Turkey

A group of 103 retired Turkish admirals were acquitted on Tuesday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused them of preparing a coup last year. The state media report this. According to the state news agency Anadolu, the court ruled that there was no evidence of a crime. The public prosecutor had asked for 12 years in prison for each of the former admirals. They remained free pending trial. They had to go to court because they had signed an open letter in April last year asking them to comply with the Montreux Convention. That treaty, from 1936, aims to demilitarize the Black Sea by establishing strict rules for the passage of warships over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. However, Erdogan wants to dig a new canal in Istanbul, west of the Bosphorus, to relieve them of one ...

Six people, including a child, have been killed in a serious traffic accident involving a coach in western Turkey.   The state news agency Anadolu reported this on Tuesday. 25 other people were also injured. The accident occurred in Kirklaarli province, near the Bulgarian-Turkish border. The bus was on its way to Bodrum city when the vehicle veered off the road and overturned. More information about the accident has not been released for the time being.

The number of deaths from flooding in northern Turkey has risen to at least 70. The number is expected to increase further. Rescuers are still pulling dead people from collapsed buildings, according to local media.   The provinces of Kastamonu, Sinop and Bartin have been hit by severe flooding in recent days, caused by heavy rainfall. Many buildings, roads and bridges have been destroyed. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the area because of the unsafe situation. The floods started last Tuesday, shortly after the worst wildfires in the east of the country were extinguished. The three provinces are all close to the Black Sea and are more likely to be affected by flooding. It's not usual to be as intense as this year.