Human geography

Here are seven great holiday destinations where you can rest your head during short holidays without getting too far from Istanbul!

Disgruntled local authority workers ride to Parliament in a motorcycle rally in downtown Athens, on Wednesday. Their rally and protest march caused traffic jams in the center of the Greek capital, which is also seeing a buildup of trash on the streets due to a two-day strike called by the municipal workers' union, POE-OTA.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged on Tuesday that the long-delayed Thessaloniki metro will be up and running in April 2023.

After two meetings with local officials at the Ministry of Macedonia-Thrace, he said he was pleased that timetables are being kept, adding that the problems with the city's public transport will improve at the start of 2020. 

Turkey's metropolis Istanbul has been ranked 17th in the list of the most beautiful cities in the world by online travel agency Flight Network. Click through for the top 20 most beautiful cities in photos… (Photos: Alamy)

Unidentified vandals early on Monday wreaked damage to the branch of a bank in the outskirts of Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. 

The assailants broke the glass facade of the branch and damaged its ATM.

Officers of the northern city's Toumba district were investigating the incident which occurred at 5 a.m. 

For the first time in history, tourists in Turkey's megacity Istanbul are expected to exceed the city's own residents in number, the city's chamber of commerce president said on Oct. 18.

Over 34,000 irregular migrants were transferred to repatriation centers across Turkey in the last four months, the Istanbul Governorship said on Oct. 18.     

This is the latest in a series of articles about the demographic crisis facing Central and Southeast Europe. See more.

But serious analysis of the region's demographic decline, depopulation and the hollowing out of the labour force is harder to find. Possibly this is because governments have neither credible answers nor the resources available to change things.

An abusive father in the metropolis Istanbul was detained on Oct. 9, after a video of him beating up his 19-year-old daughter went viral on social media.

Turkey is set to host an international conference on jewelry and gemstone next week in Istanbul.