News archive of May 2015

US Secretary of State John Kerry broke his leg in bike crash May 31, apparently after hitting a curb, and scrapped the rest of a four-nation trip that included an international conference on combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

US Secretary of State John Kerry was hospitalised in Geneva on Sunday after a cycling accident across the border in France, the State Department said.
 

A group of people from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (?HH) prayed before the Israeli ambassador's house in Ankara early May 31 on the fifth anniversary of Israel's 2010 raid on the "Mavi Marmara," a Gaza-bound flotilla ship.

Turkey's Ambassador to Bulgaria Suleyman Gokce has expressed dissatisfaction with the 30-kilometer border fence and the declaration of the Parliament on the fate of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

A group of devout Muslims from across Turkey prayed before the city's historic Hagia Sophia on the 562nd anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Istanbul, demanding that the site be turned back into a mosque.

Tahera Ahmad, aged 31, was denied an unopened can of diet coke aboard her United Airlines flight from Chicago to Washington just after an unopened can was handed to another passenger. Ahmad, director of interfaith engagement and associate chaplain at Northwestern University,  was told that the refusal to hand her a coke was so that she wouldn’t “use it as a weapon.”

Turkey has expressed serious concern that Mahinur Özdemir, a Belgian deputy of Turkish origin, has been expelled from her party for refusing to call the 1915 killings of Ottoman Armenians a ?genocide,? calling on all Belgian political parties and institutions to act in common sense.  

Riot police and water cannons stood on alert on May 31 as Taksim Square and Gezi Park, alongside numerous roads and metro stations leading to Taksim, were closed to prevent gatherings called by Taksim Solidarity, a collective organization of several rights groups at the center of the Gezi Park protests, to commemorate the second anniversary of the nationwide anti-government protests. 

Riot police and water cannons stood on alert on May 31 as Taksim Square and Gezi Park, alongside numerous roads and metro stations leading to Taksim, were closed to prevent gatherings called by Taksim Solidarity, a collective organization of several rights groups at the center of the Gezi Park protests, to commemorate the second anniversary of the nationwide anti-government protests. 

Taksim Square and Gezi Park, in addition to numerous other roads and streets, have been closed to the public on the second anniversary of the anti-government Gezi protests which spread across Turkey in protest at decisions taken under then-PM Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's leadership.