Turkey

TASELI PLATEAU, Turkey (AP) — Rescue crews were waiting for doctors to give the go-ahead Friday for an operation to move out an American researcher who fell ill almost 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below the entrance of a cave in Turkey, officials said. The effort could last up to 10 days.

07 September 2023; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged on Tuesday to punish those who attack refugees, foreigners and scarfed women in Turkiye. In a message on social media platform X, Erdogan said that there had been increasing levels of “harassment” of people in shops, buses and other public spaces.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Vladimir Putin on Monday, hoping to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin a deal allowing Ukraine to safely export grain. Moscow withdrew from the agreement in July. But Putin made it clear that the initiative would not be restored right now.

Here’s what’s at stake:

WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME OF THE TALKS?

Putin poured cold water over hopes for a revival of the grain initiative, saying the West must first meet its demands on facilitating Russian agricultural exports.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Vladimir Putin on Monday, hoping to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow broke off from in July.

Here are some key things to know and what’s at stake:

WHERE WILL THE TALKS BE HELD?

The meeting in Sochi on Russia’s southern coast comes after weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet.

Erdogan previously said that Putin would travel to Turkey in August.

ANKARA, Sept 2 (NNN-TRT) – The Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), killed a senior member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in a cross-border operation in northern Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah region.

The “neutralised” PKK member, Rezan Gungen, codenamed “Rezan Botan,” was allegedly trained in Sulaymaniyah, for assassination attempts against Türkiye’s security forces.

Turkish authorities often use the term “neutralised” in their statements to imply the “terrorists” in question surrendered or were killed or captured.

ANKARA, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Türkiye launched an air operation targeting "terrorists" in the Qandil and Asos regions of northern Iraq early on Friday, the country's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The operation was carried out in the early morning to "neutralize" the terrorist elements of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and other Kurdish armed groups, said the statement.

Turkish authorities often use the term "neutralized" in their statements to imply the "terrorists" in question surrendered or were killed or captured.

31 August 2023; MEMO: Electricity generation from Turkiye’s first nuclear power plant could be sooner than initially planned, Akkuyu Nuclear Deputy Construction Director, Dmitry Romanets, told Anadolu at the country’s largest technology and aerospace event, TEKNOFEST, on Thursday.

01 September 2023; MEMO: The first aircraft of Turkiye’s indigenous fighter program, the TF-X, sits in a hangar ahead of its maiden flight at the end of the year. But fiscal problems could stand in the way of its success, according to an analyst, even as the country’s President seeks partners for the program, Defence News reports.

29 August 2023; MEMO: Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus condemned the attack on a mosque in the Greek Cypriot administration’s city of Limassol.

In a post he published on his social media accounts on Sunday, Kurtulmus conveyed his strong condemnation of the attack on the historic Koprulu Haci Ibrahim Aga mosque.

29 August 2023; MEMO: Riyadh and Ankara seek to increase their trade exchange to $30 billion in the medium and long terms, according to the head of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkiye (TOBB), Rifat Hisarciklioglu.

In a speech he delivered yesterday during a Turkish-Saudi roundtable meeting in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Hisarciklioglu said a significant growth in trade exchange between Turkiye and Saudi Arabia is expected by the end of this year.