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/ 12 October 2006
France’s lower house of Parliament on Thursday backed a Bill that makes it a crime to deny claims that Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I. Though the Senate or President Jacques Chirac can still block the Bill, Turkey has made clear the move will badly damage relations with France.
The six powers gathering in London on Friday to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme are not expected to make a decision on imposing sanctions against Tehran because of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s late arrival, the US State Department said.
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/ 13 September 2006
Police raided houses on Wednesday in a major security crackdown in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, after a bomb blast killed 10 people, five of them children. It was the bloodiest attack in Turkey since suicide bombers killed more than 60 people in Istanbul in November 2003.
Three people died and dozens more were injured in a blast in Turkey’s Mediterranean city Antalya on Monday, the fifth bomb to hit the country in less than 24 hours. Locals and witnesses said they heard a loud explosion, which broke windows, shattered glass and sparked a fire at a shopping area in the centre of the city, one of Turkey’s most popular tourist destinations.
Felipe Massa of Ferrari won the Turkish grand prix on Sunday from the pole position, his first Formula One victory in his 67th race. ”It’s like a dream come true,” he said, choking back tears after an emotional win. Renault’s Fernando Alonso held off Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher in a duel over the last dozen laps to take second and increase his lead slightly over the German in the standings.
While Jenson Button lines up as a race winner for the first time in Turkey this weekend, the main spotlight is back on Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher. The Formula One title battle has reached a decisive phase, with five races remaining and the only two men on the starting grid who know what it feels like to be a world champion separated by just 10 points.
Duygu Asena, a renowned Turkish journalist and writer who devoted much of her work to promoting women’s rights, has died at the age of 60 after battling a brain tumour for the past two years, the Anatolia news agency reported. She won acclaim with her first novel Kadinin Adi Yok (Woman Has No Name) in 1987.
Renowned Turkish-American record producer Arif Mardin, who worked with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Queen and David Bowie, has died of pancreatic cancer in New York at the age of 74, his family said in Istanbul on Monday. Mardin produced music legends such as Aretha Franklin, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, the Bee Gees and Phil Collins.
A Turkish student said on Sunday he was poised to set a record at a nationwide university entrance exam … by giving the wrong answer to all 180 questions. Speaking to reporters after Sunday’s exam, which 1,5-million youths sat, Sefa Boyar said he was hopeful he would achieve the record.
Turkish prosecutors are investigating an English artist for exhibiting a collage that depicts Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dog receiving a prize in a pet show from United States President George Bush. Michael Dickinson, a long-time resident of Istanbul, displayed the collage in March without permission from the organisers of an Istanbul show.
South Africa has offered to transfer military technology to Turkey in a bid to get ahead of competitors in a ,5-billion tender for 91 attack helicopters for the army. ”There would be a high level of sharing in transfer of technology and intellectual property rights”, said South African Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin.
Turkish authorities were on Thursday investigating a large fire that destroyed the cargo terminal at the country’s biggest airport, responsibility for which was claimed by radical Kurdish militants. The police sealed off the badly damaged building at the Atatürk International airport and were examining tapes from security cameras, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Police increased security at Istanbul’s Atatürk International airport on Thursday as authorities and companies began to assess the huge damages caused by a raging fire and tried to determine what caused it. A hard-line Kurdish militant group has claimed responsibility in an e-mail to a pro-Kurdish news agency.
The Turkish military released details on Wednesday of a collision between Turkish and Greek fighter jets in disputed airspace between the two Nato allies, saying that the Greek F-16 "harassed" the Turkish plane and crashed into it. A statement said two Turkish F-16s and an F-4, "on a routine training flight", were confronted by two Greek F-16s.
A huge fire engulfed the cargo section of Istanbul’s international Atatürk airport on Wednesday. Black smoke billowed high into the air, television footage showed. The fire caused panic at the airport, and authorities were trying to evacuate hundreds of people from nearby terminals.
The Turkish army confirmed on Tuesday that a Turkish F-16 fighter jet and a Greek F-16 fighter jet had collided over the eastern Aegean Sea after what it said was an attempt by Greek warplanes to intercept Turkish jets. The Turkish pilot ejected and survived the crash, a statement by the general staff said.
French businessmen in Turkey are bracing for a vote in their country’s National Assembly this Thursday that could prove disastrous for trade. France’s Socialists have stirred up a very sore point in relations with Turkey over an issue that dates back to World War I, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished.
Italy’s Marco Melandri took the lead on the last lap to win the Turkish Motorcycling Grand Prix in Istanbul on Sunday for the second year in a row. Australian Casey Stoner looked all set to become the youngest MotoGP winner to date but lost the lead in the closing corners to take second ahead of American Nicky Hayden.
A seven-year old boy shot in the chest during a third day of sustained rioting by Kurds in eastern Turkey died overnight. The child was fatally wounded on Thursday when about 10 000 angry protesters took to the streets of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority city, for the funerals of three people killed during the earlier clashes with police.
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/ 8 February 2006
Turkey’s press blasted Fifa on Wednesday over the sanctions meted out by football’s governing body for the country’s part in the brawl that marred their November World Cup qualifier against Switzerland. Fifa ordered Turkey to play their next six home games behind closed doors at a neutral venue and pay all organisational costs.
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/ 13 January 2006
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu could be passing from person to person in Turkey even though health experts have no evidence that the virus is spreading that way, a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) expert said on Thursday. But he said such contact would not necessarily trigger a pandemic.
Turkey’s Health Minister, Recep Akdag, on a visit on Monday to the eastern town of Dogubeyazit, home of Turkey’s first bird-flu deaths, was mobbed by residents who accuse the government of neglecting them because they are Kurds. Akdag tried to assure the area’s majority Kurdish population that Ankara has not abandoned them.
The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 will be released on parole on Thursday, his laywer told The Associated Press on Sunday. A Turkish court on Thursday decided to free Mehmet Ali Agca ”on parole on January 12,” his lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag told The Associated Press by telephone.
A Turkish teenager whose brother died of bird flu also succumbed to the disease on Thursday, a Turkish doctor said, as authorities tried to determine if the siblings had contracted the worrisome H5N1 strain of the virus. If confirmed, the brother and sister would be the first people outside of Asia to die of the H5N1 strain in the latest outbreak.
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/ 23 December 2005
For about half the adult population of Turkey, smoking is an absolutely normal activity, the result being a permanent national health disaster with anti-smoking campaigns making barely a dent in the habit. Now, about 100 lawmakers have submitted an anti-smoking Bill to Parliament that will ban the habit in coffee houses, shopping centres and taxis.
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/ 23 November 2005
A passenger train rammed into a truck carrying farm workers in southern Turkey on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring 30 others, officials said. It was the nation’s fourth major rail accident in less than two years. Many of the injured were in critical condition, according to the Anatolia news agency.
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/ 24 October 2005
Italian Marco Melandri, riding a Honda, won the Turkish MotoGP in Istanbul on Sunday ahead of world champion Valentino Rossi, who failed in his bid to equal the season’s win record of legendary Australian Mick Doohan. American Nicky Hayden came third as Melandri took his first grand-prix victory at the inaugural Turkish MotoGP.
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/ 17 October 2005
Three violent earthquakes shook western Turkey on Monday, cracking walls, collapsing chimneys and sending 30 people to hospital, including a man who reportedly threw himself from the fifth floor of a building in panic. Turkey’s top seismologist warned of the threat of more earthquakes.
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/ 13 October 2005
Increasing numbers of Turks are rushing to pharmacies to buy the anti-viral drug Tamiflu following an outbreak of bird flu in northwestern Turkey, but there is a shortage on the market, Turkish pharmacists said on Thursday. Tamiflu, produced by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, is considered to be the most effective drug against bird flu.
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/ 30 September 2005
Biritish Prime Minister Tony Blair today insisted Turkey’s future was in the European Union as British officials in Brussels worked to dispel a looming crisis over next week’s talks on its membership. In an interview with Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper, the prime minister said he would work hard to help Turkey realise its EU ambitions.
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/ 28 September 2005
Last minute-wrangling aside, Turkey’s long-awaited accession talks with the European Union are to finally get under way on October 3 marking a major victory for the Ankara government and the beginning of one of the country’s biggest diplomatic endeavours.
Kimi Raikkonen claimed a dominant victory for McLaren in the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul on Sunday to turn the heat up on championship leader Fernando Alonso. The Finn was the class act of the field as he coolly claimed his fifth win of the year, but he could only close the gap in the title race by two points.