Author: Sevil Hazan

With Turkey and Hungary continuing to block Sweden’s application to join the NATO military alliance, the Swedish government hopes for a swift ratification soon by both countries after Turkish elections scheduled for May 14. Sweden and Finland lodged a joint application to join NATO just weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The alliance welcomed Finland earlier this month – NATO’s 31st member state – after Turkish and Hungarian lawmakers finally voted through the ratification in March. Sweden’s application has yet to be approved by the same two NATO members. Anti-terror law Ankara has accused Sweden of harboring…

As part of a project jointly funded by the Goethe Institute, the Dutch Embassy, the Swedish Consulate, the French Cultural Center, the Istanbul Culture and Art Foundation, and the Anadolu Kultur Foundation, 40 Turkish and Syrian children living in Turkiye’s southeastern province of Gaziantep have collaborated to write and illustrate a book titled “Gokce” (sky in Turkish), alluding to the fact that people of all races, cultures and creeds live together under the same sky. Gaziantep, whose population is nearly 2 million, is home to about half a million Syrian refugees. The city has the second-highest population of Syrians after…

Ships flying the Cypriot flag are faced with a second Turkish embargo as they are prevented from transporting grain from or to Ukraine under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, said Shipping Minister Marina Hadjimanolis. She pointed out that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was an agreement between Turkey, Ukraine and Russia with the United Nations to ensure grain passage from Ukraine. “Turkey is the country that controls the ships that pass through the Black Sea and prevents any ship that carries the Cypriot flag or any ship managed in Cyprus from being part of this process. “That’s why I…

Suspect was caught in northwestern Edirne province, as per the security sources.Turkish authorities have nabbed one Fetullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO) suspect near Türkiye’s border with Greece, security sources have said. The FETO suspect, identified only by the initials BK, was detained on Monday in a restricted military zone in the northwestern Edirne province, said the sources, requesting anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media. FETO orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in Türkiye, in which 251 people were killed and 2,734 injured. Ankara accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through…

The decision on the release or not of Eva Kaili is expected, as it became known after the end of her hearing at the appeals court, on Friday, March 3. The hearing of both Eva Kaili and Mark Tarabella for their involvement in the European Parliament corruption scandal, Qatargate, ended at noon on Tuesday, after they had appealed. The appeals court considered whether Eva Kaili should remain in custody or not in an “in camera” hearing. Why was the decision not announced today? According to information from Mega, it is common practice for the appeals court to delay decisions and…

Tens of thousands of people are thought to have been killed and thousands others injured by a huge earthquake which struck south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, in the early hours of Monday morning. The earthquake, which hit near the town of Gaziantep, was closely followed by numerous aftershocks – including one quake which was almost as large as the first. Why was it so deadly? The first earthquake was big – it registered as 7.8, classified as “major” on the official magnitude scale. It broke along about 100km (62 miles) of fault line, causing serious damage to buildings near…

In a statement issued over the weekend, Botas said the volume of gas being pumped to Turkey through the Gurbulak-Agri entry point on the Turkey-Iran border has been significantly reduced since 1 January due to “a malfunction” on the Iranian side of the network. The Turkish authorities have urged Iran to resolve the problem as soon as possible, particularly given the more urgent need for supply during the winter months. The country has taken precautions, however, to prevent disruption, Botas said, and will withdraw gas from storage to meet demand. Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest gas supplier after Russia, shipping 9.43bn…

The construction of the Mor Efrem Syriac Ancient Orthodox Church, the first-ever church built in the modern Republic of Turkey, is nearly complete and is expected to open within two months, the Istanbul Syriac Ancient Foundation has announced. The church’s foundation was laid in February 2019 during a ceremony attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul’s Yesilkoy district. “Feverish work is being carried out to eliminate the last deficiencies to open the first-ever church of the Turkish republic,” Daily Sabah quoted Sait Susin, the Foundation’s president, as saying. The first floor will host the cultural hall for the congregation…

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) announced on Saturday that it would be nominating its own presidential candidate for upcoming elections, shooting down the possibility of throwing its weight behind a joint opposition candidate. “We will name our candidate soon and go to the elections,” Pervin Buldan, the HDP co-chair, said during a party event in the eastern city of Kars. Buldan’s announcement isn’t a simple decision since the HDP, with its 10-13 percent of votes, is essentially seen as the kingmaker between two competing political blocs led by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and main opposition Republican…

Turkey has reacted to criticism from the Council of the European Union which Tuesday warned that the EU candidate country is drifting further away from the bloc, while noting that accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill and no further chapters can be considered for opening or closing. In a statement translated from Turkish Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry said that the Council conclusions “once again exposed its narrow-minded and biased stance towards Turkey.” “Such decisions, in which the common interests of the EU are sacrificed for the interests of certain member states, neither contribute to Turkey-EU relations, nor do…