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The presidents of Israel and Turkey agreed to work to improve ties between the two countries,a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans ruling party said Wednesday, according a Thursday report by the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News.

Erdogan held his first call with Israels new president, Isaac Herzog, on Monday. The conversation between Herzog and Erdogan lasted for 40 minutes and was very positive, according to Herzogs office.

How Israels compromise coalition accidentally ended one racist policy

Hurriyet quoted Omer Celik, spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, as saying that [a] framework emerged after this call under which advances should be made on several issues where improvements can be made, and where steps towards solving problematic areas should be taken. Tourism and trade are areas in which both sides will benefit from cooperation, he was quoted as saying.

Ass for whether the two countries will appoint ambassadors, Celik told the newspaper:It is early yet. They are, of course, being evaluated, in the end, all of these are matters that depend on the steps to be taken.

Meanwhile, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV reported, citing unnamed sources, that Israel has refused a Turkish offer to mediate a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas. According to the sources, Israel would like to see Egypt keep its role as mediator, and opposes Turkish involvement in the Gaza Strip.

Ties between Turkey and Israel have frequently been rocky, and both countries expelled the others diplomatic representative in 2018, when Turkey ordered the Israeli ambassador to return to Israel and Israel told the Turkish consul in Jerusalem, who was in charge of Turkeys ties with the Palestinians, to return to Turkey.

A diplomatic source told Haaretz that although Erdogan has signaled a desire to improve ties with Israel several times in recent years, his blunt statements on the Palestinian issue some as recent as the past week make it difficult for diplomats to discern his intentions.

In 2011, in response to a UN report stating that Israel did not violate international law when it forcibly took control of a Turkish Gaza-bound flotilla, Erdogan downgraded Turkeys ties with Israel, recalled its ambassador in Tel Aviv, and expelled the Israeli ambassador from Ankara. In 2016, the two countries signed a reconciliation agreement that included the payment by Israel of $20 million to a humanitarian foundation used for reparations for the families of Turkish citizens who died onboard the flotilla. The agreement led to the appointment of an Israeli ambassador in Ankara, who served for two years before being expelled.m

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Israel and Turkey agree to improve relations, spokesman for Erdogans party says - Haaretz

ERZURUM

Parts of Turkeys Black Sea region hit by flooding and landslides will be officially declared a disaster area, the nations president said on July 17.

Speaking at a hospital opening and inaugurations of other newly completed projects in Turkeys eastern Erzurum province, Recep Tayyip Erdoan said the formal declaration will be announced after the next Cabinet meeting, likely at the start of next week.

The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said downpours hit northeastern Rize on Wednesday after landslides caused heavy damage in some areas, with a building destroyed in the village of Muradiye.

At least six people died, with two people missing, in flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rain.

Interior Minister Sleyman Soylu came to the region to assess the situation along with Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailolu and Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum.

Around 5 million Turkish liras ($582,000) will be sent to the region to help recovery efforts.

Investing throughout Turkey

Also speaking on investments in eastern Turkey, Erdoan said the current market value of todays inaugurated investments reached a total of 9.5 billion Turkish liras ($1.11 billion).

We will continue to embrace the full breadth of Turkey, from Erzurum, Diyarbakr, Hatay, and Trabzon to Antalya, Tekirda, Van, and Bursa, and introduce projects and services to every inch of our homeland," said Erdoan, referring to provinces throughout Turkey.

We do this because we love this country with all its colors. Because we love this nation with all its people. Because we have taken on the responsibility to build a great and strong Turkey through the bridge we built from the past to the future, he added.

Erdogan said the determination, unity, and solidarity of the people of Erzurum remained firm and steady despite 40 years of PKK terrorist efforts against it.

Erzurum is one of our cities that showed the most determined stance against the tricks, hypocrisy, and frauds of FET the terrorist group behind the defeated 2016 coup, whose fifth anniversary was marked this week Erdoan added.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.

FET and its U.S.-based leader, Fetullah Glen, orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016 in which 251 people were killed and 2,734 wounded.

Ankara also accuses FET of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.

FETO,

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Flood-struck areas of Black Sea region to be declared disaster area - Hurriyet Daily News

The Panama Papers seemed to suggest that the Prime Ministers two adult children had used flats in London as collateral to secure large scale loans from Deutsche Bank in 2008. These flats were owned by two British Virgin Island companies, one of which Nescoll listed Sharif s daughter, Maryam Safdar, as its only shareholder.

Maryam Safdar produced papers certifying that she was not a shareholder but merely a trustee in the firm, thus attempting to disassociate from the offshore companies.

The problem? The certificate she claimed was issued in February 2006 had used the Calibri font. The controversy eventually led to the dismissal of the Nawaz Sharif government in 2017 courtesy its Supreme Court. He is currently disqualified from contesting elections.

The confluence of power and an inflated sense of self-worth can wreak havoc over a large population, if not checked in time. The good days that Adolf Hitler had promised to Germans, or the change that Benito Mussolini had vowed to bring about, is not very different from what modern heads of states sometimes lead us to believe in the 21st century.

A quote by Hagel comes to mind: History teaches us that man learns nothing from history.

Calibri has had a wonderful run and has unwittingly stirred the hornets nest, has scared despots, and claimed at least one scalp. But it seems likely that its term as Microsofts default font is ending as well. In May 2021, the company announced that it will soon be replacing Calibri with another font as the default on the worlds most popular word processor.

(The author worked for the United Nations in New York and served as UNICEFs Chief of Communications.)

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When a Microsoft font exposed the Turkish President Erdogan and Pakistan's PM Mian Nawaz Sharif - National Herald

Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides has been going all out on a preemptive diplomatic strike aimed at garnering support in Brussels, Washington, and the international community to stop Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from revealing surprises to the world during a scheduled visit to the island on July 20.

Appearing Sunday as a guest on The Greek Current, a podcast by the Hellenic American Leadership Council in collaboration with Kathimerini, Christodoulides said it was critical that Erdogan be stopped from making more provocative and illegal actions that would negatively affect the interests of the United States, the European Union, and the international community.

Erdogan has been talking up his upcoming visit to the northern part of Cyprus, assigning special meaning on July 20 as Peace and Freedom Day for Turkish Cypriots, the very same hot summer day in 1974 viewed by Greek Cypriots in the south as an invasion when Turkish troops landed on the island in response to a Greek-inspired coup engineered by Athens.

While it is expected that statements about Varosha, an abandoned ghost town in the north set to reopen, would draw strong reactions from Greek Cypriots in the south, there were other rumors on social media that could have raised the alarm in Nicosia.

Erdogan said he would make a big announcement on July 20, prompting political pundits on social media to wonder whether recent visits to the north by Pakistani dignitaries could signal an attempt by the Islamic Republic to establish diplomatic relations with a Turkish Cypriot administration currently recognized by no other country except Turkey.

We are using all available means, which are diplomatic, political, and legal means in order to stop Turkey, Christodoulides said.

The Cypriot minister, who was in Brussels on Monday, held discussions with many of his counterparts including from France, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, but also Egypt and Pakistans foe India on the sidelines of the Foreign Affairs Council.

According to the Cyprus News Agency, citing a diplomatic source, it was particularly important for Cyprus to organize the working breakfast for the EU Foreign Ministers, with the Egyptian Foreign Minister as a guest, adding that the Egyptian minister praised the role of Cyprus in the region, while he referred to his interventions in the destabilizing role of Turkey.

Cairo has been at odds with Ankara since 2014 after Erdogan questioned in a speech at the UN General Assembly the legitimacy of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, an army general back in 2013 when he overthrew the government that had wide support from the Muslim Brotherhood, a group favored by conservatives in Turkey.

Christodoulides, a former career diplomat, also argued that if Turkey went ahead with its plans during the Varosha visit, other actions by Ankara could negatively influence the Middle East as well as the interests of the EU, US, and the international community.

If the international community is perceived by Turkey as weak or [in]decisive in its response, Ankara will see no reason to backtrack from implementing its planning in relation to Varosha, the minister said.

So whats important now is to act [pro]actively before Mr Erdogan comes to Cyprus, before July 20, in order as I told you to stop Mr Erdogan from proceeding with more provocations, the minister told the podcast.

Christodoulides said he also replied to a letter by US President Joe Biden and spoke on the phone with State Secretary Antony Blinken, stressing his main message that we act now, preventatively, so as not to find ourselves before a situation that is irreversible.

We cannot allow Mr Erdogan to deliver on his promises to announce, as he called it, surprises to the world during his upcoming illegal visit to the occupied part of Cyprus.

Christodoulides called on allies to join the effort, saying the only way to do so would be to send now a clear message of decisiveness from the international community.

Cyprus has been divided for decades between a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south, which also functions internationally as the Republic of Cyprus.

Multiple efforts at reaching a settlement collapsed one after the other, with the south insisting on a federal solution and the north wanting to part ways, with Turkish Cypriots accusing Greek Cypriots of not being sincere or ready to share equally the administration of the island. [Kathimerini Cyprus]

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Cyprus against the clock to stop Erdogan - Kathimerini English Edition

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has launched a tirade over the Cyprus issue saying he was the only one still living, along with one top former EU official, who really knows what went in during the high-level negotiations in Burgenstock, Switzerland in March 2004.

In an interview with Turkish channel TRT on Tuesday night, Erdogan spoke on several topics such as Turkey-US relations and the situation in the eastern Mediterranean, also touching on the Cyprus issue and Ankaras often fraught ties with the EU.

Answering questions from journalists Erdogan said: Every now and then you bring before us the eastern Mediterranean, every now and then you bring before us Cyprus. Believe me, within the EU, no country in recent times knows how this division came about.How was the division made?How did the talks in Burgenstock take place? Nobody knows that.The only one who knows this is me.

Erdogan said when other politicians talk about Burgenstock, not even Greek premier Kyriacos Mitsotakis knows what really went on there at the highest level.

He referred to the fact that former UN Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, presided over the 2004 talks, though Erdogan failed to remember that Annans special envoy Alvaro de Soto was also in at the highest level. De Soto aside, he was also likely referring to the fact that the leader on the Greek Cypriot side at the time, Tassos Papadopoulos is also deceased.

There was one other person at the talks, he said, who participated on the part of the EU, and that was Gunther Verheugen who was the EU Commissioner for Enlargement at the time. Wherever he went he was telling the truth, said Erdogan. But no one gets up to ask him now.

Indeed, after Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan solution plan in late April and a week later joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, Verheugen publicly accused Cyprus of cheating its way into EU membership.

Erdogan said that in the middle of the Burgenstock talks Greece and the Greek Cypriots were ready to leave the table and only Kofi Annan stopped them, saying: You cannot leave, according to the Turkish president.

Annan told them I gave my word to Erdogan. We will finish the work here and then we will leave. They [the Greek side] came back and sat down. And after that meeting a referendum was held. They said yes in the north and then they [the EU] allowed the south to join, said Erdogan. They are not honest and now they come and without shame they tell us we have no rights over the gas and oil around Cyprus? he added. Erdogan said if it was up to Brussels, they would ask Turkey to disappear from the region altogether.

Referring to French President Emmanuel Macron who in late 2019 said Nato was becoming brain dead, Erdogan said that without a strong Turkey, the transatlantic military alliance was not strong.

In this context, Erdogan had harsh words for US President Joe Biden ahead of the upcoming Nato summit on June 14. At the meeting, we will ask why the Turkey-US relations are going through such a tense period, said Erdogan who added that he has worked with a number of former US presidents including Barack Obama and Donald Trump. He did not have such a tension with any of them, he said. The anger towards Biden however has more to do with the US recent recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Those who corner Turkey this way will lose an important friend, said Erdogan.

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Erdogan: I'm one of the few who knows what really happened at Burgenstock - Cyprus Mail