Turkey President Faces Voter Fury After Earthquake

Published

1 year ago

February 10, 2023

Hakan Tanriverdi has a simple message for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan days after Turkey suffered its worst disaster in generations: “Don’t come here asking for votes.”

The earthquake that killed more than 21,000 people across Turkey and Syria came at one of the most politically sensitive moments of Erdogan’s two-decade rule.

The Turkish leader has proposed holding a crunch election on May 14 that could keep his Islamic-rooted government in power until 2028.

The date gives his splintered opposition little time to hammer out their differences and agree on a joint presidential candidate.

Whether that vote can now go ahead as planned remains to be seen.

Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency across 10 quake-hit provinces. The region is still digging out its dead and many are living on the streets or in their cars.

Campaigning here seems out of the question.

But there is also a political dimension that is deeply personal for Erdogan.

The earthquake struck just as he was gaining momentum and starting to lift his approval numbers from a low suffered during a dire economic crisis that exploded last year.

Tanriverdi’s bitterness is a bad sign for Erdogan in a province where he handily beat his secular opposition rival in the last election in 2018.

“We were deeply hurt that no one supported us,” Tanriverdi said of the government’s earthquake response.

– Erdogan fights back –
Tanriverdi’s grievances are common in Adiyaman province — one of the hardest-hit by the quake.

Locals complain that rescuers didn’t arrive in time to pull out people who survived the first critical hours. Some pointed to a lack of machinery to drill through slabs of concrete.

“I did not see anyone until 2:00 pm on the second day of the earthquake,” Adiyaman resident Mehmet Yildirim said.

“No government, no state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you! You left us on our own.”

Erdogan admitted “shortcomings” in the government’s handling of the disaster on Wednesday.

But he is also fighting back. The 68-year-old led a rescue response meeting in Ankara on Tuesday and spent the following two days touring a series of devastated cities.

He is yet to visit Adiyaman.

That upsets Hediye Kalkan, a volunteer who travelled nearly 150 kilometres (95 miles) to help with the Adiyaman rescue and recovery effort.

“Why doesn’t the state show itself on a day like this?” she demanded.

“People are taking their relatives’ bodies out by their own means”.

– ‘Isn’t it a sin?’ –
The sheer scale and timing of the disaster — spanning a large and remote region in the middle of a winter storm — would make any rescue effort complicated.

Erdogan has received a largely warm reception from locals in carefully choreographed visits broadcast on national television.

One elderly Syria, Turkey Quake Toll Rises To 2,300 came out to hug Erdogan and shed tears on his shoulder.

Veysel Gultekin might not do the same if he had a chance to face the Turkish leader.

Israeli Drone Shot Down Over Lebanon – IDF

Published

3 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Editor

The Israeli Defense Forces, IDF, on Monday said an Israeli drone was shot down over Lebanon on Sunday night.

Writing on Telegram, the IDF said a surface-to-air missile was launched at the drone that was operating in Lebanese airspace, adding that the drone was hit and had landed in Lebanon.

It added that fighter jets struck the missile launch site.

Fighting broke out with Lebanon on Sunday, with the Israeli army announcing that two shells had been fired in the direction of the village of Rosh Hanikra in northern Israel on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Israeli Army attacked the locations from which the shots were fired and fighter jets had also attacked terror infrastructure north-east of Nabatieh, it said.

Previously, fighter jets had also fired on targets belonging to the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

Both Hezbollah and the military arm of Palestinian militant organisation Hamas claimed responsibility for attacks on Israel on Sunday.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war in October, deaths and injuries have resulted from daily firing on the border between Lebanon and Israel.

VIDEO: First Female Transgender Mosque Opens In Bangladesh

Published

15 hours ago

April 22, 2024

Editor

The world’s first female transgender mosque has reportedly opened in Bangladesh.

In the video shared by DW, some of the worshippers who transitioned from being males to females were seen observing the Muslim prayers.

It was further gathered that the land where the mosque was built, was donated by the government. The transgender Muslims expressed excitement over the development, adding that they are happy they will live and be buried like every other person.

Watch the video below…

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Headline

US Man Bags Multiple Deaths Sentence After Paying Mother $2,500 To Rape 5-year-old Daugher[PHOTOS]

Published

16 hours ago

April 22, 2024

Editor

…mother faces 20 years prison for child trafficking

A Georgia man, Jeremy Williams, has been given four death sentences for paying a mother, Kristen Siple, $2,500 to rape her 5-year-old daughter, Kamarie Holland, before murdering the child.

The horrific details of the case sparked widespread outrage.

The emotional trial saw jurors reportedly shed tears upon viewing videos of Williams’ actions.

Williams was convicted of paying Kristen Siple $2,500 to rape and sodomize her daughter.

He filmed the sexual assault and then killed little Kamarie Holland.

On Dec. 13, 2021, the girl was snatched from her Columbus, Georgia home.

Williams took her to an abandoned ramshackle home where he once lived across the state line in Phenix City, Alabama, and raped, tortured and strangled the child to death.

Siple initially claimed she woke up that day to discover her daughter missing and the front door open.

However, last month, she confessed to selling her daughter to Williams for an hour to sate his sickening desires.

The mum now faces 20 years in prison for sex trafficking.

“If there’s ever been somebody that’s deserving of the death penalty, it’s Jeremy Williams,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told reporters.

“He’s another type of evil that we in society just don’t need walking around.”

According to reports, at points during the trial, jurors were sobbing as they watched bodycam footage of cops finding Kamarie’s body in the filthy basement.

They also had to endure videos of the little girl being raped.

Williams is a serial child abuser. He is also a suspect in the brutal murder of an Alabama toddler.

In 2009, he was acquitted of lowering a little boy, aged three, into a bowl of boiling water.

His ex-wife called him a “soulless” man who was “no longer worth her tears.”.

A woman who was four when she was raped by Williams called him a “monster.”

As the child killer heard the four death sentences pronounced, he was utterly without emotion.

“You don’t deserve life yourself,” Kamarie’s father, Corey Holland, told him at the sentencing. “We don’t have Kamarie and you don’t deserve to see your kids or life.”

The little girl’s sister added: “I don’t understand why someone would hurt her – she was so sweet and caring.”

Williams was also sentenced to life for the production of obscene material of a child and human trafficking, 20 years for conspiracy of human trafficking, and 10 years for abuse of a corpse.

“There’s no reason that baby should be in the ground. I want to remember her, not this joker. Jeremy is not somebody I want to remember in life,” DA Rick Chancey said.