International

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Friday to protect Turkiye’s southern border with a “safe zone” in Syria after Ankara launched a barrage of air strikes against Kurdish fighters. Erdogan has long sought to build a “safe zone” with a depth of 30 kilometres inside Syria and repeatedly threatened this year to start a new military operation to achieve …

BRUSSELS: European interior ministers gathered for crisis talks on Friday as an ugly row between Paris and Rome over how to handle would-be refugees forced EU migration reform back onto their agenda. New arrival numbers haven’t yet hit the levels of 2015 and 2016, but European capitals are concerned about new pressure on sea routes from North Africa and overland …

DIJON: The French financial crime prosecutor’s office revealed late on Thursday that it had opened a probe into the government’s use of management consultants and their role in recent election campaigns, prompting a denial from President Emmanuel Macron that he was the main target of the judicial investigation. “I’m not scared of anything,” the 44-year-old head of state told reporters …

KOBANE: In the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, gripped by fear of a Turkish offensive, Saleh Abdo Khalil passes an open-air “museum” of buildings reduced to rubble. “Daesh destroyed these buildings,” the local baker said, using an acronym for the militant Islamic State (IS) group. That danger has passed, but now, he says: “Turkiye wants to destroy the rest of …

BAKU: Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday he would not meet the prime minister of Armenia, as planned in Brussels next month, because Yerevan demanded French leader Emmanuel Macron mediate. Azerbaijan accuses France of backing Armenia in the two countries’ decades-long conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev said he would not meet Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in …

UNITED NATIONS: Violence against women remains the most widespread and pervasive human rights violation in the world, says a UN report released on Friday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In his message on this special day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres reminded the international community “this discrimination, violence and abuse targeting half of humanity comes at …

TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry has condemned a United Nations Human Rights Council decision to probe the country’s response to unrest following the death of Mahsa Amini. A majority of the 47-member council backed launching a probe of Iran’s response to the ongoing protests, as the resolution was adopted on Thursday with 25 votes in favour, 16 abstaining and only six …

DUBAI: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have built up their presence in restive Kurdish regions, state media reported on Friday amid a crackdown on mass protests, as video showed demonstrations in minority Baluch areas of the southeast. The mass demonstrations that erupted after the Sept 16 death in custody of 22-year old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini spread rapidly across the country, but have been most intense …

Police arrested dozens of people in Istanbul on Friday at a rally to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The unauthorised protest convened at Taksim Square, a traditional rallying point for demonstrations. Riot police were out in force and the marchers were impeded by a series of barriers blocking the streets. “Barricades to the murderers, not …

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday made a pitch to Turkish entrepreneurs to invest in a 10,000-megawatt solar power project for Pakistan, saying “my investor is my master”. The premier sought the investment while addressing a meeting of the Pakistan-Turkiye Business Council in Istanbul, where he reached later for a two-day visit.   He told the investors that his government …