Turkey

45 (percent): The vote President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won in Soma in the March 30 local elections.

301: The number of miners who died in Soma in the tragic accident in May (after which this columnist predicted that Mr. Erdoğan would perform better in Soma).

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has announced that the bodies of two of the 18 trapped miners in a flooded mine in Central Anatolia have been recovered 10 days after the disaster.

Seeing the country divided has always been an elemental fear in Turkey. Myths about “outside powers which are out to divide us” have always abounded in our political and social lore. Trying to maintain national unity by force has more often than not been the case.

A new board of experts from Istanbul Technical University will reexamine the digital data in the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) coup plot case, according to an interim court ruling.

The previous expert reports on digital data in the case were rejected by the Anatolian 4th Heavy Penalty Court in Istanbul, and a new board of experts will reexamine the data.

Eight people were detained by Istanbul anti-terror police early on Nov. 5 in an operation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Istanbul Police Department’s anti-terror teams, together with riot police, raided a number of addresses in the Pendik and Sultanbeyli districts, both located on the Anatolian side of the city.

All investments in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces will henceforth be protected by the gendarmerie forces, in addition to private security firms, Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said.

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who joined the battle for the Syrian border town of Kobane have been heavily shelling the positions of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, a commander told AFP.

A mausoleum project prepared for 301 miners who were killed in the country’s deadliest-ever mining accident in May in Soma will be constructed by the end of the year.

Graves for 86 workers who were killed in separate mine accidents in Soma in the past will also be placed in the mausoleum, along with the ones for the 301 miners.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has released at least 93 Syrian Kurds from the flashpoint town of Kobane who were kidnapped in February, a monitor said Nov. 4.
      
They were among more than 160 Kurds abducted as they travelled east through Syria en route for Iraqi Kurdistan, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
      

Only 19 percent of Turks are in favor of the U.S., while 73 percent dislike the country, a survey conducted by the PEW Research Center has revealed. The survey, which was conducted in 2013 and announced recently, also showed that of all countries, Turks like their own the most.