Author: Karlee Beste

Turkey’s economy is in a bad way. In June the budget deficit, seven times higher than a year earlier, reached 219.6 billion lira ($8.37 billion).  The forecast for July shows it widening still further. On July 16 Turkey raised the tax on gasoline, adding to the recent 2% increase to VAT and 5% hike to corporation tax. Aimed at tackling the budget deficit, those tax hikes will have the deleterious side-effect of stoking inflation, which stood at 38% in June. Two days after the tax hike, the Turkish lira weakened to a record low of 26.6 against the dollar. On July…

KYIV, July 20 (Reuters) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Thursday condemned a decision by Poland to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain exports to the European Union as an “unfriendly and populist move”. “During this critical time, Poland intends to continue blocking the export of UA (Ukrainian) grain to the EU. This is an unfriendly and populist move that will severely impact global food security and Ukraine’s economy,” he wrote on Twitter. Five central European countries want a European Union ban on grain imports from Ukraine to be extended at least until the end of the year. The ban is…

A United Nations and Turkey-brokered pact that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea is set to expire on Monday if Russia does not agree to extend it. The last cargo ship cleared by the pact’s signatories left Ukraine on Sunday and was headed across the Black Sea from the port of Odesa towards Turkey, according to the Marine Traffic website. There was no word from talks in Istanbul, where Turkish and UN officials were trying to persuade Moscow to agree to another extension of the deal. The Russian TASS news agency quoted UN sources as saying…

Turkey’s opposition alliance fractured on Friday after one of the leaders refused to endorse a joint candidate against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The cracks emerged a day after the six opposition party leaders held a meeting in Ankara to discuss whom to field against Erdogan in the May 14 polls. Five parties endorsed Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a bookish former civil servant who heads Turkey’s main secular party, as the frontrunner in the bid to end Erdogan’s rule. But Meral Aksener, leader of the nationalist IYI Party, has resisted Kilicdaroglu, backing instead Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu or Ankara’s mayor Mansur Yavas. “I am…

A letter carrier is recovering after he was attacked by turkeys in Richfield. The attack happened last Thursday on the 7100 block of Oak Grove Boulevard. Richfield Police say the birds cut up the letter carrier’s hands and ripped up his pants. Thankfully the letter carrier only suffered minor injuries. In a statement, the United States Postal Service said: “Turkeys can sometimes be aggressive and territorial, and this can sometimes be a nuisance for mail carriers when they block their vehicles or chase them off of a property where the turkeys are protecting their young. The safety of our employees…

A Turkish court has prohibited access to the 2021 report on internet censorship in Turkey published by the Freedom of Expression Association’s EngelliWeb initiative. The report, compiled by Professor Yaman Akdeniz and researcher Ozan Güven, revealed that Turkish courts blocked access to over 107,000 websites and domains, including thousands of news links in 2021. The restrictions were imposed due to alleged violations of personal rights, mainly involving government officials such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his son, as well as ruling party members. The court’s decision to restrict access to the report was based on a request by yoga instructor Akif Manaf, who claimed a…

German police briefly detained two journalists working for a Turkish newspaper and searched their homes in an operation that drew a sharp protest from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Turkey summoned the German ambassador in Ankara on Wednesday to condemn the operation that targeted journalists from a pro-government Turkish newspaper in the latest case of tensions between the two NATO allies. Officers searched the homes of two journalists, aged 46 and 51, in a Frankfurt suburb on Wednesday morning “on suspicion of endangering the dissemination of personal data”, according to the regional police force and the prosecutor in the nearby city…

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, February 28, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — Increased drug abuse during the pandemic makes drug prevention even more important today than ever before. And parents, teachers, youth and local officials who attended a presentation February 19 by Foundation for a Drug-Free World at Archelaou Theater in a suburb of Athens had reason to be optimistic. They saw how the drug education materials of the Foundation’s Truth About Drugs initiative get through to young people on this vital subject. Research conducted by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens spotlights the urgency of effective prevention. It found that during the pandemic there…

After a year since it invaded Ukraine, now Russia is in the brink of massive loss. On February 7, 2023, Kyiv claimed that Russian forces have suffered their deadliest day so far. Ukrainian military increased running tally of Russian military deaths from 1,030 overnight to 133,190. On the other side of the war, Russia claimed they had inflicted 6,500 Ukrainian casualties in January. Although this figure cannot be independently verified, it gives widespread skepticism of significant Russian success. The fatalities proved that NATO and the western countries’ assistance to Ukraine worked. Not only were they sending heavy weaponry and ammunition in…