Ankara

By George Gilson

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and French President Emmanuel Macron have discussed over the phone the ongoing war in Ukraine, prospects of NATO's expansion with Sweden and Finland, as well as the state of bilateral ties, the Turkish Presidency has announced.

The new Turkish claims of "conditional sovereignty" - where the condition for their concession was, always in Ankara, their demilitarization - exercised by Greece in the Aegean islands as well as in the Dodecanese, are "a new development" and "they are seriously undermining regional peace and stability," Athens said in a letter to the United Nations on May 25, responding to a letter from Turkis

A senior Turkish official said after talks with Swedish and Finnish officials on May 25 that Turkey would not agree to the two Nordic countries joining NATO unless specific steps are taken to address Ankara's objections.

Within the framework of a regulation that Turkey's Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Treasury and Finance Ministry are working on to solve soaring rent prices, the production of social housing will be increased, housing costs will be reduced and new steps will be taken to enable citizens to purchase houses affordably.

An Anatolian Pars, an endangered leopard subspecies of Iranian Pars, has been spotted for the first time in a decade, the provincial directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks in the eastern province of Van has announced.

Around 4 million people have visited an official website displaying the criteria to become Turkey's first astronaut, with more than 31,000 people applying in just 48 hours, Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank has said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the website "uzaya.gov.tr" is open for submissions late on May 23.

By George Gilson

Fewer than ten days after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis received repeated standing ovations from a Joint Session of the US Congress, the State Department is keeping an equal distance between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, even as Ankara is ratcheting up tensions in the Aegean and allowing migrant boats to reach the shores of the Aegean islands of Samos.

Turkey has called on Sweden and Finland to give concrete assurances in their fight against terrorism, particularly the PKK and its Syrian offshoot YPG, if they want to join NATO. The message was delivered to the Nordic states at a three-way meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara on May 25.

Hungary has imposed a state of emergency, and Viktor Orbn states that Budapest will stay away from the war.
Ursula von der Leyen called for talks with Moscow to enable the delivery of wheat, which was captured in Ukraine because Russia blocked the ports.