Turkey - Page 15

ANKARA, Turkey — Three New Zealand citizens were detained while attempting to illegally cross into Turkey from Syria, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has spoken out against Germany’s plans to export Type 214 Class submarines to Turkey as tensions between the two NATO members are heightened.

A report from Freedom House called Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression describes growing efforts by authoritarian nations like China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran to silence critics and dissidents living overseas, sometimes by murdering them.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Thursday that “there is no such thing” as LGBT during a speech denouncing a recent anti-government protest movement that launched at an Istanbul university last month.

Germany´s foreign minister is scheduled to meet his Turkish counterpart in the Turkish capital, following a tumultuous year of relations.

Greek Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens has stated that he views Islam not as a religion but as a “political party”, and its followers as a “people of war”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got his first dose of the Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate, “CoronaVac,” on Thursday.

Turkish government communications director Fahrettin Altun has claimed the eastern Mediterranean Sea as part of his country’s “blue homeland”, as tensions remain high in the region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday he is looking to a compliant U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to right a “serious wrong” and allow Ankara to purchase F-35 fighter jets to work alongside its new Russian air defense systems despite Washington’s previous repeated objections.

A court in Istanbul sentenced Turkish sex cult leader Adnan Oktar to more than 1,075 years in prison on Monday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The local government in south-central Konya, Turkey, announced this week that it would turn a fully renovated 19th-century Armenian church into a “humor art house” after barring worshippers from using the church for years, multiple reports revealed Thursday.

Beijing announced the ratification this week of an extradition treaty with Turkey, which human rights experts worry will be used to expedite the return of Muslim Uyghur refugees to China.

NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) will be led by Turkey in 2021, the military bloc said on Wednesday. The news came on the same day Turkey confirmed it will snub NATO-ally U.S. and pursue major arms deals with Russia.

The Greeks who represent the last vestiges of Christian Byzantium and the Roman Empire are heading towards their final extinction in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, with their numbers dwindling to a mere handful under his Islamist government.

Over the next year and into early 2022, the European Union is planning to spend nearly half a billion euros on Syrian migrants currently living in Turkey.

Can Dündar, the former editor-in-chief of the anti-Islamist Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, received a 27-year prison sentence Wednesday for allegedly aiding a terrorist group by publishing a news story.

The Turkish parliament approved a plan Tuesday that would keep Turkish forces deployed in Libya for another 18 months.

The Saudi news network al-Arabiya cited official Justice Ministry statistics Sunday to reveal nearly 1,000 children in Turkey between 2014 and 2020 have suffered prosecution on charges of “insulting the president,” a crime in Turkish law.

Police arrested a 22-year-old Syrian migrant in the Evros region near the Greek border with Turkey in possession of ten Turkish-made Zoraki pistols.

Since the election of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Wikipedia editors have been downplaying or removing mention of controversies from her page. This has included minimizing mention of antisemitism controversies over her comments about Israel and its supporters, excluding mention of personal scandals, and censoring details about Turkish lobbying ties. Editors have meanwhile given considerable attention to alleged mistreatment of her by others, particularly President Donald Trump who editors tied to threats Omar received.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the U.S. would impose sanctions on Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) after it purchased Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missiles, despite repeated U.S. objections and security concerns.

An Iranian lawmaker threatened Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Twitter over the weekend after Erdoğan recited a poem last week allegedly promoting separatist sentiment among Iran’s Azeri minority.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenian officials and Azerbaijan on Saturday accused each other of breaching a peace deal that ended six weeks of fierce fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’s leader threatened to crush Armenian forces with an “iron fist.”

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg has called on countries to resolve issues through dialogue as the European Union explores sanctions against Turkey over its activity in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Anti-government demonstrations once again took place in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on Friday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after Azerbaijan held a victory parade to celebrate its seizure of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the Armenian people on Thursday that the unspecified “struggle” against them will “continue from now on many other fronts” in remarks at a victory parade in Azerbaijan.

Two human rights watchdog groups have published an extensive report examining Christian persecution in Turkey and showing that Christians are still treated as second-class citizens in the mostly Muslim nation.

Forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) seized a Jamaica-flagged Turkish cargo ship in the Mediterranean on Monday, angering the Turkish government and potentially reigniting the Libyan civil war after a tentative truce was established in October.

In the Turkish town of Trabzon, Mayor Murat Zorluoğlu has installed a “mask cam” at a major bus stop to document and shame people not wearing masks outdoors, Euronews reported this week.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias warned that continued Turkish actions in the Eastern Mediterranean were threatening peace in the region.

A birth tourism scheme in Long Island, New York, helped secure birthright American citizenship for about 119 anchor babies delivered to Turkish nationals over the last few years, a Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment alleges.

Citizens who get pulled over on December 11 by police in Chesapeake, Virginia, are reportedly in for a pleasant surprise.

A court in Turkey on Thursday sentenced 475 defendants to lengthy prison terms, in many cases handing down multiple life sentences, in a mass trial for “traitors” accused of participating in the 2016 attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never made a secret of his ambition to become a historic regional leader. His nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire long ago became a source of concern for observers who think he might seriously attempt to bring it back. His detractors mock him as “Sultan Erdogan,” but he might not find that name insulting. Erdogan flexed his military muscle in several recent conflicts. He might be warming up for something bigger, or he may have already overtaxed Turkey’s military strength.

For more than 30 years, Butterball has been fielding calls from consumers about its turkeys during the holiday season. This year is no exception despite all the changes people are making in fear of contracting the coronavirus.

BERLIN (AP) – Germany’s defense minister on Tuesday rejected Turkey’s complaints over the search of a Turkish freighter in the Mediterranean Sea by a German frigate participating in a European mission, insisting that German sailors acted correctly. Sunday’s incident prompted