ISTANBUL( Reuters)-A migrant boat carrying 45 people has sunk to the south of Turkey, and Turkish naval ships and an aircraft are carrying out search and rescue operations, the defence ministry said on Friday. Ministry officials said those on board the vessel were migrants. The ministry said in a statement that it had received information on Thursday evening that the boat was sinking, 161 miles( 259 km) southwest of the Turkish resort town of Kas. Two naval frigates were sent to search the area

ISTANBUL( Reuters)-Turkish security forces have detained nearly 1, 500 irregular migrants in the last week, most of them Afghans, near the southeastern border with Iran, officials said, amid rising violence in Afghanistan. The officials from a local governorate and the Interior Ministry said 1, 456 migrants had been detained since July 10 near Mount Erek in eastern Van province, as well as 11 human traffickers who brought them into Turkey. Concerns over a potential new influx of migrants into Tu

MILAS, Turkey( Reuters)-A blaze threatening a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Turkey is under control, local authorities said on Wednesday, as firefighters battled coastal wildfires for an eighth day." The flames reached the wall of the power plant last night.... Firefighting planes from Spain and Croatia joined teams from Russia, Iran, Ukraine and Azerbaijan this week to battle blazes, after Turkey requested European support. Opposition parties criticised President Tayyip Erdogan and hi

ICMELER, Turkey( Reuters)-Until devastated by wildfires, hills near the Turkish sea resort of Marmaris were decked in thick green pine forest.... Now these same hills form a ghostly, grey-brown landscape topped with blackened tree stumps as though sketched in charcoal.... Drone footage from the small tourist seaside town of Icmeler near Marmaris from before and after what President Tayyip Erdogan has called Turkey's worst wildfires shows the extent of the devastation....

ISTANBUL( Reuters)-A superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was cruising a few kilometres( miles) off the coast of southwest Turkey on Monday, after skirting European Union waters in recent days, ship tracking data showed.... World governments are seeking to isolate President Vladimir Putin and his allies over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a" special operation".... The monitoring site showed it was some 3 km( 1.9 miles) off Turkey's coast on M

ISTANBUL( Reuters)-When Muzaffer Kayasan first caught COVID-19, he thought he was destined to die since he was already suffering from leukemia.... " I guess this is the female version of COVID-she has been obsessed with me," Kayasan joked last week as he found out that his latest PCR test was, yet again, positive.... Nine months in hospital and five months mostly alone in his flat have separated him from much of the outside world, including his granddaughter, Azra, who stays in the garden whil

ANKARA( Reuters)-Turkish student Utku Ozdemiroglu and his father Cengiz were packing their bags for a flight home from Kyiv when the first bombs landed. Cengiz was in the city to accompany his son, a third year medical student, through to the end of his academic term at Kyiv University.... I thought they were shattering," 24-year-old Ozdemiroglu told Reuters. Fearing the worst, he texted his mother in Ankara.... He was among 5, 000 Turks studying in Ukraine, according to figures released by th

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey( Reuters)-Rain fell on Bicar Icli's fields in southeastern Turkey for the first time in eight months last week, but he and other farmers are already counting the cost of a drought they blame on climate change. Icli has not been able to plant his winter wheat crops due to the parched soils.... " he said, as he looked over his sun-baked fields. Besides the lingering drought, Turkey was hit by flash floods in its Black Sea region and massive wildfires in southern regions during

Six years ago, Ukrainian singer Jamala conquered Europe with a song about Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s deportation of hundreds of thousands of people from her Black Sea homeland of Crimea, in World War Two.“ When strangers are coming, they come to your house.... “ I was lost, but I had to go forward.... “ I think we are all in the same boat.” She took that message earlier this month to Berlin, where she performed her 2016 song again at a preliminary round of this year’s Eurovision-this time t

arrow-right With$ 2.3 billion to spend from the Biden administration’s pandemic-relief funding, Chairman Phil Mendelson( D) and others argued that raising taxes would be unnecessary and inappropriate this year.... The version includes generous spending on a long list of programs, mostly funded by the federal grants as well as other sources of local revenue.... “ These tax increases will allow the District to bring thousands of residents out of homelessness, ” he said....