AKP party

Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Monday met with China's Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) during a state visit to China, state-run Athens-Macedonia (ANA-MPA) news agency reports.

Pavlopoulos discussed Greece's key foreign policy issues, particularly the Cyprus problem, ANA-MPA said.

As Ankara insists on its aim of drilling in Cyprus's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), despite vehement objections by the European Union, another Turkish official scaled up tensions further over the weekend, calling on Cyprus to "remember 1974," referring to Turkey's invasion of the island.

Amid Ankara's stated plans to drill in Cyprus's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), another Turkish official scaled up tensions further over the weekend, calling on Cyprus to "remember 1974," referring to Turkey's invasion of the island.

The spokesman for Turkey's ruling AKP party has condemned Greece's courts for siding with "Turkey's enemies and coup plotters," after Greece's supreme administrate court published a decision giving one of the men asylum status.

Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos has accused Turkey of not contributing to stability in the region in the wake of further tension between Athens and Ankara, Ekathimerini reported.

A Turkish court handed down a historic prison sentence of 217 years, four months, and 15 days to a Quran assistant instructor this week for kidnapping and sexually abusing nine of his students between the ages of nine and 13.

The Turkish Parliament is attempting to pass an internal rule according to which any MP using the term “Kurdistan” in the country’s national assembly should be be fined. The draft proposal has been approved by the ruling pro-Erdogan AKP party and its nationalist coalition partner MHP. The proposed changes would also ban MPs who abstain from taking the oath of parliamentary privileges.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has decided to limit its criticism of the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) "justice march" in the coming period. 

An event Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is planning to hold in Germany has drawn criticism from a wide array of German politicians, according to German media reports on Wednesday.

Lawmakers in Turkey have approved new articles of a proposed consitutional reform package allowing for changes to the country's top judicial body, regulation of the annual budget and a switch of the government system, local media report.