Four people were killed when heavy rains triggered flooding and landslides on Tuesday in the north-eastern provinces of Trabzon and Rize on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, the Anatolia news agency reported. Turkey’s lush Black Sea Coast region is prone to seasonal floods and landslides.
The smell of scorched diesel was still discernible on the waterfront at Kusadasi on Sunday, though the road where the minibus exploded had been strewn with red and white carnations. The mid-morning blast in the popular Aegean resort — possibly the work of a suicide bomber — killed a British woman, an Irish holidaymaker and three Turks.
Down three goals at half-time, it looked like Liverpool’s 21-year wait for a fifth European Cup success would never end. Amazingly, the end came just over an hour later. Liverpool scored three second-half goals in seven minutes to overcome the deficit and draw 3-3 with AC Milan before winning 3-2 on penalties.
An earthquake measuring 5,5 on the Richter scale rattled an eastern Turkish town overnight, leaving six people injured, officials said on Thursday. The quake, the third powerful tremor to hit the town of Karliova in Bingol province this month, was followed by an aftershock that registered 4,7 on the Richter scale.
A Turkish man managed to get the pension of his mother for two years after her death, posing as an elderly woman to the local bank and neighbours, the mass-circulation <i>Sabah</i> newspaper reported on Saturday. He was caught only after he forgot to change his voice in response to a question by a bank clerk.
Two Turkish prison inmates, who drilled a 9cm-wide aperture between their cells enabling them to have sexual relations in prison that produced a child, received four-month sentences for damaging public property, press reports said on Sunday. The pair managed to drive the hole through their concrete communal cell wall.
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/ 13 January 2005
Doctors have removed parasites weighing a total of 3kg from the stomach of a young woman in central Turkey in what they have described as a rare case in medicine, Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday. Surgeon Kemal Arslan said the size of the parasites varied between 5cm and 20cm.
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/ 12 January 2005
Police in Istanbul have arrested a married couple after a sting operation in which officers posed as customers who wanted their horoscope read, Hurriyet newspaper reported on Wednesday. Undercover officers deposited 200 lira (about R870) into a bank account and used the receipt as proof of payment for a session with the mediums.
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/ 15 December 2004
Turkey will not accept entry to the European Union on any conditions, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in a newspaper interview published on the eve of a key EU decision on the issue. ”We will not say yes at any price. We have told the EU that,” Gul told the Milliyet daily, in comments published on Wednesday.
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/ 20 November 2004
Tourists descend on the Turkish town of Canakkale to gawp at the Hollywood star — a 12-tonne fibreglass horse, held together with bolts, ropes and nails, which dominates the seafront. It was a gift from Warner Brothers and a small consolation for the fact that Troy, the -million blockbuster starring Brad Pitt, was not made in Turkey.
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/ 19 November 2004
It took 10 people about 45 minutes to carry an overweight man from his home in the western Turkey town of Bolu to a waiting ambulance, from where he was transported to a hospital in Istanbul. Mustafa Ozacar, a father of two, decided to be hospitalised after ballooning out to 320kg for no diagnosed reason.
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/ 8 September 2004
A fire that raged through a copper mine in northern Turkey killed 19 workers and injured 17 others on Wednesday. Rescuers were searching the smoke-clogged shafts to make sure that no one was left inside. The fire broke out inside the mine in the town of Kure in Kastamonu province, trapping about 30 workers.
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/ 1 September 2004
Ilker Yilmaz might just hold one of the world’s most bizarre world records. The Turkish construction worker on Wednesday poured milk into his hand, loudly snorted it up his nose and squirted it 2,795m out of his left eye in what he hopes will be recognised as a new world record.
Rescuers were on Tuesday working to save dozens of people stranded on rooftops or trapped in their houses in Istanbul as floods triggered by torrential rains left parts of Turkey’s largest city under water, media reported. Meteorological services say the rain was the heaviest to hit the city in a decade.
Two trains collided head-on in north-western Turkey on Wednesday, killing six people and injuring about 30 others, an official said. Firefighters were trying to enter the first car of one of the trains to pull out passengers. The car was smashed and flipped over in the collision near the village of Tavsancil in Kocaeli province.
Six people were injured on Friday when an earthquake measuring 4,6 on the Richter scale shook the eastern Turkish town of Dogubeyazit close to the border with Iran, a local official said. The tremor, which caused minor damage, struck at 10.14am local time with an epicentre 18km north-east of the town.
Turkish authorities faced strong criticism on Friday for starting up a fast-train service on decade-old tracks, after 36 people perished in one of the country’s worst railway disasters. One of the new fast trains derailed on Thursday evening near the town of Pamukova, its five carriages overturning and crashing into each other.
An earthquake in a remote, mountainous part of eastern Turkey on Friday collapsed dozens of stone and mud-brick houses, killing 18 people including three sisters and their brother, and injuring 27 others. The earthquake destroyed 67 homes in the village of Yigincal, near the Iranian border.
A car bomb detonated by remote control killed three people and injured 24 others in an attack that apparently targeted the convoy of the governor of an eastern Turkish province, officials said. Governor Hikmet Tan was not injured in the blast but his car was heavily damaged.
A strong earthquake shook eastern Turkey on Sunday, days after another quake killed 10 people in the region. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in Sunday’s quake. The quake, centred in Erzurum province, had a preliminary magnitude of 5,3, the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory said.
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/ 9 February 2004
A 24-year-old woman buried alive for nearly a week was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed Turkish housing block on Monday, the second ”miracle survivor” from a tragedy in which at least 87 died. ”She said ‘get me out and I will have you over for tea’,” a rescuer said, adding that he was unable to hold back his tears.
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/ 5 February 2004
Five people hugged each other as their apartment building collapsed on Monday, crushing them to death in central Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday. Relief workers struggled to separate their bodies to be able to pull them out of the debris of the building. At least 38 people died in the collapse.
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/ 3 February 2004
Rescue workers removed 12 bodies and 28 injured people from the rubble of an 11-storey residential building that collapsed in the central Turkish city of Konya, and work was continuing to find dozens more who were believed trapped, a local official said early on Tuesday.
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/ 26 November 2003
Several suspects interviewed by police in connection with last week’s twin bomb attacks against British targets in Istanbul were sent to a state security court in Istanbul on Wednesday. The NTV news channel put their number at 18, including four women.
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/ 23 November 2003
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Saturday of his shame that the bombers who blew themselves up in a week of carnage in Istanbul were fellow Turks as police rounded up more suspects. But Erdogan vowed that the predominantly Muslim nation would not be cowed by the two sets of massive attacks.
Istanbul bombs: Warnings ‘ignored’
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/ 20 November 2003
An unidentified caller claimed responsibility for the two bomb blasts in Istanbul on behalf of al-Qaeda and a Turkish underground Islamic extremist group, Anatolia news agency reported. The person said in a phone call to the agency that the attacks were a joint attack by the two groups.
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/ 20 November 2003
At least 26 people were killed and more than 400 injured in two massive explosions in Istanbul on Thursday, one badly damaging the HSBC bank headquarters and the other hitting the British consulate. Turkish television reported that British consul general Roger Short had been killed.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=23823">Pools of blood and wrecked cars</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=23831">Turkey blasts: Claims of al-Qaeda</a>
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/ 20 November 2003
At least 25 people were killed and 390 injured on Thursday in huge explosions that rocked Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, badly damaging the British consulate and two offices of the HSBC bank, Turkish media reported. Turkey’s Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, said the bomb attacks were the result of suicide car bombs.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=23831">Turkey blasts: Claims of al-Qaeda</a>
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/ 18 November 2003
Israeli parliamentary Speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Tuesday that suspected bombers involved in the Istanbul synagogue attacks were Turkish nationals with links to Afghanistan and Iran. Twenty-five people died when suicide bombers detonated explosives-laden trucks at two synagogues in old Istanbul on Saturday.
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/ 17 November 2003
Turkish officials are investigating claims that the al-Qaeda terrorist network was behind the weekend’s bomb blasts outside two Istanbul synagogues that killed 23 people. At least six Jews at Beth Israel were among those killed in the blasts, which also wounded 303 people, including Jews and Muslim passers-by.
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/ 16 November 2003
Police in Turkey have arrested three people, including a veiled woman, in connection with twin car bomb attacks that devastated two Istanbul synagogues on Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding 300. Officials had earlier speculated that the attacks had been carried out by al-Qaeda.