istanbul metropolitan municipality

Turkey on Feb. 24 marked the anniversary of 1942 Struma disaster, which killed hundreds of people when a vessel carrying Jewish refugees was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Black Sea.

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said commemoration ceremonies have been annually held in Istanbul's Sarayburnu district on Feb. 24 since 2015.

Heavy snowfall and cold weather conditions disrupted traffic and paralyzed daily life in Istanbul on Feb. 17.

According to the Metropolitan Disaster Coordination Center (AKOM), temperatures will rise to seasonal norms on Feb. 18.

"Snow thickness in the high and rural areas of the city reached up to 30 centimeters," said AKOM in a statement.

A funeral was held on Feb. 14 for Kadir Topbaş, former mayor of the Turkish metropolis Istanbul. He died on Feb. 13 at the age of 76.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also attended the ceremony at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul.

"We are facing a great calamity. Coronavirus has separated from us many of our companions," Erdoğan said.

After moving in from Turkey's northwestern Thrace region, cold weather coming from the Balkans finally arrived in Istanbul on the weekend, which coincided with a curfew imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Feb. 14 midnight, much of the city was covered in white as the Asian districts of the 16-million metropolis were last to receive heavy snowfall.

Istanbul's western and northern outskirts were partly covered in snow on Feb. 12 following warnings from both meteorological and local authorities.

Snowfall was partially effective in districts located in the far west of the metropolis such as Beylikdüzü, Büyükçekmece, Çatalca and Silivri.

Turkey's largest city was hit with a heavy storm early on Feb. 9, with trees and roofs toppled. 

The storm began with light rain on Istanbul's European districts including Sultangazi, Gaziosmanpaşa, Bakırköy, Bağcılar, Beyoğlu, Kağıthane, Bayrampaşa and Esenler.

One of the main causes of more than 19,000 fires that occurred in the first 11 months of 2020 in Istanbul were cigarette butts, according to data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

Istanbul's Fire Department extinguished 19,087 fires in this period, and cigarette butts were the cause of 7,595 of them, the state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

People have started selling cemetery plots on the black market for prices as high as 2 million Turkish Liras ($264,000), as finding graves in Istanbul, a metropolis where 70,000 people die every year on average, has become increasingly difficult.

The Istanbul Governor's Office has launched an inquiry into a portrait of Ottoman Emperor Mehmet the Conqueror, which the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality had bought in an auction in London for $1.1 million, after allegations that the painting could be fake.

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) project to ease the city's notorious traffic jams, daily Milliyet has reported.