Turkey

20 June 2019; MEMO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday vowed to try to ensure the Egyptian government is tried in international courts for the death of former president Mohamed Morsi, who suffered a fatal heart attack in a Cairo court earlier this week, Reuters reports.

20 June 2019; DW: A Turkish court on Thursday handed down verdicts to more than 220 suspects in one of the biggest trials relating to the 2016 failed coup attempt to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The court sentenced 17 top former military officials to 141 life terms, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Nevsehir, Turkey, June 17 - Turkey will host a hot-air balloon festival for the first time in Cappadocia, the otherworldly touristic hub famed for its fairy chimneys.

The Cappadocia International Hot-Air Balloon Festival, set for July 3-7, will be organized by the Urgup Municipality in the central Nevsehir province.

During the event, some 150 hot air balloons will take six different flights and 20 balloons of various shapes from nearly a dozen countries will take to the skies.

ANKARA, June 16. /TASS/: One of Turkey’s military observation points has come under a mortar shelling in Idlib in northern Syria, the Turkish National Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

"A deliberate mortar shelling of our observation point number nine in the Idlib de-escalation zone was carried out from the Tall Bazan region, which is under the control of the Syrian regime [of President Bashar Assad]," the ministry said.

ANKARA, June 16. /TASS/: The supplies of Russia’s S-400 missile defense systems to Ankara will begin in the first half of July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after returning from the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

"We discussed with Russia the S-400 issue, this is a closed chapter. There haven’t been any problems. I think the supplies will begin in the first half of July," Erdogan said, according to the NTV TV channel.

16 June 2019; MEMO: Turkey rejects ‘fait accompli’ in Jerusalem, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, as reported on Anadolu Agency.

“We reject efforts to create new fait accompli in Jerusalem,” Erdogan told at the 5th Summit of Heads of State of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe.

Erdogan said Turkey has an active stance on Palestine issue.

14 June 2019; MEMO: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has stated that Turkey will retaliate if the US imposes sanctions on it over its purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defence system.

13 June 2019; DW: Ankara has already bought a Russian anti-aircraft missile system, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his AK party members on Wednesday.

The air defense system would be delivered to Turkey in July, the president added.

ANKARA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The language used in Pentagon's letter which threatened to remove Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program was "not in the spirit of the alliance," Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Wednesday.

Last week, U.S. acting Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan informed Akar in a letter that the F-35 fighter jet training program for Turkish pilots would halt over Ankara's purchase of the S-400s, and all Turkish trainees would have to leave his country by July 31.

8 June 2019; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stated that “Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus have rights in the eastern Mediterranean and we cannot allow anyone to confiscate these rights”.

Erdogan voiced his opinion in a press statement yesterday, adding that “the Turkish Cypriots have the same right to the Mediterranean’s natural and underground resources as the Greek Cypriots, in accordance with international law”.