Category: 2. Middle East

With the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor on corruption charges, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan has got rid of his most powerful opponent. Now his sights are set on the main opposition CHP, analysts say.

“When the big fishes are exposed, they won’t dare to look their own families in the eye, let alone the nation,” the president warned this week, hinting at a fresh legal action targeting the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Last week, Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested along with…

Turkey intensified its crackdown on anti-government protests on Friday, arresting the lawyer of the jailed Istanbul mayor and targeting more journalists, as the country faces its biggest wave of unrest in more than a decade.

Nine days after the arrest and subsequent jailing of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, demonstrators were again out on the streets on Thursday night, despite a growing sense of fear.

Overnight, police raided more homes, and Imamoglu — seen as President…

BEIRUT — Israeli warplanes launched at least three airstrikes in Beirut on Friday, according to local media, shortly after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a known Hezbollah stronghold called Dahiyeh.

No casualties have been reported so far.

The strikes, the first to hit Beirut since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on Nov. 27, came after two rockets were launched from southern Beirut…

Israel said on Friday it will strike anywhere in Lebanon it sees a threat, after rocket fire prompted it to bomb Beirut for the first time during the fragile four-month-old truce with Hezbollah.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described the strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs as “a dangerous escalation” and French President Emmanuel Macron called it an “unacceptable” truce violation.

The health ministry reported no casualties from the Beirut attack but said Israeli strikes in the south…

Israel’s defence minister threatened Beirut on Friday after rocket fire from Lebanon, rattling an already fragile truce that had largely ended more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah.

“If there is no quiet in Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee communities, there will be no quiet in Beirut either,” said defence chief Israel Katz, referring to the northern towns towards which the rockets were launched.

Israel’s military said in a statement Friday morning that two “projectiles” were launched…