Politics by country

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan on June 20 said he did not expect the United States to impose sanctions on Turkey over its planned purchase of a Russian missile defense system and repeated that it was a 'done deal.'

Chinese President Xi Jinping started a historic visit in Pyongyang on June 20 to reboot a troubled alliance, as he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un face their own challenges with U.S. President Donald Trump.    

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said on June 20 it had shot down a U.S. "spy drone" over its territory after it violated Iranian airspace, according to Iranian state television.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' decision to break with tradition and not address the annual general meeting of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) sent the opposite message to the one he probably intended - to emphatically show that he does not maintain close ties with big business interests. 

Senate President Calin Popescu-Tariceanu endorses the introduction of a voting system by legislative means that can provide a set of possibilities for the citizens and, in this regard, a parliamentary committee will start working as of Thursday.

A possible rise of Kudret Ozersay, the "foreign minister" in the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, to the leadership of the Turkish Cypriot community will be a negative development for the Cyprus issue, the country's Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides said on Wednesday.

The Pension bill will clear the Chamber of Deputies, and the absence of Social Democratic Party (main ruling PSD, ed. n.) senators from a plenary Senate session on Wednesday, where the bill was defeated, will be analysed, has said PM Viorica Dancila, criticising at the same time the Opposition dealing with the bill. "These things show first of all the way they approach the pension law.

"The sanctions of Turkey are coming," Teneo Intelligence's director of research, Wolfango Piccoli, told Bloomberg television on Wednesday after the agency reported that Washington is mulling strict measures against the country if it persists with plans to purchase a Russian missile defense system despite American objections.

As a result of his involvement, Croatia tried to pass a law that tried to protect former Yugoslav secret service agents from extradition to Germany to stand trial. As in many other things, he was unsuccessful.

US President Donald Trump is considering stricter sanctions against Turkey if Ankara insists on plans to purchase a Russian missile defense system, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Citing people familiar with the issue, Bloomberg said that Washington is weighing three "sanctions packages," the severest of which "would all but cripple the already troubled Turkish economy."