Turkish Kurdistan

The Turkish State Meteorology Services has issued alerts for 17 of Türkiye's all 81 provinces as harsh weather continues to wreak havoc in the country and temperatures drop by 8 to 12 degrees.

An Iraqi group of five people, who were on their way to a private hospital in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, were killed in an armed attack on early Jan. 19 in the neighboring province of Mardin.

The perpetrators of the armed attack on the jeep, which set off from Iraq's Duhok Governorate, followed the vehicle from the Habur Border Gate, according to the local media.

Diyarbakır Prison, which has long been associated with cruelty, torture, and inhumane acts after the Sept. 12, 1980, military coup, turns into a museum, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said visiting the southeastern province on Oct. 23.

As a cold spell takes its toll in the country, the Turkish State Meteorological Service has issued a "yellow alert" for 18 of Türkiye's 81 provinces, with the Black Sea and Eastern Anatolia regions likely to witness sleet and occasional snowfall the coming weekend.

The Sur Cultural Road Festival, organized for the first time this year within the scope of the Turkish Cultural Road Festival events, has started in Diyarbakır.

Organized by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the festival will host more than 600 events with the participation of more than 2,000 artists until Oct. 16.

Some 37 of the "Diyarbakır mothers," a group of mothers carrying out sit-in protests claiming that their children were abducted by the PKK, have been reunited with their children so far, Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun has said.

The outcry of "Diyarbakır mothers," several mothers carrying out sit-in protests claiming that their children were abducted by the PKK, has been recognized by the global public opinion as terror actions have been stated in many international reports, according to a workshop carried out in Istanbul.

Mehmet Kuşman, who has been a volunteer guard at a Urartian castle in the eastern province of Van and is one of the few people in the world who speaks the Urartian language, has said that he will quit his voluntary job in November.

The number of deaths due to drugs in Türkiye has been declining regularly in the last five years, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has said.

"We will not let our kids, youth to fall in this quicksand [of drugs] with our determination in our fight against the drugs," Soylu said on Twitter on June 25.

Türkiye has conducted its most extensive anti-drug operations with the participation of some 4,200 police officers in 11 of the 81 provinces, the country's interior minister has said, adding that some drug barons and baronesses were caught.

Making a press conference at 7 a.m. on June 21, the minister said the police units started the raids, named "Eradication Operations," at 4 a.m.