Damascus

A house that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, used as his military headquarters in Syria's northern province of Afrin during World War I will be renovated and turned into a museum.

"The house has already been cleaned, and a project to restore and turn the house into a museum has been prepared," the Hatay Governor's Office said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected for a fourth seven-year term in a presidential election on Wednesday dismissed by the opposition as a sham, news wires reported. Al-Assad won 95.1% of the valid votes, head of the Syrian parliament Hamoud Sabagh said. Some 78.6% of eligible voters cast ballots inside and outside Syria, Sabagh added at a press conference in Damascus.

Candidate for the post of President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad and his wife cast their votes at a polling station in the Municipality Council of Douma city in Damascus countryside.

Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Pera Museum presents the exhibition "Etel Adnan: Impossible Homecoming," which brings together 60 years of work by the artist and poet Etel Adnan, whose life spanned nearly a century.

Russian-Turkish relations are very rich, both in terms of contacts at the highest level and their substantive agenda, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on March 31. 

Speaking at a meeting of the Moscow-based think tank Valdai Discussion Club, Lavrov said the two countries are able to bring out solutions, even on issues on which the parties have almost opposite views.

A missile strike targeting Turkish-controlled northern Syria wounded several civilians, the Turkish Defense Ministry said on early March 15, noting that Russia was notified to halt the firing.

With a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government lighted the fuse to which has now become a decade-old conflict, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions displaced.

The last surviving head of the House of Osman, the royal dynasty that once ruled the Ottoman Empire- which ruled vast territories for six centuries, before it was replaced by the Turkish Republic- has died at age 88 in Syria.

Prince Dündar Abdulkerim Osmanoğlu lost his life at a hospital on Jan. 18 in the Syrian capital Damascus, where he had been receiving treatment.

Amnesty International on May 11 said it has documented 18 attacks in northwest Syria carried out by regime and Russian forces over the past year that amounted to "war crimes".    

Russia-backed regime forces have since late April 2019 waged two deadly military campaigns against Syria's last major rebel bastion of Idlib, which has become home for some three million people.    

The Greek Foreign Ministry reportedly plans to reactivate Greece's involvement in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region in tandem with the gradual lifting of the lockdown.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias plans to resume contacts in coming days with his counterparts in the region, while on Tuesday he announced the appointment of Tasia Athanasiou as special envoy for Syria.