Latest News from Turkey

There are plenty of TV news channels in Turkey, but among them, CNN Türk stands out. For most of the "news channels" are actually propaganda outlets - the overwhelming majority of them for the government, just a few of them against the government. CNN Türk, however, tries to be non-partisan and objective.

I do not refrain from repeating this each time: If Turkey is to become a prosperous country, it will do it through scientific and technologic developments.

Sweden is holding a Turkish cargo ship in a southwestern dock, port authorities said Jan. 26, amid reports that it was carrying explosives and was bound for the Middle East.

The College of Commissioners is expected to discuss tomorrow a draft on suspending the Schengen Agreement for Greece for two years, which will mean exclusion of Greece from the European zone, French newspaper  Le Monde reports.

Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party's (MHP) deputy chairman Oktay Vural replaced his leader, Devlet Bahçeli, who is still recovering from a heart surgery, for the first time at the party's weekly group meeting at parliament on Jan. 26. 

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli had a scheduled, preventative open-heart surgery on Jan. 20. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has tasked the country's top auditing board to probe the activities of the "parallel state structure," a purported illegal organization allegedly led by U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, more than a year after getting the country's top national body to list the "movement" as a threat. 

The Executive Committee of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (H.R. Network) issued a statement endorsed by 28 Nobel laureates in support of Turkish academics who have come under fire for signing a petition calling for an end to military operations in southeast Turkey.