Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an opposition daily that published footage purportedly showing trucks belonging to a state intelligence service carrying weapons to rebels in Syria, vowing it would pay a “heavy price.”
“The slander against the [Turkish] National Intelligence Organization [MIT] and the illegitimate operation [against MIT trucks] is an espionage activity at one point,” Erdogan told state-run TRT television late on Sunday. “This newspaper was also involved in this espionage activity.”
“The person who made the story will pay a heavy price. I will not let him get away with it,” said the president, who has threatened other news outlets before this week’s parliamentary election.
The footage published on the opposition Cumhuriyet daily’s Web site on Friday shows inspectors searching a metallic container watched by security officers, a prosecutor and sniffer dogs.
The daily said the trucks carried mortar shells, ammunition and hundreds of grenade launchers hidden under boxes of antibiotics marked as “fragile.”
Turkish prosecutors swiftly opened an investigation into the daily on charges of “obtaining information on state security,” “political and military espionage” and “propaganda for a terrorist organization.”
Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar hit back at Erdogan, tweeting: “We are not civil servants, but journalists. Our duty is not to hide the state’s dirty secrets, but to call it to account in the name of people.”
“The person who committed this crime will pay a heavy price,” he added, referring to Erdogan. “We will not let him get away with it.”
Turkey has denied aiding militants in Syria including the Islamic State group, saying the intercepted aid was bound for the Turkmen minority in Syria.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS