Turkiye detains three journalists over Istanbul prosecutor story

Turkiye detains three journalists over Istanbul prosecutor story
Demonstrators hold posters reading " Birgun will not be silent" and "Journalism is not a crime" during a protest in front of the Istanbul Justice Palace in Istanbul, Feb. 9, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 09 February 2025
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Turkiye detains three journalists over Istanbul prosecutor story

Turkiye detains three journalists over Istanbul prosecutor story
  • The trio were released after appearing in court in Istanbul on Sunday
  • Articles or comments about Istanbul’s top prosecutor have triggered several legal probes in recent months

ISTANBUL: Three journalists from the left-leaning BirGun newspaper were detained for several hours under anti-terror legislation over a story linked to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, the paper said Sunday.
The move was denounced by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Turkiye’s main opposition CHP party.
Journalists Ugur Koc and Berkant Gultekin, who work for the online BirGun.net, and its managing editor Yasar Gokdemir were taken from their homes late Saturday for “targeting individuals engaged in counterterrorism efforts,” BirGun editor-in-chief Ibrahim Varli wrote on X.
He said it was over a story about a journalist from the pro-government Sabah newspaper visiting Istanbul’s chief prosecutor Akin Gurlek, which “had already been announced by (Sabah) itself.” Varli accused authorities of “trying to intimidate the press and society with investigations and detentions.”
The trio were released after appearing in court in Istanbul on Sunday. They were not formally arrested.
About 100 protesters gathered outside the court, holding up copies of the paper and signs saying: “BirGun will not be silent” and “Journalism is not a crime,” an AFP correspondent said. Three hundred people demonstrated in Ankara.
Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called the detentions “unacceptable.”
“This action, over a news story critical of ‘prosecutor impartiality’, is unjustified,” he wrote on X.
Articles or comments about Istanbul’s top prosecutor have triggered several legal probes in recent months, including the latest investigation into Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as well as another probe last year into CHP opposition leader Ozgur Ozel.
Writing on X, Ozel denounced the arrests as “an unprecedented disgrace.”
“The detention of journalists Ugur Koc, Berkant Gultekin and Yasar Gokdemir for publishing a news item that was already published by Sabah newspaper is an unprecedented disgrace. Trying to fabricate a crime out of this is a sign of guilt,” he wrote.
Ozel was placed under investigation in November for “insulting a public official” and “targeting individuals involved in counter-terror efforts” over remarks about Gurlek, whom he has called a “mobile guillotine” — a phrase he used again on X on Sunday.
On January 6, the MLSA media rights group said there were at least 30 journalists and media workers in prison and four under house arrest in Turkiye. It said in 2024, it monitored 281 freedom of expression trials involving 1,856 defendants, 366 of whom were journalists.
The number of detained journalists has since increased. Three journalists for the opposition Halk TV were detained in late January for broadcasting an interview with an expert witness involved in probes involving opposition CHP mayors, including Imamoglu.
Two were granted conditional release but editor-in-chief Suat Toktas remains behind bars, in a move denounced by the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) as “a political move by Turkish authorities to silence critical voices.”
In another investigation ordered by Gurlek, Melisa Sozen, an actor who played a Kurdish militant in a 2017 series of the hit French spy thriller “The Bureau,” was quizzed by police this week on grounds of alleged “terrorist propaganda,” DHA news agency and Halk TV said.
The probe was related to the fatigues she wore for the part, which were allegedly similar to those worn by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militants that Ankara says are linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).


African Union warns of huge risk of partition in Sudan

African Union warns of huge risk of partition in Sudan
Updated 12 March 2025
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African Union warns of huge risk of partition in Sudan

African Union warns of huge risk of partition in Sudan
  • The RSF and its allies last month signed in Nairobi a “founding charter” of a parallel government
  • The AU called on all of its member states as well as the international community not to recognize any government or parallel entity

ADDIS ABABA: The African Union on Wednesday said the announcement of a parallel government in war-torn Sudan risked cleaving the country, already ravaged by nearly two years of unrest.
The conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the regular Sudanese army has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 12 million people, in what the UN has described as an “unprecedented humanitarian crisis on the African continent.”
The war, which was initially sparked by disagreements over the integration of the RSF into the army, has torn the country apart, with the army now controlling eastern and northern Sudan and the RSF dominating almost all of western Darfur and parts of the south.
The RSF and its allies last month signed in Nairobi a “founding charter” of a parallel government.
On Wednesday the AU said in a statement that it condemned the move and “warned that such action carries a huge risk of partitioning of the country.”
The signatories to the document, seen by AFP, intend to create a “government of peace and unity” in rebel-controlled areas.
They have also pledged to “build a secular, democratic, decentralized state, based on freedom, equality and justice, without cultural, ethnic, religious or regional bias.”
In early March, the RSF and its allies signed, again in Nairobi, a “Transitional Constitution.”
The AU called on all of its member states as well as the international community “not to recognize any government or parallel entity aimed at partitioning and governing part of the territory of the Republic of Sudan or its institutions.”
The AU added it “does not recognize the so-called government or parallel entity in the Republic of Sudan.”
On Tuesday, the European Union said in a statement that the parallel government threatens Sudanese democratic aspirations, echoing a statement by the UN Security Council last week.


Syria’s Shibani expected at Brussels donor summit

Syria’s Shibani expected at Brussels donor summit
Updated 12 March 2025
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Syria’s Shibani expected at Brussels donor summit

Syria’s Shibani expected at Brussels donor summit
  • Al-Sharaa is expected to attend an international donor summit for his country in Brussels on March 17

DAMASCUS: Syria’s foreign minister Asaad Al-Shibani is set to attend a donor summit for his country in Brussels on March 17, a European official told Reuters on Wednesday, the first time Syria will be formally represented at the yearly conference.

The official said that Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa was not expected to be at the donor meeting, after a Syrian source and two diplomats had told Reuters he was expected there.

The yearly conference, hosted by the European Union, aims to “mobilize international support for an inclusive, peaceful transition” and will be the first time it is held following the ouster of Bashar Assad from power in December.

In the past, representatives of Syrian civil society were invited to take part in the summit — but the Syrian state was not.


Turkiye’s operations against Kurdish militants in northern Syria continuing, official says

Turkiye’s operations against Kurdish militants in northern Syria continuing, official says
Updated 12 March 2025
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Turkiye’s operations against Kurdish militants in northern Syria continuing, official says

Turkiye’s operations against Kurdish militants in northern Syria continuing, official says
  • The statement comes after a deal was made between the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the new government in Damascus

ANKARA: Operations by Turkiye’s armed forces against Kurdish militants in northern Syria are continuing, including on Tuesday, a Turkish Defense Ministry official said on Wednesday, following a deal between the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the new government in Damascus.
The official did not provide details on the location of the operations. Ankara views the SDF, which controls much of northeast Syria, as terrorists linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, and has carried out several cross-border incursions against them.


Syrians flee sectarian killing into Lebanon

Syrians flee sectarian killing into Lebanon
Updated 12 March 2025
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Syrians flee sectarian killing into Lebanon

Syrians flee sectarian killing into Lebanon
  • More than 350 families had made the same journey into Lebanon in recent days, according to local Lebanese authorities, fleeing the violence in which the UN human rights office said entire families including women and children had been killed

MASOUDIYEH, Lebanon: Fearing for their lives, Syrian men, women and children waded through a river to safety in Lebanon on Tuesday, among hundreds of people who have fled to the neighboring country to escape sectarian killing targeting their Alawite community.
A woman who made the crossing on Sunday said she’d seen the bodies of seven slain people in her village. Another said she’d spent three days trapped at home by heavy gunfire. A man said militants had threatened to kill all the people in his village because they are members of the minority Alawite community.
Days after the killing began in Syria’s coastal region, the steady stream of refugees continued: Reuters reporters saw more than 50 cross the knee-high waters of the Nahr El Kabir River into Lebanon during a half-hour period on Tuesday, carrying children and whatever possessions they could gather.
Nada Mohammed, who crossed into Lebanon on Sunday, said her village near the border, Karto, was woken up by a phone call at 4 a.m. from relatives telling her the militants had arrived in the village and she should pack her things.
“We saw seven people they slaughtered,” she said.
Her daughter, Sally Rajab Abboud, described bearded foreigners with long hair who spoke formal Arabic rather than Syrian dialect.
More than 350 families had made the same journey into Lebanon in recent days, according to local Lebanese authorities, fleeing the violence in which the UN human rights office said entire families including women and children had been killed.
Violence began to spread through the coastal region, home to many Alawites, on Thursday, when Syria’s Sunni Islamist-led government said its forces were attacked by remnants of the regime of Syria’s ousted leader Bashar Assad, an Alawite.
Security forces poured into the region to crush the insurrection, while mosques in areas loyal to the government issued calls for jihad, or holy struggle. During violence that followed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 1,200 civilians were killed, the vast majority of them Alawites.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Monday promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies if necessary. Sharaa said he could not yet say whether forces from the defense ministry — which has merged former rebels into one structure — were involved in the sectarian killings.
Abou Jaafar Sakkour, who fled to Lebanon from the village of Khirbet Al-Hamam near the Lebanese border, said militants had threatened to slaughter its residents because they are Alawites, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Some of the militants were Syrian while others were foreign, he said. The attackers had ordered the women to leave the village, and declared that it belonged to them.
“What are we guilty of? We want international protection, whether it’s Israel, Russia, from France. Anything that will protect us,” Sakkour said.
Lebanese from nearby Alawite villages assisted the Syrian refugees as they crossed the river into Lebanon on Tuesday.
Lebanon received more than a million Syrian refugees after the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011 as people fled Assad’s rule.
Crossing the river with her two children on Tuesday, a woman said she had fled her home in the city of Tartous after being trapped indoors for three days by heavy gunfire.
“We didn’t go out, we didn’t even stand in front of the windows, we shut the curtains, and we didn’t go out at all, all the doors were locked, but we haven’t slept for three nights,” she said, declining to give her name.
“There’s fear.”

 


Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid

Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid
Updated 12 March 2025
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Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid

Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid
  • The attacks will continue until Israel allows aid deliveries in Gaza, the Houthis say

SANAA: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Tuesday said they would resume attacks on Israeli shipping after their deadline for the resumption of aid deliveries into Gaza expired.
The Houthis said they were “resuming the ban on the passage of all Israeli ships” in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Baba Al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden after Israel failed to meet the four-day deadline the rebels set on Friday for the suspended aid deliveries to be restarted.
Israel blocked all aid into the war-battered territory just over a week ago in an effort to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages it took in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
An increasingly fragile truce was then further hit on Sunday when Israel announced it would cut off the electricity supply to a water desalination plant in Gaza, although Hamas announced on Tuesday that a fresh round of ceasefire talks had begun in Qatar.
The Houthis, who control much of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, fired scores of drones and missiles at Israeli-linked and other shipping in the Red Sea during the Gaza war, until calling a halt when a ceasefire started in January.
The rebels said on Tuesday that the ban on Israeli shipping would “take effect from the time this statement is issued” and that “any Israeli ship attempting to violate this ban shall be targeted in the declared zone of operations.”
The attacks will continue until Israel allows aid deliveries in Gaza, the Houthis said.