Nineteen outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants were “neutralized” in aerial and land operations carried out by the Turkish military in the provinces of Tunceli, Şırnak, Diyarbakır and Mardin, as the army prepared to “inflict a major blow” against the group this winter, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has said.
A court in the western province of İzmir has accepted an indictment against the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) co-chair and two other party lawmakers on terror charges, seeking up to five years in jail, a judiciary source said on Nov. 28. The İzmir Public Prosecutor’s Office had charged HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, who is in jail on terror charges, and HDP deputy Erdal Ataş with “making propaganda for a terrorist organization.”
Prime Minister Binali Yıldrım has signaled that Turkey’s state of emergency could be lifted before the country votes in a potential referendum on a new charter, while Deputy PM Numan Kurtulmuş also said the government wanted to see it lifted soon. Yıldırım told daily Hürriyet that his government would not permit any situation in which people could argue that “a referendum took place under a state of emergency,” suggesting that emergency rule, which was imposed after the July 15 coup attempt, would be lifted before a potential vote.
The European Union should not punish Turkey’s 80 million people with its actions against the country’s government, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said, commenting on a European Parliament vote on Nov. 24 to temporarily freeze accession talks with Ankara.
The leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has become a national security issue, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Secretary-General Abdülhamit Gül has said, claiming that Kılıçdaroğlu was acting with those who “support terror.”
An ongoing Turkey-backed military operation in northern Syria will not target Aleppo, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has said, in an indirect message to Damascus after four Turkish troops were killed in an attack by the Syrian government on Nov. 24
The European Parliament’s decision to call on the European Commission to freeze accession talks with Turkey is important as it marks a first in the overall enlargement process of the bloc but is unlikely to be implemented due to a complex procedure. When Turkey and the European Union agreed on starting full membership talks in 2005, they also adopted a framework to regulate the technicalities of the Ankara-Brussels negotiations.
As an upcoming Nov. 24 European Parliament vote on the status of EU-Turkey talks heats up the debate on Turkey’s stalled accession to the 28-member bloc, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed continued dialogue while criticizing Ankara.
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government is visiting Turkey on Nov. 23, Hurriyet Daily News reported. Barzani met with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara and is set to sit down with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul. The talks are reportedly centered on the ongoing offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State as well as the recent detention of the former mayor of the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin, Ahmet Turk.
Source: Stratfor
More than 15,500 public personnel in Turkey have been dismissed from their posts with two new state of emergency decrees, the Official Gazette reported early on Nov. 22. A total of 15,726 personnel have been dismissed, mostly from the police, over suspected links to the movement of the U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gülen, believed to have masterminded the failed July 15 coup attempt.