Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey carried out airstrikes targeting Kurdish militants in neighboring Iraq and Syria on Saturday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said, coming a day after an attack on a Turkish military base in Iraq killed nine Turkish soldiers.

Turkey often launches strikes against targets in Syria and Iraq it believes to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a banned Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s.

ISTANBUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Public transport fares in Türkiye's largest city, Istanbul, have been increased as of Tuesday, sparking public outrage.

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Transport Coordination Centre (UKOME) announced an 18 percent increase in public transport fares and a 28 percent increase in taxi fares.

The minimum fare for the shortest trip in a taxi rose to 90 liras, or 3 U.S. dollars, and a full-fare ticket jumped from 15 liras to 17.70 liras.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday named several of his party’s candidates for March’s nationwide election.

The ruling party will try to recover cities lost to the opposition’s Republican People’s Party, or CHP, five years ago — including the country’s largest city, Istanbul, and the capital, Ankara.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish authorities have detained 33 people suspected of spying for Israel, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported on Tuesday.

Authorities were still searching for 13 others believed to have links to Israel’s Mossad security service, the Anadolu Agency reported.

The suspects were detained in raids in Istanbul and seven other provinces for allegedly planning to carry out activities that included “reconnaissance” and “pursuing, assaulting and kidnapping” foreign nationals living in Turkey, the agency reported.

ANKARA, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in a call on Wednesday that Turkey expected the United States to act in line with their NATO alliance and keep its promises on the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara, a Turkish diplomatic source said.

The call came at the request of the U.S. side, a day after a Turkish parliamentary commission voted to approve Sweden's NATO membership bid, the source added. The parliament's general assembly must also approve the bid for it to be ratified.

ANKARA, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was no different from Adolf Hitler and likened Israel's attacks on Gaza to the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis.

NATO member Turkey, which supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has criticised Israel's air and ground assault on Gaza, called it a "terror state" and said its leaders must be tried in international courts.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey has hit more than 70 sites allegedly linked to Kurdish groups in Syria and northern Iraq during airstrikes launched this week in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in Iraq, the defense minister said Wednesday.

At least 59 Kurdish militants were killed in the strikes as well as in land clashes, Yasar Guler said in a video message to top military officials which was posted on X, formerly Twitter.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Sweden edged closer toward joining NATO on Tuesday after the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee greenlighted a protocol for the Nordic country’s membership in the military alliance.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his objection to Sweden’s membership during a NATO summit in July, but it took him several months to send the bill to parliament for ratification and weeks for the parliamentary committee to give its consent.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee gave its consent to Sweden’s bid to join NATO on Tuesday, drawing the previously nonaligned Nordic country closer to membership in the Western military alliance.

Sweden’s accession protocol will now need to be approved in the Turkish parliament’s general assembly for the last stage of the legislative process in Turkey. No date has been set.

ISTANBUL, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Turkish police on Friday arrested 304 people over their suspected links to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in an operation that targeted 32 cities.

In a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Yerlikaya said 86 out of the 304 suspects were detained in Istanbul and 20 in the western city of Izmir in the operation codenamed HEROES-34.