Ankara

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will have talks in Turkey on Nov. 21 as part of his trip including Morocco and Ukraine, according to diplomatic sources.

The vice president will meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and a number of nongovernmental representatives.

Turkey’s Chamber of Architects has penned a letter to Pope Francis, calling on him not to attend a ceremony set to be held at the country’s new presidential palace during his upcoming visit as the guest of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Pope Francis is set to be the first house guest at the Presidential Palace, colloquially known as the Ak Saray (White Palace), on Nov. 28.

The Culture Ministry has announced that a total of 20,269,000 people visited Turkish museums and historic sites in the first eight months of 2014. The total number throughout the whole of 2013 was 29,481,000. Here is the list of the top 10 most visited museums in Turkey, according to the latest figures:
1) Topkapı Palace, Istanbul: 3,760,548 visitors

Pope Francis is set to be the first house guest at Turkey's new presidential palace during a visit to Turkey at the end of the month.

One of the ongoing controversies in Turkey is the new “Presidential Palace” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had built for himself in the outskirts of Ankara. The complex is simply huge, with some 1,000 rooms and a size six times bigger than that of the White House in Washington D.C. It cost Turkish tax payers $615 million according to figures given by the Finance Ministry.

Syrian air missile defense systems have locked onto Turkish military aircrafts almost 400 times this year, as compared to only once in 2012, Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz has disclosed.

Suspicious envelopes were sent to the Turkish Foreign Ministry and a building hosting three embassies in Ankara on Oct. 30, days after a substance sent to western consulates in Istanbul proved to be an inoffensive material similar to chalk dust.

A major exhibition on the Seljuks will be held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art without loans from Turkey.

Everything would have come up roses between Ankara and Tehran. Certain things did come up roses. Trade, of both the conventional and shady varieties, actually did prosper. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while he was still the prime minister, said he felt that Tehran was his second home.

Nine members of the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), including its chairman, Osman Yıldırım, were detained in an operation in Ankara on Oct. 28 over fraud allegations.

Yıldırım and other officials are accused of leaking confidential information about the project for a maiden light airplane manufactured in Turkey, the Türkkuşu.