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23 feared dead as devastating floods hit Turkey

Adem — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:20:01 +0000

Sixteen people were believed to have been killed in Istanbul province and five in neighboring Tekirdag province, according to provincial officials. Three of the five killed in Tekirdag were from the same family. Another two people were feared dead in Tekirdag province.

Among the dead in Istanbul were seven women textile workers who were trapped in their minivan, CNN sister network CNN Turk reported.

Witnesses in the city of Istanbul said the flash floods hit at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, washing through an industrial zone situated in a low-lying valley.

Dozens of cargo trucks flipped over or were ripped to pieces, the wreckage attracting crowds who watched the chaotic scene from nearby hilltops.

Several roads in Istanbul city remained closed, including the airport road, CNN Turk said. Rescue missions were in full swing with military helicopters whirring overhead. Residents were advised not to wander from their homes.

“We never had such rain in all the time I have been here,” said Zafer Ercan, deputy mayor of the town of

Turkey attacks China genocide

Adem — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:34:14 +0000

Turkey’s prime minister has described ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang region as “a kind of genocide”.

“There is no other way of commenting on this event,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

He spoke after a night-time curfew was reimposed in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, where Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese clashed last Sunday.

Failed EU immigrants are held in Turkish camps

Adem — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:41:22 +0000

Each day, police vans deliver batches of illegal migrants to the Gaziosmanpasha detention center, an hour’s drive north of Istanbul. The migrants have been deported from Greece, an entry point into the European Union, where they had hoped to start better lives.

There are several hundred migrants in this camp, and for most of them, like Sadoon Mahmoud, the failed bid to enter Europe was made at great cost. He paid 5,000 euros ($7,000) to human traffickers to take him from Iraq to Greece.

Unveiling Turkey’s uncalculated richness

Adem — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:33:36 +0000

The Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) has already announced the “new” gross domestic product (GDP) accounts, aiming at revising the extension of national income coverage and improving methodology.
In that regard, revised accounts, which now use 1998 as the base year (the previous base year was 1987), represent major improvements in the consistency of the data, enabling international comparability of figures. The new GDP figures are in compliance with the European System of Accounts (ESA-95), a system deemed more comprehensive.

According to declared figures, as of 2006, the new GDP figure posted an increase of 31.6 percent, amounting to YTL 758.4 billion, up from YTL 576.3 billion in the previous account. The new series’ data show an average annual growth of 7.5 percent during 2002-2006, compared to 7.1 percent in the previous account set.