Tag Archives: Turkey

Turkey opposition stages sit-in to protest changes to parliamentary procedure

FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo

By Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s main opposition staged a sit-in on Thursday to protest against proposed changes to parliamentary procedure that it says will restrict lawmakers’ ability to challenge President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party in the assembly.

The move comes amid mounting concerns among opposition parties, human rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies that Erdogan is using a crackdown on suspected supporters of last year’s failed military coup to stifle all dissent.

Members of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) said the planned changes – which include shortening the time allotted to discuss bills and punishment for lawmakers who make “illegal references” to Turkey’s regions in parliament – would limit their freedom of expression.

Under the changes, lawmakers can vote to ban for three sessions fellow parliamentarians who use expressions such as “Kurdistan” or “Kurdish provinces”. Members of the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition frequently use the terms in reference to the largely Kurdish southeast, angering Turkish nationalists.

“In reaction to the opposition’s voice being cut, the CHP group is not leaving parliament tonight,” senior party deputy Ozgur Ozel told the assembly, after most of the proposed changes were approved by Erdogan’s AKP and its nationalist allies on Wednesday evening.

“Their goal is to strengthen President Erdogan and disable parliament,” Ozel later told Reuters, vowing to challenge the reform in the constitutional court. The pro-Kurdish HDP said it supported the CHP protest.

CRACKDOWN

Erdogan’s AKP says opposition deputies exploit parliamentary regulations to frustrate the assembly’s legislative activities. Fourteen articles of the 18-article bill have so far been passed, with the remainder expected to pass on Thursday.

Parliamentary discussions of party proposals regarding bills will now be limited to 14 minutes, down from a previous 40 minutes. Procedural discussions will be limited to 12 minutes.

CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu this month completed a 25-day march from the capital Ankara to Istanbul to protest the state crackdown on suspected supporters of the coup.

Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the civil service, police, military and private sector and more than 50,000 people detained for suspected links to the failed coup.

The government says the moves are necessary because of the severity of the security threats Turkey faces, including from Kurdish militants.

Militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched an insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Gareth Jones)

Pro-Kurdish party launches protests against Turkish crackdown

Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers leave from a park after a party meeting in Diyarbakir, Turkey, July 25, 2017. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey’s pro-Kurdish parliamentary opposition launched three months of protests on Tuesday against a state crackdown which has seen dozens of lawmakers and mayors jailed over suspected links to militant separatists.

Hundreds of police, backed by armored vehicles and water cannon, imposed tight security at a park where 10 lawmakers of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) gathered in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country.

The HDP said police had initially allowed the protest, but later blocked off shaded areas of the park, leaving access only to an exposed paved area under a hot sun. It said in a statement only a few of its members were able to make their way inside.

“The blockade at this park is a sign of the real situation in Turkey… A political party that got 70 percent of votes (in Diyarbakir) cannot carry out its group meeting in the park,” HDP spokesman Osman Baydemir told reporters.

Ankara says the HDP is linked to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decades-old insurgency and is deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union. The HDP denies the allegation.

Eleven HDP deputies have been jailed pending trial, more than 70 elected mayors from the HDP’s southeastern affiliate have been remanded in custody in terrorism-related investigations, and their municipalities taken over by state officials. Thousands of party members have also been arrested.

The HDP plans to hold round-the-clock, week-long protests led by its own lawmakers in Istanbul, the southeastern city of Van and the western port city of Izmir as part of the campaign.

“NO VIOLENCE, NO ANIMOSITY”

“Fascism can only be stopped through a democratic battle. This is what we’re saying. We will be here for seven days, 24 hours a day,” said Baydemir. “No violence, no animosity, we are just shouting that we have not given in to fascism.”

Baydmemir has said the HDP will hold protests until Nov. 4, the anniversary of the arrest of its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag. Their arrests drew international condemnation and Yuksekdag has since been stripped of her parliamentary status and replaced as co-chairwoman.

The HDP protest call came two weeks after Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, the secularist CHP, completed a 25-day protest march from the capital Ankara to Istanbul over a state crackdown on suspected supporters of last year’s abortive military coup.

Turkish authorities have jailed, pending trial, more than 50,000 people and suspended or dismissed some 150,000 from their jobs since imposing emergency rule soon after the failed putsch.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Gareth Jones)

NATO offers to broker compromise in Turkish-German stand-off

FILE PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel greets Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the beginning of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Bernd Von Jutrczenka/POOL/File Photo

By Paul Carrel and Robin Emmott

BERLIN (Reuters) – NATO’s secretary general is offering to broker a visit by German lawmakers to troops serving on a Turkish air base in an attempt to heal a rift between the two allies which is disrupting anti-Islamic State operations.

The mediation offer by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, announced on Monday, came as Ankara itself sought to limit the economic fallout from the damaging row with Berlin, dropping a request for Germany to help it investigate hundreds of German companies it said could have links to terrorism.

Germany has become increasingly worried by President Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on the Turkish opposition since a coup attempt last year – concerns made more acute by the arrest this month of six human rights activists, including one German.

Adding to tensions is Turkey’s refusal to let German members of parliament visit soldiers stationed at two air bases. For historical reasons, Germany’s soldiers answer to parliament and Berlin insists lawmakers have access to them.

This has already led Germany to move troops involved in the campaign against Islamic State from Turkey’s Incirlik base to Jordan. The risk of further decampments has sparked deep concern in NATO and now prompted it to intervene.

“The Secretary General has now offered to arrange a visit for parliamentarians to Konya airfield within a NATO framework,” alliance spokesman Piers Cazalet said on Monday. “Konya airfield is vital for NATO operations in support of Turkey and the Counter-ISIS Coalition.”

With Germany Ankara’s largest export market and home to a three million strong Turkish diaspora, it is in Turkey’s economic interests to resolve the row. The swift deterioration in relations threatens to damage deep-rooted human and economic ties.

CLOSE TIES

Germany has warned its nationals traveling to Turkey that they do so at their own risk, and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Erdogan was “jeopardizing the centuries-old partnership”.

Stepping back from confrontation, Turkey’s interior minister on Monday told his German counterpart that Ankara’s submission to Interpol of a list of nearly 700 German companies suspected of backing terrorism had stemmed from “a communications problem”.

Turkey had merely asked Interpol for information regarding the exports of 40 Turkish companies with alleged links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the failed putsch last July, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said. He promised that Turkey would remain a “safe haven” for foreign investors.

Germany’s DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce said firms remained uncertain about doing business in Turkey, from which Germany bought $14 billion worth of goods in 2016.

“I hear it a lot: if the political environment does not improve, if legal certainty is in question, then there will hardly be a recovery in new investments by German firms (in Turkey),” DIHK foreign trade chief Volker Treier said.

(Additional reporting by Rene Wagner in Berlin, Robin Emmott in Brussels and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Israel says Jerusalem mosque metal detectors to stay

Palestinians stand in front of Israeli policemen and newly installed metal detectors at an entrance to the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City July 16, 2017.

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Sunday it would not remove metal detectors whose installation outside a major Jerusalem mosque has triggered the bloodiest clashes with the Palestinians in years, but could eventually reduce their use.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security Cabinet on Sunday evening. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would halt security ties with Israel until it scraps the walk-through gates installed at entrances to Al-Aqsa mosque plaza after two police guards were shot dead on July 14.

Netanyahu’s right-wing government is wary of being seen to yield to Palestinian pressure over the site, which Jews revere as the vestige of their two ancient temples. It was among areas of East Jerusalem that Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed as its capital, in a move not recognized internationally.

“They (metal detectors) will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers,” Tzachi Hanegbi, Israeli minister for regional development, told Army Radio.

“If they (Palestinians) do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque.”

Incensed at what they perceive as a violation of delicate decades-old access arrangements at Islam’s third-holiest site, many Palestinians have refused to go through the metal detectors, holding street prayers and often violent protests.

Reuters witnesses reported some light clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli security forces after prayers at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday night. Palestinian medical sources did not report any serious injuries.

The spike in tensions, and the deaths of three Israelis and four Palestinians in violence on Friday and Saturday, have triggered international alarm and prompted the United Nations Security Council to convene a meeting for Monday to seek ways of calming the situation.

Washington sent Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, to Israel on Sunday evening in hopes of helping to reduce tensions, a senior administration official said.

“President Trump and his administration are closely following unfolding events in the region,” the official said. “The United States utterly condemns the recent terrorist violence.”

Two Jordanians were killed and an Israeli was wounded in a shooting incident on Sunday in a building inside the Israeli embassy complex in Jordan’s capital, Amman, police and a security source said.

Details of what happened were unclear. Israel imposed a ban on reporting the incident and made no public comment.

Jordan has seen an outpouring of public anger against Israel in recent days, with Jordanian officials calling on it to remove the metal detectors at the Al-Aqsa mosque.

 

ABBAS ULTIMATUM

The spasm of violence began on Friday, when Israeli security forces shot three demonstrators dead, Palestinian medics said. Israeli police said they were investigating the charge.

On the same day, a Palestinian stabbed three Israelis in the occupied West Bank after vowing on Facebook to take up his knife and heed “Al-Aqsa’s call”.

A Palestinian was killed in the Jerusalem area on Saturday when an explosive device he was building went off prematurely, the Israeli military said. Palestinian medics said he died of shrapnel wounds to the chest and abdomen.

On Sunday, a rocket was launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, but hit an open area, causing no damage, Israel’s military said.

Abbas, referring to the metal detectors in a speech on Sunday, said: “If Israel wants security coordination to be resumed, they have to withdraw those measures.

“They should know that they will eventually lose, because we have been making it our solemn duty to keep up security on our side here and on theirs.”

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, warned of potential “large-scale volatility” – a prospect made more likely in the West Bank by the absence of Abbas’ help.

Erdan said Israel may eventually do away with metal-detector checks for Muslims entering the Al-Aqsa compounds under alternative arrangements under review. Such arrangements could include reinforcing Israeli police at the entrances and introducing CCTV cameras with facial-recognition technologies.

“There are, after all, many worshippers whom the police know, regulars, and very elderly people and so on, and it recommended that we avoid putting all of these through metal detectors,” Erdan told Army Radio, suggesting that only potential troublemakers might be subjected to extra screening.

Any such substitute arrangement was not ready, he added.

The Muslim authorities that oversee Al-Aqsa said, however, they would continue to oppose any new Israeli-imposed measures.

“We stress our absolute rejection of … all measures by the Occupation (Israel) that would change the historical and religious status in Jerusalem and its sacred sites,” the Palestinian grand mufti, acting Palestinian chief justice and Jordanian-run Waqf religious trust said in a joint statement.

Turkey also urged the removal of the metal detectors and the Arab League said Israel was “playing with fire”.

 

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Peter Cooney)

 

Turkish journalists go on trial accused of supporting terrorism

Journalists and press freedom activists release balloons during a demonstration in solidarity with the members of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet who were accused of supporting a terrorist group outside a courthouse, in Istanbul, Turkey, July 24, 2017.

By Can Sezer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Prominent journalists and other staff at a Turkish opposition newspaper went on trial on Monday accused of supporting a terrorist group, in a case that critics of President Tayyip Erdogan consider attack on free speech.

“Journalism is not a crime,” chanted several hundred people gathered outside the central Istanbul court to protest against the prosecution of 17 writers, executives and lawyers of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper.

The trial coincides with an escalating dispute with Germany over the arrest in Turkey of 10 rights activists, including one German, as part of a crackdown since last year’s attempted coup against Erdogan.

Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to 43 years in jail for newspaper staff accused of targeting Erdogan through “asymmetric war methods”.

“I am not here because I knowingly and willingly helped a terrorist organisation, but because I am an independent, questioning and critical journalist,” one of the defendants, columnist Kadri Gursel, told the court.

Gursel, who, along with editor Murat Sabuncu and other senior staff, has been in pre-trial detention for 267 days, was prevented from hugging his son in the courtroom by security guards, the newspaper said on its website.

The 324-page indictment alleges Cumhuriyet was effectively taken over by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the failed putsch last July, and used to “veil the actions of terrorist groups”.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup.

The newspaper is also accused of writing stories that serve “separatist manipulation”.

Other defendants include Ahmet Sik, who once wrote a book critical of Gulen’s movement. Former editor Can Dundar, who is living in Germany, is being tried in absentia.

The newspaper has called the charges “imaginary accusations and slander”. Social media posts comprised the bulk of evidence in the indictment, along with allegations that staff had been in contact with users of Bylock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers.

 

‘DE FACTO COALITION’

“According to the government, everyone in opposition is a terrorist, the only non-terrorists are themselves,” Filiz Kerestecioglu, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party, told reporters ahead of the trial.

Gursel, the columnist, denied he had links to Gulen’s movement, saying he had in the past revealed ties between Erdogan’s AK Party and the Gulen movement.

Erdogan has his roots in political Islam and was an ally of the cleric until a public falling-out in 2013.

“I exposed the current government’s de facto coalition with this group and I foresaw the harm that this sinister cooperation would do to the country,” he told the court.

Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have complained of deteriorating human rights under Erdogan. In the crackdown since last July’s failed coup, 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 detained or dismissed from their jobs.

As part of the purge some 150 media outlets have been shut down and around 160 journalists are in jail, according to the Turkish Journalists’ Association.

The crackdown has strained Turkey’s ties with the European Union, but reaction from the bloc has been restrained because it depends on Turkey to curb the flow of migrants into Europe.

Europe’s leading power, Germany, has stepped up pressure in recent days, threatening measures that could hinder German investment in Turkey and reviewing Turkish applications for arms deals.

Turkish authorities say the crackdown is justified by the gravity of the coup attempt, in which rogue soldiers tried to overthrow the government and Erdogan, killing 250 people, most of them civilians.

 

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

Istanbul court orders four activists detained again – website

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a ceremony marking the first anniversary of the attempted coup at the Parliament in Ankara, Turkey July 16, 2017. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A Turkish court ordered the re-arrest on Friday of four activists who had briefly been freed after being detained along with the local director of human rights group Amnesty International, Hurriyet Daily News website reported.

The activists were in a group of 10 people detained two weeks ago while attending a workshop near Istanbul. They were released on Tuesday, while the other six were remanded in custody on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.

The website said the new detention warrants were issued following an appeal against their release by the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office.

The 10 detainees include Amnesty’s Idil Eser, and German national Peter Steudtner, whose arrest has deepened a political crisis between Ankara and Berlin.

Germany said on Friday it was reviewing applications for arms projects from Turkey, accusing it of stepping up covert operations on German soil, and a minister in Berlin compared Ankara’s behavior over the detention of the activists to the authoritarian former communist East Germany.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Germany to “pull itself together”.

The 10 activists were detained as part of a crackdown following last July’s failed coup attempt in Turkey. Ankara says the steps are necessary to confront many threats against Turkey, but Western countries have been increasingly critical.

Amnesty International said on Tuesday the activists’ detention was part of a “politically motivated witch-hunt”.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Louise Ireland)

‘You belong here’ Germany tells Turks as row with Ankara rages

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel addresses a news conference in Berlin, Germany, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Thomas Escritt and Michelle Martin

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany sought on Saturday to reassure the country’s three million people of Turkish descent it would stand by them as a row with Ankara escalates, saying they were not the target of changes to government policy on Turkey.

In a letter published in German and Turkish in daily newspaper Bild, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Germany had no quarrel with Turkish people in either country but could not stand by as “innocent” German citizens were jailed.

On Friday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble compared Turkey’s detention of six rights activists, including a German, to the authoritarian former communist East Germany.

“However difficult the political relations between Germany and Turkey, one thing is clear: you, people of Turkish roots in Germany, belong here with us, whether you have a German passport or not,” Gabriel wrote in Saturday’s open letter.

“We have always striven for good relations with Turkey, because we know that good relations are important for you (German Turks),” he added.

He said Germany would review cooperation and especially economic aid for the fellow NATO member and campaign for Europe to take a clear position on Ankara.

Gokay Sofuoglu, chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany, welcomed Gabriel’s conciliatory words.

“We must not let ourselves be driven apart here in Germany. People with Turkish roots need to focus on Germany,” he told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

‘UNACCEPTABLE AND UNBEARABLE’

Bilateral tensions were already high before the activists’ arrests after recriminations during an April referendum on extending President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers and a pullout of German troops from a Turkish air base that began this month.

The arrests are part of a sweeping crackdown across Turkish society since a failed coup against Erdogan last year.

German officials are also increasingly concerned at what they say is large-scale covert activity by Ankara’s security services among Germany’s Turkish diaspora.

Germany’s head of domestic intelligence said on Friday Turkish agencies were carrying out influence operations in Germany, including targeting opponents of Erdogan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian ally, Horst Seehofer, told Welt am Sonntag the financial aid Turkey receives as part of the European Union accession procedures should be cut off.

Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU) that has long been skeptical about Turkey joining the EU, said the idea of the country becoming a full member was “well and truly over” and developments there were “unacceptable and unbearable”.

Germany has warned citizens who travel to Turkey they do so at their own risk and on Saturday the radical Left party urged the government to stop deportations in view of the arrest of government opponents.

“If the German Foreign Ministry warns against going on holiday in Turkey, then there needs to be an end to deportations of Turkish citizens,” party co-leader Bernd Riexinger told Die Welt newspaper.

(Editing by John Stonestreet and Helen Popper)

Turkey seeks to cool row with Germany as Berlin reviews arms requests

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble arrives to attend an European Union finance ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

By Orhan Coskun and Michelle Martin

BERLIN (Reuters) – Turkey’s economy minister sought to calm rising tensions with Germany on Friday as Berlin said it was reviewing all applications for arms projects from Ankara.

Tensions between the NATO allies have escalated since Turkey arrested six human rights activists including German national Peter Steudtner on accusations of terrorism; but relations have been strained over a series of often bitter disputes this year.

Turkey’s economy minister told Reuters he believed the Turkey-Germany crisis was temporary.

“One must refrain from words that would cause lasting harm…to the economies,” Nihat Zeybekci said in an interview. “Germany must reassess comments that are inappropriate.”

But Germany said almost immediately afterwards it would review Turkish applications for arms projects.

“We’re checking all applications,” an Economy Ministry spokeswoman said.

That means the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (Bafa) probably cannot issue new export approvals; but projects already agreed will not be affected initially as no international sanctions have been imposed on Turkey.

In 2016 the German government exported armaments worth 83.9 million euros to Turkey. In the first four months of 2017, business worth 22 million euros was approved – for deliveries for the navy and for joint projects with other NATO partners.

Germany has warned Germans traveling to Turkey that they do so at their own peril. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was quoted as comparing Turkey with the former communist East German state – the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

“Turkey now makes arbitrary arrests and no longer sticks to minimum consular standards. That reminds me of how it was in the GDR,” he told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper.

Schaeuble said those who traveled to the former Communist East before it collapsed in 1990 were aware that “if something happens to you, no one can help you”.

TURKISH SECRET SERVICES

German officials have complained they have not had full consular access to Steudtner, who was arrested with five others and accused of “terrorism” – an allegation Berlin has dismissed as absurd. Another German citizen was arrested on charges of links to terrorism earlier this year.

The arrests were part of a broader crackdown across Turkish society since a failed coup last July.

Germany’s domestic security chief expressed concern about increased activities of Turkey’s secret service and the growth of militant groups among the three million people with Turkish roots living on German soil.

“We know about the Turkish government’s influence on the Turkish community here in Germany,” BfV president Hans-Georg Maassen told local newspaper Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung.

Maassen named as an example charges being made against supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating Turkey’s failed coup last July. He also said there were attempts to “intimidate those with Turkish roots if they are against President (Tayyip) Erdogan”.

German authorities barred Turkish ministers in March from speaking at mass rallies of expatriates supporting Erdogan’s campaign for broader presidential powers. Erdogan responded by accusing Berlin of “fascist actions”.

More than 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in Turkey’s civil service, military and private sector in the purges that followed the attempted putsch in 2016. More than 50,000 people have been jailed.

Rights groups and some Western governments say Erdogan is using the crackdown as a pretext to quash dissent. The Turkish government says the measures are necessary given the gravity of the security threat it faces.

Die Zeit newspaper reported this week that Turkish authorities had several weeks ago handed Berlin a list of 68 German companies, including Daimler and BASF that they accused of having links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the coup.

Zeybekci said Germany’s behavior in cautioning its citizens over travel to Turkey was “unfortunate”, but he did not see harm accruing to tourism.

So far this year, bookings from Germany have accounted for some 10 percent of Turkey’s tourists.

Last year, the number of foreign visitors to Turkey fell 30 percent amid a spate of bombings by Kurdish and Islamist militants, the lowest in nine years. The travel sector contributes about $30 billion to the economy in a normal year.

Commercial links are close.

Germany was also Turkey’s top export destination in 2016, buying $14 billion worth of Turkish goods. It was also the second biggest source of Turkish imports, at $21.5 billion. Only China, at $25.4 billion, exported more to Turkey.

German news broadcaster n-tv said it would no longer run adverts that aimed to attract investment in Turkey.

(Writing by Paul Carrel; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Up to 6.6 magnitude quake off Greece and Turkey kills two

quake damage

By Vassilis Triandafyllou and Tuvan Gumrukcu

KOS, Greece/ANKARA (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake killed two people on the Greek holiday island of Kos in the early hours of Friday, sending tourists fleeing into the streets, and causing disruption in the nearby Turkish tourist hub of Bodrum.

A Turkish and a Swedish tourist, aged 39 and 22 years, died when the roof of a popular bar collapsed, Greek police said. Kos’s port was put out of action and, across the strait, a small tsunami damaged vehicles parked near Bodrum’s shore.

On Kos, around 115 people were injured, including tourists of various nationalities — 12 of them seriously. More than 350 people visited hospitals in Turkey, though most had only light injuries.

The quake struck at 1:31 a.m. (2231 GMT), and many of Kos’s tourists spent the rest of the night in the open as a precaution, hotel owners said.

“All of a sudden it felt like a train was going right through the room,” said Vernon Hausman, a German holidaying on Kos.

“I told my son: ‘Looks like an earthquake, so let’s get the hell out of here.'”

Greek authorities said the 12 people seriously injured on Kos included tourists from Turkey, Sweden and Norway; four were transferred to Crete and three to Athens.

One person was in a critical condition, while a Swedish tourist lost a leg, the director of the hospital in Crete told Greek Skai TV.

“LUCKY ESCAPE”

Turkish and Greek authorities put the magnitude at 6.3 and 6.6 respectively and reported several aftershocks, with one estimated at 5.1. The U.S. Geological Survey located the epicenter of the main quake in the Aegean Sea, 10 km (6 miles) SSE of Bodrum and about 16 km ENE of Kos’s main port.

Hotel owners in Bodrum told Turkish broadcasters that some tourists were checking out.

“It was a lucky escape and it could have been much worse,” said Issa Kamara, a 38-year old personal trainer at the Maca Kizi hotel in Bodrum’s smart Turkbuku area.

Constantina Svynou, head of the hoteliers’ association in Kos, told Greek state television that many visitors had spent the night outside their hotels.

“There are about 200,000 tourists on the island, we are at the peak season. Our first reaction was to calm the tourists, following basic rules and evacuating hotel buildings,” Svynou said, adding that there had been no injuries at hotels.

Reuters video footage showed residents and tourists walking along the streets of Kos’s main town among collapsed walls and debris. Long, wide cracks appeared in the asphalt on the quayside, which is near a tourist strip of cafes and bars.

“It was terrible … our bed was shaking from the left to the right,” said Jara, a 26-year-old Dutch tourist. “Everything was going crazy.”

Kos’s airport remained operational and Greek Deputy Shipping Minister Nektarios Santorinios flew there. But he said the main port was out of action.

“Passengers on ferries have been rerouted to the islands of Nisyros and Kalymnos,” he told Greek SKAI TV.

TIDAL WAVE

Police said most of the damage in Kos had been to older buildings.

A seismologist told Greek TV that there had been a tidal wave about 70 cm (28 inches) high.

Turkey’s emergency authorities warned against aftershocks, but said there had been no casualties or major damage there. Some power cuts were reported, and a minaret in the town of Islamkoy was said to have collapsed.

The broadcaster CNN Turk said that, in Bodrum, 60 vehicles had been dragged along by the water. It also showed boats listing in a harbor. Several store owners told the broadcaster NTV they had suffered flood damage.

Turkey said it would evacuate around 200 of its citizens from Greece by boat.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the fact that no lives had been lost in Turkey was a sign that “the measures we took have been effective”.

Turkey’s location between the Arabian tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate renders it prone to earthquakes.

In October 2011, more than 600 people died in the eastern province of Van following a 7.2-magnitude quake and powerful aftershocks. In 1999, two massive earthquakes killed about 20,000 people in Turkey’s densely populated northwest.

The same year, a 5.9 magnitude quake killed 143 people in Greece.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, Renee Maltezou, Michele Kambas and George Georgiopoulos in Athens, and Sandra Maler in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Turkey’s publication of U.S. troop locations poses risk, Pentagon says

An aerial view of the Pentagon in Washington August 31, 2010. REUTERS/Jason Reed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The publication by Turkey’s state-run news agency of the locations of what appeared to be U.S. military posts in Syria puts American forces in danger, and the United States has complained to Turkey, a NATO ally, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Anadolu news agency published a report on Tuesday naming the location of 10 U.S. military posts in northern Syria, in some cases detailing the number of U.S and French troops present.

“The release of sensitive military information exposes Coalition forces to unnecessary risk and has the potential to disrupt ongoing operations to defeat ISIS,” said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“While we cannot independently verify the sources that contributed to this story, we would be very concerned if officials from a NATO ally would purposefully endanger our forces by releasing sensitive information,” Pahon said.

He added that the United States has voiced its concerns to Turkey.

Relations between Ankara and Washington have already been shaken by a U.S. decision to support and arm Kurdish YPG fighters to drive Islamic State from their Raqqa stronghold in Syria.

Turkey views the YPG as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the outlawed Kurdish separatist group that has been waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s. It fears an effort to form a contiguous Kurdish state embracing some Turkish territory.

Ankara was infuriated last month when Washington – which has designated the PKK as a terrorist group – announced that it would continue the Obama administration’s policy of arming the YPG, although U.S. officials insist that the United States will retrieve the weapons provided once Islamic State is defeated.

A decision by U.S. prosecutors to charge a dozen Turkish security and police officers after an attack on protesters during Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Washington also angered Ankara.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Leslie Adler)