President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Türkiye ey will carry out a military air and ground operation east of the Euphrates in Syria, where Ankara and Washington have yet to establish a planned 'safe zone'. "We've made our preparations, we've made our operation plans, given the necessary instructions," Erdogan said, adding that Türkiye would carry out air and ground actions and these could start "as soon as today or tomorrow". The United States has agreed to jointly establish a safe zone on the Syrian border, but Ankara has said it is not satisfied with progress...
Türkiye in International Media
Türkiye’s state-run news agency says top Turkish and Greek ministers have met to discuss migration policies amid a spike in migrant arrivals in Greece over the summer. Anadolu Agency said Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu met with Giorgos Koumoutsakos, Greece’s migration minister, on Thursday in Ankara. Soylu is scheduled to hold a separate meeting with his French and German counterparts to discuss a 2016 European Union-Türkiye migration agreement and ways of assisting Greece cope with the increased arrivals. The meetings follow threats by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Türkiye could “open the gates” and...
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his readiness to act alone in northeast Syria and retake areas from American-backed Kurdish forces, saying that efforts to defuse the threat they pose to Türkiye have failed. “We may suddenly arrive one night,” Erdogan told reporters after a speech to parliament in Ankara on Tuesday, referring to a possible cross-border offensive in northeast Syria. “We have tried every means, with great patience, to solve this problem together with our allies.” Erdogan spoke a day after Türkiye vowed to take further steps to protect its national security and create a buffer...
By Laura Pitel Türkiye has set an ambitious growth target of 5 per cent for next year, although some analysts have questioned what they said were contradictory projections in the government’s new economic plan. Berat Albayrak, the country’s Treasury and finance minister, promised a return to the fast-paced economic growth of previous years from 2020 onwards, after a slump that followed last summer’s plunge in the value of the Turkish lira. Mr Albayrak lowered his growth forecast for 2019 to 0.5 per cent, which most analysts said was far more realistic than the previous target of 2.3 per cent. However,...
Days ahead of the anniversary of the grisly slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that his country will press ahead with efforts to shed light on the killing. In a Washington Post op-ed, Erdogan described the journalist's killing by a Saudi hit squad as "arguably the most influential and controversial incident of the 21st century" and blamed the murder on a "shadow state within the kingdom's government — not the Saudi state or people." The Turkish leader wrote: "We will keep asking the same questions... Where are Khashoggi's remains? Who signed the Saudi journalist's...
Türkiye is not satisfied with talks with the United States on establishing a "safe zone" in northern Syria and will act alone if there is no progress, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday. Ankara has repeatedly threatened to act against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which it deems a terrorist group, unless its NATO ally removes the fighters from a 480-km (300-mile) long area on the Syrian side of its border. "We are not pleased with the current state of efforts and we have conveyed this to the Americans very clearly," Cavusoglu told reporters after the U...
Türkiye's draft plan for a construction project to settle 1 million Syrian refugees in a "safe zone" in northeast Syria would cost around 151 billion lira ($27 billion), state broadcaster TRT Haber said on Friday. President Tayyip Erdogan set out plans for the project in a speech at the United States General Assembly this week, holding up a map to show the zone which Türkiye wants to set up with the United States, and where it says the refugees would be housed. Türkiye has pushed for the 20-mile (32 km) deep "safe zone" to be established along more than 400...
President Tayyip Erdogan met President Donald Trump at a reception in New York on Wednesday, the last day of a trip to attend the U.N. General Assembly that Erdogan had said would include meeting Trump to discuss buying U.S. Patriot missiles. Türkiye's presidency said on Twitter that Erdogan had attended the reception and provided a picture showing the Turkish leader and his wife Emine with Trump and first lady Melania. It gave no other details and did not say whether the two leaders only met or also had talks. Turkish markets have been watching Erdogan's trip closely...
President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said nuclear power should either be free for all states or banned completely, and warned that the "inequality" between states who have nuclear power and who do not undermines global balances. Türkiye signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1980, and has also signed the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear detonations for any purpose. Erdogan has hinted in the past that he wanted he same protection for Türkiye as Israel, which foreign analysts say possesses a sizable nuclear arsenal. Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity around the nuclear issue, refusing to...