Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Turkey could face division if it does not shift to a presidential system, PM Binali Yıldırım has asserted, in response to the main opposition's warning that a change in the administrative system could bring about the separation of the country. 

When Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ visited Washington, he made a very good comment on the Gülen community in a meeting at SETA. 

FBI inspectors in the Brooklyn borough of New York carried out a raid on the house and café of a Turkish-origin man thought to be linked to the movement of Pennsylvania-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, whose extradition Turkey has demanded.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is building its own "Baathist regime," main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said, adding that Turkey is fast "moving away from democracy."

President Tayyip Erdoğan's remarks on Oct. 29, in which he said reinstating the death penalty could be on parliament's agenda "soon," rekindled debates about the quality of democracy in Turkey and also put the country's position in further jeopardy vis-a-vis European institutions.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) head Devlet Bahçeli's recent move to revive the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) efforts for a presidential system has puzzled many, but journalist Kemal Can believes it is part of a bid to extend leverage over the government.

In what was widely seen as a fresh dig at Greece, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday reiterated that several Greek islands in the eastern Aegean "used to be ours."

The Turkish leader made waves recently in Greece when he said that the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the borders between Greece and Turkey in 1923, was unfair on his country.

The Council of Europe warned Turkey against re-establishing the death penalty on Oct. 30. 

"Executing the death penalty is incompatible with membership of the Council of Europe," the 47-member organization, which includes Turkey, tweeted a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his government would ask parliament to consider reintroduction.

Osman Efendioğlu, a local poet living in Turkey's Black Sea province of Rize, has been selected as a Living Human Treasure by UNESCO. 

The 80-year-old Efendioğlu says he knows 90 percent of "atma türkü" (a type of public poetry unique to the eastern Black Sea region) spoken in Rize and is working to collect all this poetry in a book. 

 A Turkish court has barred a leader of an opposition party from leaving the country, accusing her of "belonging to an armed terrorist organisation," the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Oct.29.