Turkey

Daniel Burke was accused of terrorism offences after volunteering to help the Kurdish YPG fight against Isil in Syria.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan declared Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia a mosque on Friday hours after a top court ruled the ancient building’s conversion to a museum by modern Turkey’s founding statesman was illegal.

Forty-two people, including former mayors of the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), were detained for their suspected links to the PKK, a designated terrorist group that has waged a decadeslong insurgency against Turkey.

The first time Wael Amr got on a plane was not quite what he had hoped for. Air travel in films led him to imagine how glamorous it would be to leave Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province for an exotic holiday abroad.

The People’s Democratic Party has launched what it calls a march for ‘justice and democracy’ in response to President Erdogan’s growing crackdown on his critics.

Plans to convert the famous 6th-century building in Istanbul back into a mosque, after being a museum since 1935, have further tested relations with Greece – already damaged by over other regional and international disputes.

Terrorism will soon no longer be a problem in Turkey, as the country has successfully destroyed a large number of them, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said, noting that the number of terrorists has been rapidly falling.

Jets from Turkey carried out cross-border airstrikes on Monday targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Turkish Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, announced Turkish authorities.

Context: Turkey’s conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU – continues in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. In northern Syria, Ankara and the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Forces (YPG), remain pitted against each other. On …

Twelve foreign terrorist fighters have been deported to Finland with an evacuation flight as part of Turkey’s efforts to repatriate former Daesh-linked persons to their country of origin, the Interior Ministry announced Sunday.