Diyarbakır

Turkey has made it mandatory for people to wear face masks in public in five more provinces as part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, the country's health minister said early on June 16. 

Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter that wearing masks is mandatory in Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Kayseri, Rize and Şanlıurfa provinces. The mask rule is applied in 42 provinces.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases has been declining in Istanbul and İzmir, two of Turkey's most populous cities, but there has been an increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases in certain provinces in the country's Central Anatolia as well as eastern and southeastern regions, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said.

The Turkish president on May 30 extended condolences for the two soldiers and a police officer killed in southeastern Turkey.

Five years into a drive to restore a historical district in Diyarbakır province hit by attacks by the terror PKK
group, the Turkish government has renovated more than 20 historical monuments, including churches, a provincial official told Anadolu Agency.

Inverted tulips that grow in the mountainous regions of Anatolia in the spring have started to blossom on Mount Sakız on the border of the southeastern and eastern provinces of Diyarbakır and Elazığ.

With the arrival of spring, the orange, red and yellows tulips are out in all their glory and have added color to the ever-increasing vivid landscape.

At least five people were arrested over alleged links to April 8's terror attack in southeastern Turkey, security sources said.

Earlier on April 9, prosecutors in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır issued warrants for six suspects over the attack in Kulp district which claimed the lives of five villagers.

Turkish prosecutors sought an aggravated life sentence on March 26 for a suspect accused in the 2015 killing of Tahir Elçi, the former head of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, and two police officers. 

Five mayors from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in southeastern Turkey have been detained over alleged terror links, according to local media reports.

Turkey appointed acting mayors to four municipalities in the region.

Turkey has deported 7,918 foreign terrorists of 102 different nationalities so far, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Feb. 27.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Soylu stated that Turkey also banned the entry of over 90,000 foreigners affiliated with terrorist organizations. 

The Culture and Tourism Ministry has launched an investigation into the suicide of an archeologist, Merve Kaçmış, employed at the world-known Zeugma Museum in the southeastern province of Gaziantep.

It is claimed that she was exposed to workplace bullying after rejecting to take the responsibility of about 100 unregistered artifacts.