The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that a senior Turkish diplomat was removed from his post and would not return to Taipei after being accused of assaulting police officers and sexual harassment.
Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Chen Chun-shen (陳俊賢) said the Turkish government dismissed Turkish Office Deputy Representative Halil Ibrahim Dokuyucu from his post as punishment for the social disturbance he caused in Taipei.
“Both Taipei and Ankara need to repair their relations and move them in a positive direction following the incidents. That was why the Turkish government did not to let Dokuyucu return to Taiwan,” Chen said at a routine news conference.
Dokuyucu left Taiwan on Aug. 18 shortly after media reports that he allegedly assaulted police officers while drunk at a Taipei nightclub in early July.
A few days later, a Taiwanese woman accused Dokuyucu of sexually assaulting her at a bar in July.
Dokuyucu claimed to have diplomatic immunity, but 53 days later, the ministry announced that he did not have immunity, due to the July 15 thwarted military coup in Ankara.
Dismissing criticism that the ministry had allowed Dokuyucu to flee, Chen said the envoy was not facing any legal issues at the time of his departure.
“The sexual assault allegations emerged after Dokuyucu returned to his home country... As he has apologized to the police officers he scuffled with and offered to pay for any damaged items, he was not facing any charges when he left,” Chen said.
Stressing that the ministry is determined to protect the rights of Taiwanese, Chen said that unless Dokuyucu was wanted on criminal charges, it was not possible for the ministry to prevent him from leaving the country because a woman reported being wrongfully treated.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching