Turkey
Bangladeshi BiP users can share photos, videos as ‘status’
BiP’s mother company Turkcell keeps adding new features to BiP, a global life and communication platform home-grown in Turkey with recently launched the ‘status’ feature for its app.
Now, users can instantly share their videos and photos and add text to images, said a media release. Other users can also view them and comment on them.
The new feature allows BiP users to share their videos or photos, they can also upload fresh or previously archived images or videos from their gallery.
They can also see who has viewed their ‘status’. Those who share their status can see others’ status as well (from their contact list).
Read: Turkish BiP offers group calls up to 15 participants to brighten up this Eid
They can also enter their chat window and reply to other people’s statuses. On how users’ feedback helps improve BiP, the company’s Executive Vice President of Digital Services and Solutions, Ataç Tansuğ said that Turkcell always listens to its customers about their wants and needs and then creates products and services accordingly.
“We’re constantly updating and improving BiP – and rely on user feedback to do so. For example, our users have been demanding a ‘status’ feature for a long time, so we added one. In addition, we fine-tune all of our products and services per the latest requirements in both safety and privacy. We are investing in new security features at the moment; we aim to introduce end-to-end security by the end of this year," he said. Turkcell stores BiP users’ data at special high-security data centers across Turkey.
BiP’s latest version is available at GooglePlay AppStore, GooglePlay and Huawei AppGallery, please visit http://onelink.to/bip-id
Walton eyes to export 10 lakh compressors to Turkey by 2023
Walton has set a target of exporting 10 lakh compressors to Turkey by 2023.
The local brand has already shipped out 2 lakh compressors to Turkey. To export 3 lakh compressors in 2022, Walton has inked another fresh deal Kargi Sogutma Isitma San Ve Tic.
Kargi is a renowned brand in Turkey that deals with import, export and marketing of hi-tech spare parts for domestic and industrial products with a comprehensive range of customer portfolios throughout the country and also abroad, especially in Europe.
Read Walton Director Tanna gets JCI Young Entrepreneur Award
Walton and Kargi signed a new deal Thursday at the five-day ISK Sodex International Trade Fair held in Istanbul from September 29 to October 2.
Walton International Business Unit President Edward Kim and Kargi Managing Director Emin Kargi signed the deal.
The ISK Sodex, which takes place every two years in Istanbul, is the world's third-largest and Eurasia's largest international trade fair for ventilation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology.
Read Walton Primo GH10 Full Review with Price in Bangladesh
Walton Director SM Mahbubul Alam said, "At the fair, businessmen from Saudi Arabia, Greece, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and other countries met with Walton representatives and showed great interest in importing 'Made in Bangladesh' electronics and technology products, including compressors."
Walton is now exporting compressors and spare parts to countries such as Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Iraq, Turkey, Nepal, and East Timor, according to a media statement.
Read Walton becomes title sponsor of Big 2021 grand finale
Turkey working on developing national Covid vaccine
Turkey is working on developing its national Covid-19 vaccine (Turkovac) now, Turkish Ambassador to Bangladesh Mustafa Osman Turan said Monday.
"Once the work is completed, we are open to making it available to other countries and exploring ways to collaborate with Bangladesh," he added.
The envoy was paying his first visit to icddr,b in Mohakhali and was very keen to learn about the world-renowned public health research institution and its recent Covid-19 research activities.
During the visit, he termed icddr,b's life-saving research inspiring.
Refugees in fear as sentiment turns against them in Turkey
Fatima Alzahra Shon thinks neighbors attacked her and her son in their Istanbul apartment building because she is Syrian.
The 32-year-old refugee from Aleppo was confronted on Sept. 1 by a Turkish woman who asked her what she was doing in “our” country. Shon replied, “Who are you to say that to me?” The situation quickly escalated.
A man came out of the Turkish woman’s apartment half-dressed, threatening to cut Shon and her family “into pieces,” she recalled. Another neighbor, a woman, joined in, shouting and hitting Shon. The group then pushed her down a flight of stairs. Shon said that when her 10-year-old son, Amr, tried to intervene, he was beaten as well.
Shon said she has no doubt about the motivation for the aggression: “Racism.”
Refugees fleeing the long conflict in Syria once were welcomed in neighboring Turkey with open arms, sympathy and compassion for fellow Muslims. But attitudes gradually hardened as the number of newcomers swelled over the past decade.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is now nearing a boiling point, fueled by Turkey’s economic woes. With unemployment high and the prices of food and housing skyrocketing, many Turks have turned their frustration toward the country’s roughly 5 million foreign residents, particularly the 3.7 million who fled the civil war in Syria.
In August, violence erupted in Ankara, the Turkish capital, as an angry mob vandalized Syrian businesses and homes in response to a the deadly stabbing of a Turkish teenager.
Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population, and many experts say that has come at a cost. Selim Sazak, a visiting international security researcher at Bilkent University in Ankara and an advisor to officials from the opposition IYI Party, compared the arrival of so many refugees to absorbing “a foreign state that’s ethnically, culturally, linguistically dissimilar.”
Read: Trump aides aim to build GOP opposition to Afghan refugees
“Everyone thought that it would be temporary,” Sazak said. “I think it’s only recently that the Turkish population understood that these people are not going back. They are only recently understanding that they have to become neighbors, economic competitors, colleagues with this foreign population.”
On a recent visit to Turkey, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi acknowledged that the high number of refugees had created social tensions, especially in the country’s big cities. He urged “donor countries and international organizations to do more to help Turkey.”
The prospect of a new influx of refugees following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has reinforced the unreceptive public mood. Videos purporting to show young Afghan men being smuggled into Turkey from Iran caused public outrage and led to calls for the government to safeguard the country’s borders.
The government says there are about 300,000 Afghans in Turkey, some of whom hope to continue their journeys to reach Europe.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who long defended an open-door policy toward refugees, recently recognized the public’s “unease” and vowed not to allow the country to become a “warehouse” for refugees. Erdogan’s government sent soldiers to Turkey’s eastern frontier with Iran to stem the expected flow of Afghans and is speeding up the construction of a border wall.
Read: California governor seeks $16.7M in aid for Afghan refugees
Immigration is expected to become a top campaign topic even though Turkey’s next general election is two years away. Both Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and the nationalist IYI Party have promised to work on creating conditions that would allow the Syrian refugees’ return.
Following the anti-Syrian violence in the Altindag district of Ankara last month, Umit Ozdag, a right-wing politician who recently formed his own anti-immigrant party, visited the area wheeling an empty suitcase and saying the time has come for the refugees to “start packing.”
The riots broke out on Aug. 11, a day after a Turkish teenager was stabbed to death in a fight with a group of young Syrians. Hundreds of people chanting anti-immigrant slogans took to the streets, vandalized Syrian-run shops and hurled rocks at refugees’ homes.
A 30-year-old Syrian woman with four children who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said her family locked themselves in their bathroom as an attacker climbed onto their balcony and tried to force the door open. The woman said the episode traumatized her 5-year-old daughter and the girl has trouble sleeping at night.
Some shops in the area remain closed, with traces of the disturbance still visible on their dented, metal shutters. Police have deployed multiple vehicles and a water cannon on the streets to prevent a repeat of the turmoil.
Syrians are often accused of failing to assimilate in Turkey, a country that has a complex relationship with the Arab world dating back to the Ottoman Empire. While majority Muslim like neighboring Arab countries, Turks trace their origins to nomadic warriors from central Asia and Turkish belongs to a different language group than Arabic.
Kerem Pasaoglu, a pastry shop owner in Istanbul, said he wants Syrians to go back to their country and is bothered that some shops a street over have signs written in Arabic instead of Turkish.
Read: EU ministers meet to discuss Afghanistan, refugees
“Just when we said we are getting used to Syrians or they will leave, now the Afghans coming is unfortunately very difficult for us,” he said.
Turkey’s foreign minister this month said Turkey is working with the United Nations’ refugee agency to safely return Syrians to their home country.
While the security situation has stabilized in many parts of Syria after a decade of war, forced conscription, indiscriminate detentions and forced disappearances continue to be reported. Earlier this month, Amnesty International said some Syrian refugees who returned home were subjected to detention, disappearance and torture at the hands of Syrian security forces, proving that going back to any part of the country is unsafe.
Shon said police in Istanbul showed little sympathy when she reported the attack by her neighbors. She said officers kept her at the station for hours, while the male neighbor who threatened and beat her was able to leave after giving a brief statement.
Shon fled Aleppo in 2012, when the city became a battleground between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters. She said the father of her children drowned while trying to make it to Europe. Now, she wonders whether Turkey is the right place for her and her children.
“I think of my children’s future. I try to support them in any way I can, but they have a lot of psychological issues now and I don’t know how to help them overcome it,” she said. “I don’t have the power anymore. I’m very tired.
Turkey resumes passenger flights with Bangladesh
Turkey resumed its passenger flights with Bangladesh on Saturday, after nearly nine weeks of suspension.
According to the Turkish Embassy in Dhaka, passengers will now be able to board the flights of Turkish Airlines and that of others to travel from Bangladesh to Turkey.
The passengers travelling from Bangladesh will have to submit their negative PCR test results taken 72 hours before their arrival to Turkey.
If people – travelling from Bangladesh or those who have been in the country for the last 14 days – can prove that they were vaccinated with a minimum of two doses of vaccines which have been granted emergency use authorisation by either the World Health Organisation (WHO) or Turkey (two doses of Sinovac, BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Sinopharm; one dose of Johnson & Johnson) and 14 days have passed since the application of the last dose, will be exempted from quarantine during their entry into Turkey.
Read: US-Bangla to resume flights on Dhaka-Chennai route from Sunday
Death toll in floods that hit northern Turkey climbs to 70
Rescuers recovered more bodies from the site of severe flooding that devastated a town in northern Turkey on Monday, bringing the death toll to 70, officials said.
Torrential rains battered the country’s northwestern Black Sea provinces on Aug. 4, causing floods that demolished homes and bridges, swept away cars and blocked access to numerous roads.
The Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, said at least 60 people were killed in the province of Kastamonu, nine died in Sinop and one in Bartin.
Emergency crews on Monday pressed ahead with efforts to locate at least 47 people who were still reported missing in Kastamonu and Sinop. AFAD said some 8,000 personnel, backed by 20 rescue dogs, are involved in the rescue and assistance efforts.
Also read: Turkish flood deaths hit 55; dispute arises over the missing
About 2,400 people were evacuated across the region amid the floods — scores of them lifted to safety by helicopters. Many are being temporarily housed in student dormitories.
Around 40 villages remain without power, according to AFAD.
The heavy flooding came after Turkey endured a searing heat wave and as crews in the south were taming wildfires that raced across the country’s Mediterranean coast.
Also read: Floods & landslides in India kill over 100
Climate scientists say there’s little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events — such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms — as the planet warms.
In heat emergency, southern Europe scrambles for resources
A heat wave baking southeast Europe has fueled deadly wildfires in Turkey and threatened the national power grid in Greece as governments scrambled Monday to secure the resources needed to cope with the emergency.
Temperatures reached 45 C (113 F) in inland areas of Greece and nearby countries and are expected to remain high for most of the week.
Read:At least 2 killed in German chemical blast; 31 injured
Battling deadly wildfires along its coastline for a sixth day, Turkey broadened an appeal for international assistance and was promised water-dropping planes from the European Union. The fires have been blamed for the deaths of eight people in recent days.
The help for residents in Turkey’s fire-ravaged areas couldn’t come soon enough. At the coastal village of Bozalan, resident Esra Sanli looked over at the blaze.
“It’s burning. It’s obviously burning. There’s no plane, there’s no helicopter, there are no (access) roads,” she said, sobbing. “How is this going to be extinguished? How?”
In Greece, an emergency was declared in fire-hit areas on the island of Rhodes, which is near the Turkish coast. Workers with health conditions were allowed to take time off work, while Greek coal-fired power stations slated for retirement were brought back into service to shore up the national grid, under pressure due to the widespread use of air conditioning.
Pregnant and other vulnerable workers in North Macedonia were told to stay home.
Dann Mitchell, a professor of climate science at the University of Bristol, said the heat wave in southeast Europe “is not at all unexpected, and very likely enhanced due to human-induced climate change.”
“The number of extreme heat events around the world is increasing year on year, with the top 10 hottest years on record all occurring since 2005,” Mitchell told The Associated Press.
Read:Europe’s summer tourism outlook dimmed by variants, rules
“This year, we have seen a number of significant events, including a particularly dramatic heat wave in western Canada and the U.S., that was extreme even for current levels of climate change,” Mitchell said. “These black swan events have always happened, but now they sit on the background of a hotter climate, so are even more deadly.”
As hot weather edged southward, Italy and Croatia were experiencing storms as well as wildfires. A small tornado in Istria, on Croatia’s northern Adriatic coast, toppled trees that destroyed several cars, hours before a large wildfire erupted outside the nearby resort of Trogir, threatening homes and the local power supply.
Some 30 people were treated for light smoke inhalation in Italy’s coastal city of Pescara after flames tore through a nearby pine forest. Beach-goers nearby had to be rescued by sea Sunday from that wildfire.
“That zone of pine forest is a nature reserve, and it’s completely destroyed. It brings tears to see it. The environmental damage is incalculable. This is the heart of the city, its green lung and today it is destroyed,” Pescara Mayor Carlo Masci said.
Cyprus, recovering from a major wildfire last month, kept water-dropping planes on patrol to respond to fires as they broke out.
“If you don’t react right away with a massive response to any outbreak, things can turn difficult quickly,” forestry service chief Charalambos Alexandrou told state-run media. “The conditions are war-like.”
On a visit to the power grid operator Monday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged members of the public to avoid daytime use of ovens, washing machines and other energy-demanding appliances to reduce the risk of blackouts. He described the weather conditions in Greece as the most severe since a deadly heat wave in 1987.
Read:Residents say flood-hit German towns got little warning
It was the year that Ioanna Vergou, deputy mayor of the northern Greek town of Skydra, was born. The town of 5,500 briefly ranked among the hottest in the country. She said municipal workers had been given earlier shifts and those needing public services were handed water and sent to an air-conditioned waiting area.
“Many people here have compared the heat wave to what happened in 1987,” she said. “But hopefully it will be easier this time round. We are all just waiting for it to pass.”
Turkey issues postage stamp on Bangabandhu
The Bangladesh Embassy in Ankara has unveiled a special postage stamp to mark the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Turkey.
The Turkish Postal Department released the special postage stamp with the image of Bangabandhu on Tuesday noon.
Read: PM unveils commemorative stamp to mark Joy’s birth anniversary
This stamp was, in fact, unveiled at a special meeting between Bangladesh Ambassador Mosud Mannan NDC and Director General of the Cultural Wing of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Deniz Chakar, the Bangladesh Embassy said in a release.
The relations between the two countries would be further strengthened with the release of the stamp with photographs in the memory of Bangabandhu, according to Director General of the Cultural Wing of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Deniz Chakar.
Paying deep tribute to Bangabandhu, the Ambassador said that the Father of the Nation "is a tangible symbol of democracy, peace and secularism in Bangladesh and in the international arena".
Read: Bangabandhu's birth centenary: Philippines unveils commemorative cover, stamp
Bangabandhu was a pioneer of humanity, people's power and socio-economic liberation, said the ambassador.
The Ambassador especially thanked the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Postal Service for releasing the postage stamp during the birth centenary celebrations of Bangabandhu.
12 killed as bus carrying migrants overturns in east Turkey
A minibus carrying migrants overturned and caught fire in eastern Turkey, killing 12 people and injuring 20 others, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Sunday.
The vehicle tumbled into a ditch while traveling overnight near Yumakli in Van province, which borders Iran.
Television broadcasts showed groaning survivors being treated by the roadside as emergency workers sifted through the burnt-out wreckage.
Also read: Bus runs off road, killing 27 mineworkers in Peru
Migrants, mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, regularly cross the Iranian border into Turkey on foot before being ferried west to cities such as Istanbul and Ankara.
The planned U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has given added impetus to young men trying the mountainous route, according to Metin Corabatir, president of the Ankara-based Center for Asylum and Migration Studies.
Also read:10 killed in India road accident
In June 2020, more than 60 migrants drowned in Lake Van when their boat sank.
13 killed in hospital attack in opposition-held Syria town
Missiles hit a hospital in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed fighters on Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff, and putting the facility out of service, activists and an aid group said.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.
Read:In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology
The governor of Turkey’s Hatay’s province, across the border from Afrin, also said the attack killed 13 civilians and injured 27, adding that it involved rocket and artillery shelling of the hospital. The governor’s office blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups.
A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll at 18. The discrepancy could not be immediately reconciled.
The Syrian American Medical Society, or SAMS, an aid group that assists health centers in opposition areas, said al-Shifaa Hospital in the town of Afrin was targeted by two missiles. The attack destroyed the polyclinic department, the emergency and the delivery rooms, the group said.
Read: Israel says it strikes targets in Syria after missile attack
Two of the 13 people killed were hospital staff and two were ambulance drivers, said SAMS, which supports the hospital. Eleven of its staff were injured. The hospital has been put out of service and patients were evacuated, the group said.
SAMS called for an investigation into the attack on the hospital, one of the largest facilities in northern Syria that offered thousands of medical services each month, including surgeries and maternity wards. The coordinates for the hospital, which is financed by USAID as well as UN funds, were shared as part of the U.N.-led deconfliction mechanism, the group said.
Turkey and allied Syrian fighters took control of Afrin in 2018 in a military operation that expelled local Kurdish fighters and displaced thousands of Kurdish residents. Ankara considers the Kurdish fighters who were in control of Afrin terrorists. Since then, there has been a series of attacks on Turkish targets in the area.
Read:'No Sweets': For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a tough Ramadan
The governor’s office of Turkey’s Hatay province blamed the attack on the Kurdish group.
The head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abadi, denied his forces were behind the attack. In a tweet, he said, the U.S-backed SDF condemned the attack that targeted innocent lives, calling it a violation of international law.