Anadolu Agency

Ankara is mobilizing aid to protect Iraqi Turkmens on the southern neighbor’s territory in response to the threat posed by the jihadist ISIL Turkey is accelerating its plans to help construct a new refugee camp in northern Iraq for Turkmens who were forced to flee north after the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) captured the Sinjar region.

A total of 232,000 Turkish citizens voted at ballot boxes overseas in the first round of Turkey’s presidential elections, falling far behind the government’s expectations in the first year of the undertaking.

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül has sent a condolence message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai whose cousin, a close ally of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani, was killed in a suicide bomb attack on July 29.

In his message, Gül expressed his sadness to have learned that Hashmat Karzai was killed in a terrorist attack in Kandahar, Anadolu Agency reported July 30.

More than 22,000 retailers risk losing their license to sell cigarettes as the government’s new plan over tobacco use are impending.

Turkey’s long-awaited 8.6 billion Turkish Lira ($4.1 billion) high-speed train link between Istanbul and Ankara has begun operating from Istanbul’s Pendik station.

Turkey has been doing its best to reach out to Iraqi Turkmens caught in the middle of sectarian strife in neighboring Iraq, the head of a government aid agency has said, in an apparent response to criticism that the government has been ignoring the plight of Turkmens.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has issued a warning particularly addressed to Kurdish citizens, asking them not be deceived by a “plot aiming to annul the Lausanne Treaty,” referring to the historic treaty that is widely acclaimed as the basis of the independence and unitary structure of the Turkish state.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has filed separate complaints to both the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office and to Turkey’s top judicial body against Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz, on charges of “insult, slandering and threatening.”

One of the three presidential hopefuls, Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş, has started publicizing all donations received by his campaign.

The Turkish government claims that the Kürecik radar base is not designed to protect Israel, while the opposition loudly insists it is.