Tag Archives: Turkey

Islamic State destroys famous monument in Syria’s Palmyra: antiquities chief

file photo of Roman theatre destroyed by Islamic State

By Kinda Makieh and Tom Perry

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have destroyed one of the most famous monuments in the ancient city of Palmyra, the Tetrapylon, and the facade of its Roman Theatre, Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters on Friday.

The Syrian government lost control of Palmyra to Islamic State in December, the second time the jihadist group had overrun the UNESCO world heritage site in the six-year-long Syrian conflict.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement that the destruction constituted “a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity”.

The Tetrapylon, marking a slight bend along Palmyra’s grand colonnade, comprises a square stone platform with matching structures of four columns positioned at each of its corners.

Satellite imagery sent by Abdulkarim to Reuters showed it largely destroyed, with only four of 16 columns still standing and the stone platform apparently covered in rubble.

The imagery also showed extensive damage at the Roman Theatre, with several towering stone structures destroyed on the stage. Just last May, a famous Russian orchestra performed at the theater after Palmyra was first won back from Islamic State.

Abdulkarim said if Islamic State remained in control of Palmyra “it means more destruction”. He said the destruction took place sometime between Dec. 26 and Jan. 10, according to the satellite imagery of the site.

Islamic State had previously captured Palmyra in 2015. It held the city for 10 months until Syrian government forces backed by allied militia and Russian air power managed to drive them out last March.

During its previous spell in control of Palmyra, Islamic State destroyed other monuments there, including its 1,800-year-old monumental arch. Palmyra, known in Arabic as Tadmur, stood at the crossroads of the ancient world.

Islamic State put 12 people to death in Palmyra earlier this week, some of them execution-style in the Roman Theatre.

Russia marked the capture of Palmyra from Islamic State by sending the Mariinsky Theatre to perform a surprise concert, highlighting the Kremlin’s role in winning back the city.

The concert, held just over a month after Russian air strikes helped push Islamic State militants out of Palmyra, saw Valery Gergiev, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, conduct the Mariinsky orchestra.

Islamic State swept into Palmyra again in December when the Syrian army and its allies were focused on dealing a final blow to rebels in the city of Aleppo. Eastern Aleppo fell to the government later that month.

(Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Tom Perry in Beirut; Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Larry King)

Turkish parliament nears approval of presidential system sought by Erdogan

supporters of turkish president erdogan

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey moved closer to adopting a new constitutional bill extending President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers that supporters welcome as a guarantor of stability at a time of turmoil and opponents see as a step toward an authoritarian state.

Parliament ratified the first seven of 18 articles in a second round of voting, putting the assembly on track to approve the package as a whole by Friday night.

Under the new system, Erdogan could rule in the NATO-member and European Union candidate country until 2029.

As debate on the reforms went late into the evening, an independent lawmaker, Aylin Nazliaka, handcuffed herself to the podium in protest against the stronger presidency.

A lawmaker from the ruling AK Party attempted to end the protest by force and deputies from other parties then weighed in, one losing her prosthetic arm in the fracas, witnesses said.

The AK Party, backed by the nationalist MHP, says it will bring the strong leadership needed to prevent a return to the fragile coalition governments of the past. It would also, they say, help Turkey tackle attacks by Kurdish insurgents and Islamic State militants spilling over from war in Syria.

The reform would enable the president to issue decrees, declare emergency rule, appoint ministers and top state officials and dissolve parliament – powers that the two main opposition parties say strip away balances to Erdogan’s power.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was cited as telling Turkey’s Fox TV: “In the presidential period, when ministers will be appointed from outside, people from and close to the MHP could be appointed as ministers.”

MASS ARRESTS

Erdogan assumed the presidency, a largely ceremonial position, in 2014 after over a decade as prime minister. Since then, pushing his powers to the limit, he has continued to dominate politics by dint of his personal popularity.

Critics accuse him of increasing authoritarianism with the arrests and dismissal of tens of thousands of judges, police, military officers, journalists and academics since a failed military coup in July. Erdogan points to a danger from Islamic State militants and Kurdish insurgents.

The seven articles approved lower the minimum age to be a lawmaker to 18 from 25, raise the number of MPs to 600 from 550 and will result in parliamentary and presidential elections being held together every five years.

The seventh article opens the way for the president to be a member of a political party.

The main opposition CHP and the pro-Kurdish HDP, the second largest opposition party, strongly oppose the changes.

The bill needs the support of at least 330 deputies in the assembly to go to a referendum. The AKP has 316 deputies eligible to vote and the MHP 39. So far, articles have generally been approved with at least 340 votes in favor.

A study by Istanbul’s Kadir Has University showed the presidency was rated as Turkey’s most trusted institution, outstripping the army, which normally tops such surveys but whose popularity has fallen after a failed coup in July.

(Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Ercan Gurses; Writing by Daren Butler and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Janet Lawrence)

Russia says joins forces with Turkey to bomb Syria militants

Russia and Turkey teaming up

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday Russian war planes had joined forces with Turkish jets to target Islamic State militants holding the town of al-Bab around 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Aleppo.

Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian Defence Ministry official, said in televised comments it was the first time the air forces of Russia and Turkey had teamed up in this way.

The operation had been conducted in agreement with the Syrian government, he said.

Rudskoi said the Russian air force was also providing air support to Syrian government troops who he said were trying to fight off an Islamic State assault around the town of Deir al-Zor.

Russian jets were also backing a Syrian army offensive near the town of Palmyra, he said, where he warned Islamic State militants might be planning to blow up more of the ancient city’s historical monuments.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Vladimir Soldatkin)

In northern Aleppo, children return to school used as Islamic State prison

schoolchildren sit on mats as they return to school in Aleppo after Islamic State driven out

By Khalil Ashawi

AL-RAI, Syria (Reuters) – Sifting through ripped up textbooks and writing on broken whiteboards, Syrian children returned this week to a dilapidated small-town school that was used by Islamic State militants as a prison for more than two years.

With no chairs or desks, around 250 children huddled in classrooms on mats to stay off the cold concrete at the Aisha Mother of the Believers school in al-Rai, in the northern Aleppo hinterland near the Turkish border.

The students, aged 5-15, were given notebooks and pens on their first day back on Monday by seven volunteers who teach reading, writing and maths and helped get the school habitable again over the past six weeks.

“(I feel) joy, because I was able to bring back to school this number of students in a short period,” said volunteer Khalil al-Fayad. “(But also) heartbreak because of the bad condition (of the school).”

The school previously taught 500 students before being seized 2 1/2 years ago by Islamic State insurgents, who slapped logos on school bags bearing the slogan “Cubs of the Caliphate”, residents said.

The principal and teachers fled the area when Islamic State took over and parents stopped sending their children to the school, which closed after two months and was used to house prisoners of the ultra-hardline jihadists.

Volunteers set about trying to return the school to its previous standards last month in al-Rai after Syrian Free Army rebels backed by the Turkish military ousted Islamic State from the area.

With shattered windows, bullet strewn walls, debris and broken equipment still present, there is plenty left to do for the team of volunteers, who say they are seeking funding from local and Turkish authorities.

“(I) fear not being able to continue what we are doing if the situation remains the same and the lack of support continues,” Al-Fayad said.

(Writing by Patrick Johnston; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Turkey says captures nightclub attacker who acted for Islamic State

A man places flowers at the entrance of Reina nightclub, which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey January 3, 2017.

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish authorities have captured the gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day, an Uzbek national they said was trained in Afghanistan and had clearly acted on behalf of Islamic State.

The suspect, named by Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin as Abdulgadir Masharipov, was caught in a police raid late on Monday in a hideout in an outlying Istanbul suburb after a two-week manhunt.

Masharipov, who was captured with four others, had admitted his guilt and his fingerprints matched those at the scene, Sahin told a news conference.

“He knew four languages and was well-educated,” Sahin said, adding he was born in 1983 in Uzbekistan and received training in Afghanistan.

There were strong indications he entered Turkey illegally through its eastern borders in January 2016 and it was clear the attack was carried out on behalf of Islamic State, Sahin said.

The jihadist group claimed responsibility a day after the mass shooting, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Masharipov was captured with an Iraqi man and three women from Africa, one of them from Egypt, in the Esenyurt district on Istanbul’s western outskirts, about 30 km (19 miles) from the Reina nightclub.

Two pistols, mobile phone SIM cards, two drones and $197,000 in cash were also seized, Sahin said.

Dogan news agency published a photo of the alleged attacker with a black eye, a cut above his eyebrow and bloodstains on his face and t-shirt. It broadcast footage showing plain-clothes police leading a man in a white sweater to a waiting car.

He was being questioned at Istanbul police headquarters, while other people were detained in raids across the city targeting Uzbek Islamic State cells, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

“WE SAID OUR GOODBYES”

The gunman appeared to have repeatedly changed addresses before and after the attack. Remaining in Istanbul, he evaded a 16-day nationwide manhunt that included operations in cities from Izmir on the Aegean coast, to Konya in central Anatolia, and Hatay near the southern border with Syria.

“Five addresses were tracked and operations were carried out against them. He was found at one of the five,” Sahin said.

Masharipov and those seized with him late on Monday had moved to the Esenyurt address around three days ago, he said.

Neighbours in the modern, five-storey apartment building where he was found said they had never met him, although they had seen the African women who lived with him. A woman living directly below told Reuters the apartment had previously been lived in by seven or eight Syrians, who left late last summer.

Masharipov first rented an apartment in Basaksehir, another outlying Istanbul district, before switching addresses a day or two before the attack, the Istanbul governor said.

The Hurriyet newspaper said he was married with two children, was a dual Uzbek-Tajik national and spoke Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Turkish, as well as Uzbek. He received two years training in Afghanistan and Pakistan and was believed to have entered Turkey via Iran, it said.

His wife was detained last week in a raid in Maltepe, a coastal district on the Asian side of Istanbul, and their one-and-a-half year-old daughter was taken into care, Hurriyet said.

“We said our goodbyes and he left the house (on the night of the attack),” it quoted her as saying in a statement to police.

Foreign currency banknotes and various documents are seen in the bedroom of a hideout where the alleged attacker of Reina nightclub was caught by Turkish police last night, in Esenyurt neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey,

Foreign currency banknotes and various documents are seen in the bedroom of a hideout where the alleged attacker of Reina nightclub was caught by Turkish police last night, in Esenyurt neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey, January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Osman Orsal 

About 50 people have been detained in raids on 152 addresses since the shooting. Investigators analysed 7,200 hours of camera footage in the search and police received more than 2,000 tip-offs, Sahin said.

“WAR WITH TERROR” WILL CONTINUE

“I congratulate our police who caught the perpetrator of the Ortakoy massacre,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said on social network Twitter.

“Our war with terror and the powers behind it will continue to the end,” he said.

On Jan. 1, the attacker shot his way into the nightclub and opened fire with an automatic rifle. He reloaded his weapon several times and shot the wounded as they lay on the ground.

Turks as well as visitors from several Arab nations, India and Canada were among those killed in the attack.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and launched an incursion into neighbouring Syria in August to drive the radical Sunni militants, and Kurdish militia fighters, away from its borders.

The jihadist group has been blamed for at least half a dozen attacks on civilian targets in Turkey over the past 18 months. But, other than assassinations, the new year attack was the first it has directly claimed.

The shooting in Istanbul’s Ortakoy neighbourhood, an upscale district on the Bosphorus shore, followed a year in which Turkey was shaken by a series of attacks by radical Islamist and Kurdish militants and by a failed coup.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the attack, which targeted a club popular with local celebrities and moneyed foreigners, was designed to divide the largely Sunni Muslim nation.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in Istanbul; Editing by Nick Tattersall, Timothy Heritage, Anna Willard)

Turkish cargo jet crash kills 37 in Kyrgyzstan

Plane debris of Turkish cargo jet crash

BISHKEK (Reuters) – A Turkish cargo jet crashed near Kyrgyzstan’s Manas airport on Monday, killing at least 37 people, most of them residents of a village struck by the Boeing 747 as it tried to land in dense fog, Kyrgyz officials said.

According to the airport administration, the plane was supposed to make a stopover at Manas, near the capital city Bishkek, on its way from Hong Kong to Istanbul. It crashed when trying to land in poor visibility at 7:31 a.m. (8:31 p.m. ET on Sunday).

The doomed plane plowed on for a few hundred meters (yards) through the Dachi Suu village, home to hundreds of families, shattering into pieces and damaging dozens of buildings.

Plumes of smoke rose above the crash site, with some mudbrick buildings razed to the ground and others pierced by parts of the plane.

The torn-off tail assembly, rotated upside down, towered above a one-storey house. A football pitch-sized area nearby was completely leveled and covered with twisted pieces of metal.

Locals said they had initially thought the area was struck by an earthquake.

“Around seven o’clock in the morning I heard a strong swat (noise) and after that all the nearest houses were shaken,” said local resident Andrei Andreyev.

“Of course, everyone got frightened and started to run out of the houses to the street. Nobody understood what was going on because there was a fog, the weather was not good.”

Initial estimates put the death toll from the crash at 37, said Kyrgyzstan’s emergencies ministry. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev announced Tuesday would be a national day of mourning.

Turkish Airlines <THYAO.IS> said in a statement that the cargo flight was operated by ACT Airlines and neither the Boeing 747-400 aircraft nor the crew belonged to Turkish Airlines.

Turkish cargo operator ACT Airlines also said the jet was theirs.

“Our TC-MCL signed plane, flying on Jan. 16 from Hong Kong to Bishkek, crashed on landing at Bishkek at the end of the runway for an unknown reason,” ACT Airlines said in an emailed statement.

“More information will be disclosed concerning our four-person team when we get clear information.”

(Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Additional reporting by Marlis Myrzakul Uulu in Bishkek, Daren Butler in Istanbul and Venus Wu in Hong Kong; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Toby Chopra)

Turkish court arrests two Uighurs in relation to Istanbul nightclub attack

Turkey police holding pictures of suspects

ANKARA (Reuters) – Two Chinese nationals of Uighur origin were arrested on Friday for suspected links to the mass shooting in an Istanbul night club on New Year’s Eve, state-run Anadolu agency said.

Two suspects, Omar Asim and Abuliezi Abuduhamiti, who are Chinese citizens, were remanded in custody on charges of being members of an armed terrorist organization, and aiding in 39 counts of murder.

Turkish authorities last week said the man who killed 39 people in an attack on an Istanbul nightclub was probably an ethnic Uighur.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Anadolu news agency also said 35 people had been detained so far in relation to the attack. Uighurs were among those detained, local media reports said.

The Uighurs are a largely Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority in far western China with significant diaspora communities across Central Asia and Turkey.

The suspect, who authorities have not named, shot his way into exclusive Istanbul nightclub Reina and opened fire with an automatic rifle, throwing stun grenades to allow himself to reload and shooting the wounded on the ground.

Among those killed in the attack were Turks and visitors from several Arab nations, India and Canada.

(Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syrian Kurdish groups say not invited to peace talks

Kurdish fighter in Syria

PARIS (Reuters) – The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its political arm the PYD will not be invited to planned peace talks in Kazakhstan, a PYD official said on Tuesday, an outcome that would leave a key player in the conflict off the negotiating table.

Syria’s government and rebel forces started a ceasefire on Dec. 31 as a first step toward face-to face negotiations backed by Turkey and Russia, but the date and its participants remain unclear.

The truce is also under growing strain as rebels have vowed to respond to government violations and President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday the army would retake an important rebel-held area near Damascus.

“We are not invited. That’s for sure,” Khaled Eissa, a PYD member told Reuters in France. “It seems there were some vetoes. Neither the PYD or our military formation will be present,” he said.

Assad’s ally Russia had previously sought the PYD’s presence at other negotiations in Switzerland.

But Turkey, which opposes Assad, regards both the YPG and PYD as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists in its own territory and has said two groups should not be represented in Astana.

The Syrian Kurds aim to cement the autonomy of areas of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have already carved out self-governing regions since the start of the war in 2011, though Kurdish leaders say an independent state is not the goal.

“What we have been told is that there will only be a limited number of armed groups and not political groups,” Eissa said, adding that for a comprehensive peace deal in Syria the Kurds would at one point have to be invited to the negotiating table.

The main Syrian political opposition umbrella group that includes about half a dozen armed groups, the Riyadh-backed High Negotiations Committee, is meeting in the Saudi capital later this week to discuss the Astana talks, although it is also unclear whether Moscow intends to invite them, diplomats and opposition officials said.

Ankara intervened in Syria last year in support of rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner sought to drive Islamic State from positions it had used to shell Turkish towns, and also to stop YPG expansion.

The YPG and its allies backed by a U.S.-led coalition is fighting against IS militants around the group’s Syrian bastion Raqqa, while Turkish-backed rebels are fighting the jihadist group further northwest near areas under Kurdish control.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Turkey detains 18 people over Izmir attack, sees PKK responsible: minister

Turkish police secure area after explosion

By Mehmet Emin Caliskan

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish police detained 18 people over a gun and bomb attack that killed two people in the city of Izmir and the justice minister said on Friday there was no doubt Kurdish militants were responsible.

Militants clashed with police and detonated a car bomb outside the main courthouse in Turkey’s third largest city, located on its western Aegean coast, on Thursday after their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint. A police officer and a court employee were killed. Nine other people were wounded.

The incident again highlighted the deterioration in Turkey’s public security, coming soon after a gunman killed 39 New Year’s revelers inside a popular Istanbul nightclub. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for that attack.

Authorities said it was clear from weapons seized by police that militants had planned a much bigger attack in Izmir but it was thwarted when security forces spotted their vehicle as it approached the courthouse.

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of the slain police officer, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the two assailants, shot dead by police, had been identified and efforts were under way to find their accomplices. Police had detained 18 people.

“All the information we have obtained show it was the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist organization who gave instructions for the attack and that the terrorists were from the PKK,” he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

On Friday, security police took up guard near the courthouse as hundreds of people filed in for the funeral. Thursday’s explosion shattered windows in a nearby cafeteria and scattered rubble across the steps to the courthouse entrance.

Hundreds in Izmir’s main Alsancak square protested over the attack, holding up banners that read, “We are not afraid.”

The PKK – designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union – and its affiliates have been carrying out increasingly deadly attacks over the past year and a half, ever further from the largely Kurdish southeast, where they have waged an insurgency since 1984.

Izmir, a liberal city on Turkey’s Aegean seacoast, had largely escaped the PKK and Islamist militant violence that has scarred Istanbul and the capital Ankara in recent months.

Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Executives from top Turkish conglomerate held in post-coup probe

Dogan Holding logo

By Ceyda Caglayan

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Police detained the top legal advisor and a former chief executive of Dogan Holding, one of Turkey’s biggest conglomerates, on Thursday in an investigation into the network of the U.S.-based cleric blamed for a failed coup.

Authorities have detained, dismissed or suspended some 120,000 people including soldiers, police officers, teachers, judges and journalists since the July coup attempt, although thousands have since been restored to their posts.

Companies with ties to the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom President Tayyip Erdogan and the government accuse of orchestrating the coup attempt, have also been targeted in the crackdown. Hundreds of companies, for the most part smaller provincial firms, have been seized.

Dogan – which has interests in media, finance, energy and tourism and owns newspaper Hurriyet and broadcaster CNN Turk – said the raids were on the personal offices and homes of the two individuals and that its operations were unaffected.

Last month, another Dogan Holding executive, Barbaros Muratoglu, was remanded in custody on an accusation of “aiding a terror group” as part of an investigation into Gulen. Ankara refers to the cleric’s network of followers as the “Gulenist Terror Organisation”.

In its statement to the Istanbul stock exchange, Dogan said Thursday’s detentions were part of the same investigation.

“The search has been carried out solely in the personal offices of the mentioned executives and there is no situation that has an impact on the operations of our company or its subsidiaries,” the statement said.

TRUMP TOWERS

Dogan’s founder, Aydin Dogan, developed a glass commercial and residential complex called Trump Towers Istanbul which soars over a commercial district in the city. Dogan pays U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for the brand name.

Turkey wants Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, extradited and has been infuriated by what it sees as Washington’s reluctance to hand him over.

It is hoping that a Trump administration will be more willing to do so. U.S. officials have said the issue is a judicial matter, not a political one.

Dogan shares initially fell as much as 9.9 percent after the market opened, and were down almost 5 percent by 1145 GMT in high-volume trading. Hurriyet shares fell as much as 7.6 percent.

Aydin Dogan is a prominent figure in Turkey’s secular establishment and has had strained ties with Erdogan and the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party in the past. His group has faced multibillion-dollar tax fines.

More than 240 people were killed in the failed coup in July and the government says the extent of the subsequent crackdown, including on business suspected of links to Gulen, is justified by the gravity of the threat to the state.

More than 41,000 people have been jailed pending trial.

Dogan Holding itself has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing and has disavowed links to Gulen.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)