankara will help ease the border crisis that has weighed heavily on the country since Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared he had “opened the gates” to Europe for migrants and refugees.

In an exclusive interview, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said planned talks between the German and French leaders on one hand, and Erdoğan on the other, on Tuesday would be an opportunity to finally “set the record straight”.

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