Free Republic

Archaeologists discovered a rare 1,700-year-old amphora during excavations at the Diyarbakir Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southeastern Turkey.Located in the historic Sur district, restoration work at the fortress is still being carried out by the Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality.The discovery was made during the fifth stage of the excavations, funded by the Ministry of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change and jointly carried out by the Diyarbakir Museum Directorate.Sermed Azizoglu, an official from the municipality's construction affairs office, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that they would like to pass on the fortress' 2,000-year-old heritage to the next generations.Noting that the...

TURKEY'S Islamist government has stepped up its war on Christianity by seizing all the churches in one city and declaring them state property. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken control of six churches in the war-torn southeastern city of Diyarbakir in his latest move to squash freedom of speech and religious movement. The state-sanctioned seizure is just the latest in a number of worrying developments to come out of increasingly hardline Turkey, which is in advanced talks with the EU over visa-free travel for its 80 million citizens. Included in the seizures are Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches, one of...

A day after Turkey arrested two journalists for their report exposing Erdogan's weapons deliveries to "extremist groups" in Syria, confirming that no dissent to the president's foreign policy would be allowed, today a new riot has erupted in Istanbul following the dramatic murder in broad daylight of Tahir Elci, the president of the Turkish bar association in southeastern Diyarbakir province, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while giving a public speech. A campaigner for Kurdish rights, Elci had been criticized for challenging Turkey's official stance of calling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist organization. A Turkish prosecutor last...

ISTANBUL--A prominent human-rights lawyer was shot dead on Saturday after wrapping up a news conference in which he had appealed for calm, sparking fresh protests across the country and clouding efforts to bring a halt to continuing violence in Turkey's Kurdish southeast. Tahir Elci, one of the country's best-known advocates for Kurdish rights, was shot in the head during a chaotic gunbattle in Diyarbakir, the de facto capital for Turkey's Kurdish minority, which broke out after the killing of a policeman. It was unknown who fired the shot that killed Mr. Elci, though Kurdish politicians believe he was shot deliberately.

A Turkish official says a prominent lawyer, who faced a prison term on charges of supporting Turkey's Kurdish rebels, has been killed in attack. Firat Anli, mayor of Diyarbakir city, said Tahir Elci was shot on Saturday while he was making a press statement. Elci, the head of the bar association in the mainly Kurdish city, was detained last month for saying during a live news program that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is not a terrorist organization.