İzmir

Turkey's population saw an increase of over one million compared to last year, reaching 79,814,871 people, the Turkish Statistics Institute announced on Jan. 31.

According to 2016 results from the records of Address Based Population Registration System, males made up 50.2 percent of the total population and females made up 49.8 percent.

A Roman theater, stuck in between shanty towns in the Aegean province of İzmir's Kadifekale, is being expropriated for nearly 12 million Turkish liras with plans to unearth its fascinating 16,000-person capacity. 

It is believed that the theater, where the second century Christian bishop of İzmir St. Polycarp was killed, would be a great center for the world of Christianity. 

Many Japanese companies have recently made investments in the Aegean province of İzmir, which is seen as an opening gate to European, Middle Eastern and North African markets, İzmir Development Agency (İZKA) has said, as reported by state-run Anadolu Agency on Jan. 18. 

Turkish police have been conducting operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northwestern province of Bursa and the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, a day after Reina attacker Abdulkadir Masharipov was apprehended in an operation in Istanbul's Esenyurt district. 

Police in the northwestern province of Bursa have apprehended a total of 27 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suspects along with 29 children due to their alleged links to a terror attack in Istanbul's Reina nightclub at New Year's, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Jan. 18.

Three people were detained in conneciton to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) bomb attack in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, as the death toll of the Jan. 16 attack rose to four. 

Four police officers were killed and two others were wounded on Jan. 16 in a PKK bomb attack targeting an armored police vehicle in Diyarbakır's Sur district. 

A prosecutor who acted as a secret witness in the Ergenekon coup plot case has become a witness in a case into the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), which is widely believed to have masterminded the July 2016 failed coup. 

Police in Istanbul apprehended late on Jan. 16 a gunman who killed 39 people in a terror attack on the city's glamorous Reina nightclub in the Ortaköy neighborhood early on Jan. 1, as details over the course of his 16 days on the run came to light.

The mass shooting at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Eve was carried out professionally with the involvement of an intelligence organization, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said Jan. 16.

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A man took his wife and child hostages in the Aegean province of İzmir on Jan.13, Doğan News Agency has reported.

Hostage situation occurred in Buca district of İzmir.