Demirören News Agency

A picture taken with a drone shows a general view over an area with many collapsed buildings after a powerful earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, 13 February 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU

Some 13.4 million foreign tourists arrived in Antalya by air last year, marking a 48 percent increase from 2021.

Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, reached those numbers despite the fallout from the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

The building of a university in Istanbul has collapsed due to a deep foundation pit opened at a construction site nearby, Demirören News Agency has reported.

"The sustaining wall of the construction site fell late on Oct. 23, causing the building of Arel University to collapse in the metropolis' Sefaköy neighborhood," the agency wrote on Oct. 24.

An old Jewish neighborhood in the western province of İzmir, where some nine synagogues exist, will convert into an open museum, says the project's coordinator.

"The region inside the Historical Kemeraltı Bazaar will be a focus of interest of the city's faith and culture tourism," Nesim Bencoya, an expert from the İzmir Jewish Heritage Project, told Demirören News Agency on Oct. 18.

An excavation team has unearthed the exact place of the tomb of Saint Nicholas, also known as "Santa Claus," and the floor on which he walked, inside the St. Nicholas Church in the southern province of Antalya's Demre district.

Security forces have detained seven people convicted over their links to FETÖ while trying to flee to Greece with a speedboat from the western province of İzmir, Demirören News Agency has reported.

Along with the FETÖ suspects, four organizers were also caught, the agency said on Sept. 18.

Famous pop singer Gülşen Bayraktar Çolakoğlu, who came under controversy and is facing trial on charges of "inciting hatred" over her remarks she made about "İmam Hatip" religious schools, has decided to cancel some 50 shows until the new year.

The existence of fortune-telling cafes, which are coffee shops where all kinds of fortune-telling arts are performed, such as Turkish coffee to hand and tarot card reading, is against the law, and their owners should be punished, suggests a lawyer.

Türkiye's National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has caught two PKK/KCK terrorists in Iraq's Makhmour in an operation and brought them to Türkiye, Demirören News Agency has reported.

The Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has neutralized Vedat Aksaç, a terrorist who was in the so-called PKK's "hit squad," in northern Iraq, Demirören News Agency has reported.

Two other terrorists were neutralized in an operation on Sept. 5.