Turkey

ISTANBUL, Aug 20 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Saturday the United Nations is working with the United States and European Union to overcome obstacles to Russian food and fertilisers reaching world markets.

Guterres said that under a U.N.-brokered deal agreed in Turkey last month to resume Ukraine's grain exports cut off since Russia's invasion in February, more than 650,000 metric tonnes of grain and other food was already being exported.

ISTANBUL (AP) — A passenger bus collided Saturday with emergency teams handling an earlier road accident in southern Turkey, leaving at least 15 people dead and nearly two dozen injured, officials said.

Three firefighters, two paramedics and two journalists were among those killed on the highway between Gaziantep and Nizip, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted. The other eight fatalities were on the bus, he added.

Gaziantep Gov. Davut Gul said 22 other people were injured in the incident.

19 August 2022; MEMO: Turkiye's Central Bank shocked markets, Thursday, with a cut to its benchmark policy rate, despite inflation in the country sitting near 80 per cent, Financial Times reports.

According to the report, the Turkish Central Bank's statement, Thursday, said that the committee expects the "disinflation process to start" and that there are signals of a "loss of momentum in economic activity."

ANKARA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Türkiye and Russia have been in constant dialogue over the presence of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in Syria.

On his flight back home from Ukraine, Erdogan told reporters that a possible Turkish military operation against YPG was an important topic of his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia's Black Sea resort city of Sochi on Aug. 5, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

ANKARA, August 18. /TASS/: Turkey will go ahead with diplomatic efforts in a bid to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday following trilateral talks in Lvov with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"Turkey will go ahead with diplomatic efforts for a peaceful ending of the war in Ukraine. I believe that sooner or later it will come to an end at the negotiating table. Both Zelensky and Guterres are unanimous in this respect," Erdogan said.

17 August 2022; MEMO: Israel and Turkiye announced the full normalisation of their relations on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

According to the report, the normalisation agreement was released by Israel's Prime Minister, Yair Lapid's office.

The agreement highlights the new appointments of the ambassadors and consuls to Tel Aviv and Ankara,  the report says.

15 August 2022; MEMO: The Turkish government will be hosting a panel of experts from 12 countries which will discuss the urgent need to reform the United Nations' Security Council (UNSC), based on Turkiye's long-held view that the current system is flawed and unequal.

14 August 2022; MEMO: A Turkish military delegation will visit the US on Monday for talks on the sale of F-16 jets to Turkiye, Anadolu Agency reports.

Turkish National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar previously announced that a team will hold the third round of bilateral technical talks following up on US President Joe Biden's pledge to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Turkiye.

12 August 2022; MEMO: A disoriented brown bear cub, believed to have been intoxicated after eating an excessive amount of "mad honey", was rescued in northwestern Turkey's Duzce province yesterday, Reuters reported.

Footage showed the bear wobbling and whining as she sat belly-up in the back of a pick-up truck, after people rescued the visibly-debilitated animal from the forest.

Mad honey, or "deli bal" in Turkish, is a type of rhododendron honey that can have hallucinogenic effects.

ISTANBUL, Aug 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Two more ships left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports on Friday, including one laden with the first Ukrainian wheat to be exported under a UN-brokered deal, Turkiye’s defense ministry said.

A total 14 ships have now departed from Ukraine over the past two weeks, following the deal with Russia to allow a resumption of grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, after they were stalled for five months due to the war.