Turkey

AMASRA, Turkey (AP) — “My one and only, where are you,” a mother cried at a cemetery beside a freshly-laid mound of earth. She couldn’t process the death of her 33-year-old son who was killed in a coal mine explosion in northern Turkey.

15 October 2022; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has instructed the Turkish government to begin work on a gas centre in his country, proposed by Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to export Russian gas to Europe, according to Turkish media reports on Friday.

15 October 2022; MEMO: Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani shared on Friday that his country has "similar views" to Turkiye regarding different regional issues, Anadolu Agency reported.

This came during a joint press conference held with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Istanbul following a ministerial meeting to prepare for the 8th meeting of the High Strategic Committee between the two countries.

ISTANBUL, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Türkiye and Qatar signed 11 new agreements during the eighth meeting of their Supreme Strategic Committee in Istanbul on Friday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and visiting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani co-chaired the meeting, where high-level officials held talks on various issues.

The agreements cover areas of shared use of communications infrastructure, food security, intellectual property, disaster and emergency management, as well as cultural exchanges, according to the report.

AMASRA, Turkey (AP) — Funerals for miners killed in a coal mine explosion in northern Turkey began Saturday as officials raised the death toll to at least 41 people.

Desperate relatives had waited all night in the cold outside the state-owned Turkish Hard Coal Enterprise’s (TTK) mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin, hoping for news. There were 110 miners working several hundred meters below ground at the time of the explosion on Friday evening.

13 October 2022; MEMO: The Turkish Foreign Ministry yesterday declared its rejection of the European Union's "false allegations" about its political system and its measures related to fighting terrorism, Anadolu reported.

Commenting on the EU Commission's report on Turkiye for the year 2022, the ministry said: "We completely reject the false allegations of the European Union about our political system, our officials, our judicial decisions and our counter-terrorism steps."

13 October 2022; MEMO: Russian President, Vladimir Putin, proposed to his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, to export more gas via Turkiye and turn it into a new supply "hub", Reuters reports.

According to the report, Putin said Turkiye offered the most reliable and fastest route to deliver gas to the European Union.

12 October 2022; MEMO: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said yesterday that only "reconciliation" between the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad and the opposition can bring stability in the country.

"It is not possible to achieve stability in Syria without achieving reconciliation between the opposition and the Syrian government," Cavusoglu said in an interview on Turkish TV.

He added that Ankara "must conduct dialogue with the Assad regime in order to achieve that reconciliation".

ANKARA, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish coast guards on Tuesday rescued 53 irregular migrants off the coast of the western Aydin Province, the state-run TRT broadcaster reported.

The Turkish coast guard teams rescued the irregular migrants in life rafts off the coast of Kusadasi district, the TRT reported.

In a separate incident, the Turkish coast guards on Tuesday detected 48 irregular migrants by radar while they were trying to cross the border illegally, the TRT reported.

10 October 2022; MEMO: Israel said, yesterday, that it has agreed to compensate the family of an elderly Palestinian-American man, who died during his arrest and assault by the Israeli army in the village of Jiljilya on the outskirts of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.