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President Donald Trump said he may travel to Turkey for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, as he doesn’t believe President Vladimir Putin would show if he isn’t there. "I don’t know if he’s showing up," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I know he would like me to be there. And that's a possibility." -snip- The president noted that he has a "full day" scheduled in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Thursday, and he’d planned on sending Secretary of State and interim national security advisor Marco Rubio. But, he added, "I don't know that [Putin] would be there...

Vladimir Putin will not show up for peace talks because his 25-year stranglehold on Russia ends if he yields, experts say. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to an offer of direct talks aimed at achieving peace, but Moscow said it would refuse to honour a ceasefire before and during any meeting. The showdown was tentatively set for Istanbul with US President Donald Trump saying he would show up, but the meeting has yet to be confirmed. The apparent foot-dragging by the Kremlin was seen as a deliberate ploy to continue a bloody war with its neighbour that has rumbled...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the "way forward for a ceasefire" in Ukraine with European counterparts, including the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and the EU's foreign policy chief, the State Department said on Monday. Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha and his German and Polish counterparts were also on the call, according to the readout.

U.S. and European diplomats went on a flurry of calls in the hours after U.S. President Donald Trump offered on Monday to join prospective Ukraine-Russia talks later this week, trying to find a path that would bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Trump's surprise offer to join the talks on Thursday in Istanbul came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a fresh twist to the stop-start peace talks process, said he would travel Turkey and wait to meet President Vladimir Putin there. -snip- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks late on Monday with his Turkish...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call, according to Türkiye’s Presidential Communications Directorate, News.Az reports. It was noted that the parties discussed Turkiye-Russia relations, regional and global issues. Erdogan expressed his satisfaction with Putin's statement on the resumption of Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, and stressed that Turkiye is ready to host the discussions. The Turkish President also noted that a window of opportunity for peace has opened, and that ensuring a ceasefire will create the necessary environment for peace talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday welcomed Russia’s offer for direct peace talks, but insisted there must be a full, temporary ceasefire in place before negotiations can start. Zelenskyy, writing on X, called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s counter-offer to start talks without a ceasefire a “positive sign,” and said that “the entire world has been waiting for this for a very long time.”

Türkiye is ready to host negotiations for a cease-fire and permanent peace between Russia and Ukraine, President Tayyip Erdoğan said Sunday. Erdoğan held a key phone call wıth Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin amid Moscow's overtures for cease-fire negotiations with Ukraine. His comments came during a phone call with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, the presidential office confirmed. Erdoğan told Macron that a "historic turning point" has been reached in efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war. "A historic turning point has been reached in efforts to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, that this opportunity must be seized, and that Türkiye...

Istanbul mayor's arrest has triggered mass demonstrations.. Imamoglu was expected to challenge Erdogan in next election.. Biggest protests in more than a decade have hit markets.. ISTANBUL, - Hundreds of thousands of Turks protested in Istanbul on Saturday against the jailing of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan's main rival, sustaining the largest demonstrations Turkey has seen in more than a decade. A letter from Imamoglu was read out at the rally to cheers from the crowd. "I have no fear, you are behind me and by my side. I have no fear because the nation is united. The nation...

Built as Byzantium around 657 BC and then renamed Constantinople in the 4th century CE after Constantine the Great made the city his capital, the city of Istanbul officially received its present name on this day in 1930. Surprisingly, the capital of the Byzantine Empire was not renamed after the Ottomans captured it in 1453. Variations of “Constantinople” continued to be used by the Turkish-speaking conquerors long after they took control of the city. “It’s a fact that the Ottomans called Istanbul ‘Kostantiniyye,’ among other names, in thousands of their official documents,” said Christoph Herzog, chair of Turkish studies at...

Protests have erupted across Turkey against Erdogan’s oppressive Islamist government. Footage of massive protests, after Erdogan imprisoned his opposition candidate. EU is actually stepping in. Transcript linked below video.

Imamoglu, the popular 53-year-old mayor, was seen as the next opposition party candidate for the Turkish presidency and was expected to be nominated on Sunday. Charges for the arrest, which Imamoglu and his party reject, include terrorism and organized crime. In a statement, Imamoglu's Republican People's Party flatly rejected the charges against the Istanbul mayor, calling the move a coup. The Turkish lira fell to a record low against the dollar and the country's benchmark stock index dropped by as much as 7% following the surprise arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — a rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a popular figure, had basked in the glow of what he often jokingly dubbed his political miracle — the only person to have beaten Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party in not one, but three local elections. On Wednesday, dozens of police officers raided his residence around dawn and detained him for questioning as part of investigations into alleged corruption and terror links. Many see the arrest as part of a broader campaign to undermine the mayor and eliminate a key challenger to Erdogan before the next presidential elections. The...

Russian and U.S. diplomats met in Turkey on Thursday for talks to resolve disputes over the work of their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, a first test of their ability to reset wider relations and work towards ending the war in Ukraine. -snip- The Russian team arrived in a black Mercedes van for the start of the meeting at the gated residence of the U.S. consul general in Istanbul. Russian state TV said the talks were expected to last five to six hours.

The Balkan Peninsula... by the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was in steep decline. This decline fueled nationalist movements in the Balkans, where various ethnic groups sought independence or territorial expansion. Countries like Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro, which had gained independence or autonomy in the previous century, aspired to expand their territories further, often at the expense of their neighbors and the Ottoman Empire. These aspirations were driven by both nationalistic fervor and the desire to control strategic territories like Macedonia, a region with a highly diverse population. In response to these growing tensions, the Balkan League—a coalition...

It was Christmas 2011, a year after Roman Abramovich had taken delivery of his new superyacht, Eclipse. But it seemed the oligarch would not be using it over the festive period - records show it had been chartered by a company based in the British Virgin Islands. And yet photographs from Christmas Day that year show Mr Abramovich in the Caribbean sunshine, standing on the swim platform at the rear of the yacht, with Eclipse's large letter-E logo behind him. Charter records such as this were part of a decade-long scheme to mislead tax authorities, now uncovered in an investigation...

I was reading over the Executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and saw this section: Sec. 5. Additional Action. The Secretary of Interior may solicit public and intergovernmental input regarding additional patriots to honor, particularly in light of America’s semiquincentennial celebration, and shall recommend action to me, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. So my question is...what else can we recommend to be renamed? I think we've become so used to having the left rename things with little to no blowback that we think it's not important. But it is. Remember...

What have I done to be placed on the sanctions list of the Russian Foreign Ministry, alongside several distinguished historians of eastern Europe? My normal hunting ground (not the right word for a maritime historian) is the Mediterranean and the oceans beyond. But maybe Russia’s mandarins know that I am now writing about the Black Sea. Since the reign of Peter the Great in the 18th century, Russia has seen the Black Sea as a vital gateway to the wider world. The Ottoman sultans blocked Russian attempts to reach warmer waters via Istanbul. Russian ships bound for intended conquests had...

A New York Times report was discovered on Sunday mentioning Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who was caught targeting Trump, armed with a scoped AK-47 rifle in West Palm Beach before shots were fired by the Secret Service. The New York Times was actually in contact with and interviewed Routh for their article. In an oddly coincidental Truth Social post, just hours before the attempted shooting, Trump said, “THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES IS A TRUE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!” https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/113142180434016846 The article from the Times ties the would-be shooter to nutbag MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance, who once called for ISIS...

Boeing cargo plane forced to land at Istanbul without front landing gear Incident involving Boeing 767 jet operated by FedEx comes amid intense scrutiny of troubled planemaker Jasper Jolly and agencies Wed 8 May 2024 08.22 EDT Share A Boeing cargo plane has been forced to land at Istanbul airport without its front landing gear, in the latest setback for the embattled planemaker. Nobody was hurt in the incident, in a flight operated by the delivery company FedEx, according to Turkey’s transport ministry. The Boeing 767 aircraft, flying from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Wednesday, informed the traffic control...

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