Ankara

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has waded into the heated debate over the possible inclusion of Ottoman language classes in the high school curriculum, vowing that the classes will be introduced “no matter what they say.”

New European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was to meet Turkish leaders Dec. 8 for talks expected to focus partly on the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in neighboring Syria.

"The Syrian crisis is going to be one of the key issues on her agenda," an EU official told AFP on Dec. 8. Turkey's EU membership ambitions were also up for discussion.

South Stream Bulgaria head Dimitar Gogov has downplayed recent comments that Sofia would suffer thousands of millions of BGN in losses after the gas pipeline project was suspended last week.

Gogov told private national channel bTV projected revenues would be EUR 448 M if South Stream had not been abandoned, but added the sum was not the country's profit, but general cash flow.

The visit by Turkish Prime Minister Davutoğlu to Athens last weekend was very important in terms of number of ministers accompanying him, along with the number of members of Turkey’s business elite.  The delegation had gone there for “business,” as Davutoğlu stated in his speech at the end of the Turkish-Greek High Level Strategic Council.

The upcoming ‘Fantasturka?

Greece perceives both the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and the Sothern Energy Corridor, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos said during the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Venizelos declared while at a Greek-Turkish business forum in Athens that the Southern Energy Corridor was "opening a new page in the relations between the two countries".

The third Greek-Turkish High-Level Cooperation Council ended on Saturday with a joint statement pledging goodwill and the intention for closer bilateral cooperation in trade, tourism and energy, as well as in curbing illegal immigration.

Turkish PM Davutoğlu has called for a closer cooperation with Greece during his visit to Athens as part of the third High Level Strategic Council between both countries, while playing down differences, particularly on the Cyprus issue

A report drafted by a civil rights organization has drawn a picture of the plight of transgender individuals in Turkey, finding that half of all transgender women sex workers in the country have been subjected to physical violence from police. It also states that the murder of transgender individuals in Turkey amounts to 40 percent of the total number of such killings in all of Europe.

The issue of updating the Customs Union between Turkey and the EU will be on the agenda of a visit from three EU officials to Ankara, sources tell HDN The issue of updating the Customs Union between Turkey and the EU to reflect Ankara’s concerns about the EU’s free trade agreements with third parties will be on the agenda of a visit from three high ranking EU officials to Ankara on Dec.