Turkey

TBILISI – Georgia plans to build a high voltage electricity line to Turkey that will increase its exporting capacity tenfold, according to Sulkhan Zumburidze, director of the state power dispatcher Georgian State Electrosystem. Zumburidze told Reuters on Thursday that the project will cost 220 million euros to complete, and will …

Bulgaria’s former tsar and prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg did not rule out joining forces with the ethnic Turks ahead of the general and European Parliament elections in the summer. The NMSP centrist party leader confirmed talks on forming a pre-election coalition with the Turkish DPS are underway just days after …

The Bulgarian head of state, President Georgi Purvanov, will travel to Turkey, on April 7 where he will participate in the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations – a forum designed to promote intercultural understanding – reports the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, the BTA. “Since the United States president Barack Obama announced …

Turkey has some 12-14 million Kurds out of a total population of 70 million, but public use of the Kurdish language is still banned. Islam’s holy book the Koran is to be translated into Kurdish as part of Turkey’s efforts to boost the rights of Kurds and to meet European …

Georgian Minister of Agriculture Bakur Kvezereli said Wednesday the most affordable agricultural land in the region is actually in Georgia. “One hectare (10,000 square metres) of agricultural land sells for 350-1000 USD in Georgia. We expect Turkish entrepreneurs to purchase land in Georgia,” Kvezereli said.

Police investigators found 20 bone fragments on Monday during a dig at a site near the town of town of Cizre. Turkish police detained five people on Tuesday after finding bone fragments detectives think may be the remains of victims of extrajudicial killings in the mainly Kurdish southeast, state-run Anatolian …

Protesters accused the forum of being a platform for water privatisation, and shouted `water for life, not for profit`. Turkish police fired teargas to disperse a group of about 100 protesters gathered at the start of a global water forum in Istanbul on Monday and detained 17, state-run news agency …

Greek and Turkish Cypriots started peace talks in September 2008, the latest bid to end a conflict. Business leaders of Greece, Turkey and the two communities on Cyprus on Thursday urged leaders of the divided island to reach a peace deal this year. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started peace talks …

Twelve Turkish municipalities have severed ties with their Bulgarian sister cities, because the latter have classified the deaths of hundred of thousands of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 as genocide, Bulgarian National Radio said, citing Turkish-language newspaper Hürriyet.

International Press Institute (IPI) director David Dadge met European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and other EC officials on March 9 2009 to call on the EC to make press freedom a priority in EU membership talks with Turkey. In a media statement, the IPI said that the appeal was made …