Perpetrator of deadly Turkish car bombing ‘linked to IS group’

The perpetrator of a deadly car bombing that hit the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border at the weekend is linked to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, Turkey's interior minister said on Monday.

The bomber "is a member of a terrorist organisation linked to Daesh," Interior Minister Efkan Ala said in televised remarks, using an alternative name for the jihadist group.

One policeman was killed when the car bomb went off outside the police headquarters in Gaziantep on Sunday morning. Another police officer later died of his wounds.

Ala said nearly 50 suspects had been detained in connection with the attack.

The announcement will intensify concerns about the risk of jihadist attacks in Turkey, which has already seen tourism fall sharply since the start of the year.

Turkey remains on high security alert after a series of attacks on its soil blamed on Kurdish militantsand IS jihadists, who still control territory in Syria right up to the Turkish border.

Government spokesman and Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting the authorities had thwarted 49 suicide bombings in Turkey so far this year.

A radical Kurdish militant group, Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), on Sunday claimed a suicide bombing in Turkey's former Ottoman capital of Bursa last week, saying the female assailant had failed to reach her intended target.

Ala said that the bomber was a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state. The TAK is usually seen as a splinter group of the PKK.

A member of international coalition against IS group, Turkey has taken more robust action against IS jihadists since last summer.

The Turkish border town of Kilis has come under rocket fire from IS-controlled territory in recent weeks, prompting the army to respond with artillery fire.

In the latest strikes on Kilis on Monday, one person was killed and two wounded when Katyusha-type rockets hit an inhabited area in the town, the Dogan news agency reported.

Twenty people have now been killed in IS strikes on Kilis since January.

Turkish artillery have launched deadly strikes on IS positions in Syria, while drones that took off from an air base in southern Turkey also pounded the jihadists, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Monday, citing security sources.

"We have discussed steps to be taken by both using our national resources and in international solidarity to stave off threats arising from across the border," Kurtulmus told reporters.

Brexit would cost UK citizens a month’s salary, says OECD

Leaving the EU would cause a “major economic shock” to the UK, severely cutting growth and costing the average person the equivalent of a month’s salary by the year 2020, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday.

Less than two months before Britain votes in a June 23 referendum on whether to remain in the EU, the OECD’s stark warning on the potential economic impact of “Brexit” will come as a major blow for those campaigning for the UK to leave the 28-nation bloc, many of whom have claimed doing so would not have a negative effect.

“A UK exit would be a major negative shock to the UK economy,” the OECD argued in a comprehensive report made public on Wednesday. “In some respects, Brexit would be akin to a tax on GDP, imposing a persistent and rising cost on the economy.”

The OECD – which seeks to foster cooperation between the world's leading economies – said that uncertainty over Brexit had already begun to have a negative impact on financial markets and had weakened the UK’s economic growth, but that the situation would get significantly worse if Britain votes to leave.

By 2020, the country’s GDP would be more than 3 percent smaller than if the UK remained in the EU, equating to a cost per household of £2,200 (€2,835) in today’s prices, according to the report.

Brexit 'costly in long and short term'

The report states that the consequences of Brexit could be even more costly in the longer-term. The OECD estimated that in a “central” scenario – ie, neither particularly optimistic nor pessimistic – UK GDP would be over 5 percent smaller by 2030 than if the UK had remained a member of the EU, the equivalent of £3,200 per household.

In the organisation’s “pessimistic” scenario, the cost could rise to as much as 7.7 percent of GDP, or £5,000 per household.

Speaking to the BBC, the OECD’s secretary-general Angel Gurria claimed that Brexit would act “like a tax” on UK citizens.

Gurria said the estimated cost of Brexit, when spread out equally, “is the equivalent to roughly missing out on about one month's income within four years but then it carries on to 2030”.

"That tax is going to be continued to be paid by Britons over time," Gurria added.

Loss of unrestricted access to the EU’s single market would be one of the biggest blows to the UK’s economy, resulting in higher tariffs for goods and other barriers to trading with the EU, said the OECD's report. The UK would also lose out on trade deals the EU currently has with other third-party countries and blocks.

The UK could establish a new free trade agreement with the EU, but this would take time and likely still result in higher costs to trading with the bloc than is currently the case, the OECD said.

Brexit will hit immigration

The OECD report says that the likely significant drop in immigration to the UK after Brexit would also damage the economy.

“Immigration accounts for one-half of UK GDP growth since 2005, with more than 2 million jobs created. Curbs to the free movement of labour from the EU and, more importantly, a weaker UK economy after exit, would gradually reduce the incentives for economic migration to the UK and would be a cost to the economy,” said the report.

Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-Europe UK Independence Party, was dismissive of the report's findings, however.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah - IMF, OECD, a whole series of international organisations stuffed full of overpaid people who failed in politics mostly," he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The professor of economics at Cardiff University, Patrick Minford, said very clearly that outside the European Union the average British family would be £40 a week better off.”

The OECD’s report follow US President Barack Obama’s warning to the UK that Brexit would harm trade with the United States during a visit to London last week.

The UK would be “at the back of the queue” in trade with the US as “us having access to a big market with a lot of countries rather than trying to do piecemeal trade agreements is hugely efficient”, the president said.

Brussels bombing suspect Osama K. charged in Paris attacks

• Belgium
 
• Brussels attacks
 
• Paris attacks (Nov. 13)

Brussels bombing suspect Osama K. charged in Paris attacks

Latest update : 20/04/2016

 
 
 
 
 

© John Thys, AFP | Police officers stand outside a Brussels courthouse on April 14, 2016.

Article text by FRANCE 24 

A main suspect in the investigation into the Brussels bombings has also been charged with participation in the Paris attacks four months earlier, Belgian federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. 

Osama Krayem, who was arrested in Brussels earlier this month, might have been present in different safehouses used by the militant attackers, such as a suspected bomb factory raided in December, prosecutors said.

“He has been charged with terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Krayem, a Swedish national, had been previously linked to the attacks in Paris after it emerged that he had been checked by police in October near the southern German city of Ulm in a car rented by Salah Abedelslam, a key suspect in the investigation.

Belgian prosecutors also believe Krayem is the man seen with Brussels bomber Khalid El Bakraoui shortly before he blew himself up at a metro station, and was responsible for buying the bags used to transport the explosives. He was charged with terrorist murder over the Brussels bombings shortly after his arrest on April 8.

The Brussels bombings claimed the lives of 32 victims in March, while 130 died in November’s attacks in Paris.

Turkish court overturns 275 convictions in Erdogan coup plot case

Turkey’s appeals court has overturned coup plot convictions imposed in 2013 on a retired military chief and other senior figures in a case then regarded as clipping the wings of the secularist and military establishment, state media said on Thursday.

The ruling closes the final chapter in a nine-year legal drama whose twists and turns have tracked the shifting balance of power at the heart of the Turkish establishment.

In August 2013, ex-military chief General Ilker Basbug was sentenced to life in jail for his role in the “Ergenekon” plot to overthrow then-Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government.

Politicians, lawyers and journalists were also among 275 defendants in the case, which emerged in 2007 when an arms cache was discovered in a house in an Istanbul suburb.

It was at the time championed by Erdogan and his supporters as a battle against anti-democratic forces and to tame a military that had seen itself as the guardian of secularism, carrying out three coups and forcing a fourth, Islamist-led government from power in the second half of the 20th century.

In Thursday’s ruling, the appeals court said there had been no “Ergenekon terror group”, and that evidence had been collected illegally, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Sledgehammer

After the 2013 convictions, the case became entwined in a power struggle between Erdogan and U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose influential followers in the judiciary had been seen as key to the Ergenekon convictions.

Erdogan accused Gulen of using his influence within state institutions to try to unseat him in a coup plot. As their feud deepened, the Ergenekon defendants were released in March 2014, with the government suggesting they too may have been unfairly treated and the victims of a Gulenist plot.

Another trial over an alleged 2003 plot against Erdogan, the “Sledgehammer” case, ended with acquittal for more than 200 military officers in March last year.

The prosecutor who led the Ergenekon investigation, viewed as close to Gulen, fled to Armenia in August as an arrest warrant was issued for him over his role in a separate investigation of alleged corruption in Erdogan’s inner circle.

That corruption inquiry was thrown out by the courts and the judiciary and police subjected to a systematic purge of suspected Gulen supporters.

Police operations have subsequently targeted thousands of supporters of Gulen, accused of leading what prosecutors described as a “Gulenist Terror Group” trying to overthrow Erdogan. Gulen denies the accusations.

EU Parliament recommends making Turkish 25th official language

The European Parliament has advised making Turkish an official language of the European Union, building on the initiative by Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, according to the EP’s 2015 progress report on Turkey. 

“The European Parliament … welcomes the initiative of … Anastasiades, to make Turkish an official language of the EU, and urges the parties to accelerate this process,” read a part of EP’s progress report on Turkey, which was adopted on April 14, with 375 yay votes to 133 nays, and 87 abstentions.

Anastasiades had lobbied for Turkish to be made the EU’s 25th official language ahead of expected reunification with Turkish Cyprus.

The Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974 after Turkey intervened in the north following a coup attempt to join Greece took place.

The two communities of the island, Turkish and Greek, re-launched peace talks under the auspices of the United Nations last May to find a peaceful solution to the more than 40-year-old dispute.

The two leaders of the island, Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akıncı, jointly expressed in January that a peace deal was possible by the end of 2016.

Obama kicks off London visit by urging Brits to vote against Brexit in June referendum

US President Barack Obama arrived in London on Thursday with a mission - to persuade British voters not to ditch membership of the European Union in a referendum that Washington fears could weaken the West.

Obama is urging Britons to vote to stay in the European Union, saying the challenges in the world require allies to “stick together.”

In an op-ed published in the Telegraph newspaper, Obama says Great Britain’s presence in the EU “magnifies” Britain’s influence and helps spread “British values.”

Obama writes he’s offering his view “with the candour of a friend” and notes the decision will affect US interests.

Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam charged with attempted murder in Begium

Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in November’s Paris attacks, has been charged with attempted murder in Belgium during a police shootout in Brussels three days before his arrest, prosecutors said.

Abdeslam, who is due to be extradited to France in the next few weeks over his part in the attacks in Paris by Islamic State militants that killed 130 people, appeared before a Belgian judge on Thursday.

Four police officers were wounded and an Islamist gunman was killed in the shootout at a suspected militant safe house in the Brussels district of Forest on March 15.