Waving flags and chanting slogans, hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied in Istanbul Saturday calling for democracy to be defended after the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in over a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, huge crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest … Read more
Istanbul — Turkish police on Wednesday arrested Istanbul’s mayor — a popular opposition leader and key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — and several other prominent figures as part of investigations into alleged corruption and terror links. It was a dramatic escalation in an ongoing crackdown on the opposition and dissenting voices in Turkey. The … Read more
Huge crowds gathered outside Istanbul City Hall late Saturday for a fourth night of protests over the arrest of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who has blasted official allegations against him as “immoral and baseless”. The demonstrations, which began in Istanbul on Wednesday, have since spread to more than 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, sparking clashes with … Read more
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered this year facing a knot of political problems with little precedent in his two decades at the summit of power in Turkey. Voters were angry about persistently high inflation. His political party’s popularity had sunk. And his opponents had coalesced around the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who made it … Read more
Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in Istanbul late Friday to protest the arrest of the city’s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, defying a warning from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey would not tolerate “street terrorism”. It was the third straight night that demonstrators had rallied against the arrest of Imamoglu — Erdogan’s biggest political … Read more
Turkish riot police fired teargas and rubber bullets on Thursday, as demonstrators protested for a second night outside Istanbul City Hall over the shock arrest of the Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in a graft and terror probe. The powerful and popular Imamoglu — who is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival — was detained before … Read more
Turkish police detained Istanbul’s powerful Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu Wednesday in connection with two investigations into graft and “supporting terror,” a move that the main opposition party slammed as a politically-motivated “coup”. Imamoglu is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival and his detention came just days before he was to be named the candidate of … Read more
A young gorilla rescued from a plane’s cargo hold is recovering at an Istanbul zoo, officials said Sunday, while wildlife officers consider returning him to his natural habitat. The 5-month-old gorilla was discovered in a box on a Turkish Airlines flight from Nigeria to Thailand last month. After a public competition, he has been named … Read more