Connect with us

World

Turkey Referendum: Erdogan Declares Victory

Published

on

(Last Updated On: October 24, 2022)

Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country’s prime minister have declared victory in a Sunday referendum designed to hand Erdogan sweeping powers.

The Turkish Election Commission has yet to release its official results, and the opposition promised to contest at least a third of the votes cast. But according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, with 99.8% of the ballots counted, Erdogan appeared poised to win with 51.4% of voters casting ballots in his favor.

A total of 47.5 million votes were cast, Anadolu said.

Supreme Electoral Council President Sadi Guven also confirmed that the “yes” votes had prevailed, according to unofficial results. He said official results would arrive in about 10 days, after any objections had been considered.

Voters were asked to endorse an 18-article reform package put forward by the ruling Justice and Development Party that would replace the current system of parliamentary democracy with a powerful executive presidency.

“God willing, these results will be the beginning of a new era in our country,” Erdogan said at a news conference Sunday night, explaining that unofficial totals indicated the “yes” votes had prevailed in the referendum by about 1.3 million ballots, while Anadolu pegged it at closer to 1.14 million.

Several groups fighting in Syria tweeted their congratulations to Turkey, and according to Anadolu, Azerbaijani, Palestinian, Qatari, Pakistani, Hungarian, Macedonian, Saudi, Sudanese and Kenyan leaders passed along congratulatory messages to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry.

Shortly before Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım declared a victory for Erdogan, thousands converged in celebration at the Ankara headquarters of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, that Erdogan founded. The revelers danced, sang, chanted, lit flares, honked their car horns and waved Turkish flags along with white flags saying, “Evet” — Turkish for yes — which appeared to be the way the majority of voters cast their ballots.

Many in attendance saw the referendum’s result as an important message for the world, not just the nation. Wasin Yalcin, 24, said the vote represented “a new hope for us to get rid of foreign forces,” while Yusuf Basaran, 20, said he believed “Europe’s spine has cracked. This referendum will be the most effective thing in the rebirth of the Ottoman Empire.”

Added Aysel Can, a member of the AKP’s women’s branch, “For a strong Islamic state, for a strong Middle East, Turkey had to switch to this executive presidency system. This is a message to the world to shut up; Turkey is getting stronger. America has to know this, too. We are the voice, we are the ears, we are everything for the Middle East.”

Erdogan called Yıldırım and the leaders of the right-wing National Movement and Great Unity parties to offer “congratulations for the referendum victory” before the final vote tally was announced, according to Anadolu.

Yildirim later took the stage at AKP headquarters in Ankara to herald a win for the “yes” vote. He said those who voted yes and those who voted no remain one, and now the country will look to improve the economy, expedite development and fight its foreign and domestic enemies.

“No one should have an offended or broken heart,” the prime minister said. “There’s no stopping. We will continue our path. We will continue marching on from where we left.”

Written by: CNN

World

Russia says evidence links attackers to ‘Ukrainian nationalists’

Published

on

(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Russian investigators said on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”.

Russia has said from the outset that it is pursuing a Ukrainian link to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State (Daesh) has claimed responsibility.

In a statement, the state Investigative Committee said for the first time that it had uncovered evidence of a Ukrainian link, Reuters reported.

“As a result of working with detained terrorists, studying the technical devices seized from them, and analyzing information about financial transactions, evidence was obtained of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists,” the statement said.

However, the White House has described Russia’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in the attack as “nonsense”.

National security spokesman John Kirby said it was clear that ISIS was “solely responsible.”

He added the US passed a written warning of an extremist attack to Russian security services, one of many provided in advance to Moscow.

Russia says however it is suspicious that Washington was able to name the alleged perpetrator of the attack so soon after it took place.

The head of Russia’s FSB security service said earlier this week, again without providing evidence, that he believed Ukraine, along with the U.S. and Britain, were involved.

Continue Reading

World

Spain air drops 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza

Published

on

(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.

Other Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have also resorted to air drops to deliver aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza after nearly six months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Reuters reported.

Aid agencies say deliveries into Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments, have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last week, a U.N.-backed report said a famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.

The Spanish foreign ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians, and to its continued existence.

In January, major donors to UNRWA, including the U.S. and Germany, suspended funding following allegations that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the attacks on Israel by Hamas which triggered the war.

Israel says it puts no limit on the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and blames problems in it reaching civilians there on U.N. agencies, which it says are inefficient, read the report.

Continue Reading

World

UN expert says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, calls for arms embargo

Published

on

(Last Updated On: March 27, 2024)

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo, Reuters reported.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the U.N. rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies, read the report.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation, Reuters reported.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2022 Ariana News. All rights reserved!