A Turkish Presidential Candidate, Muharrem İnce, has been ejected from the race after a sex tape allegedly featuring the opposition leader emerged on social media. İnce’s premature finish is a fresh blow to President Erdogan, as he had been splitting the opposition vote. Opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is now expected to come out on top.
Whilst announcing his withdrawal, İnce issued a hard denial of the claims. He said the “fake” images originated from Israel…
“Fake invoices, fake videos, pictures… they took a video from an Israeli porn website and added my face there… Unfortunately some people in Turkey shared those for the sake of being in so-called opposition.”
Erdogan’s popularity was down already, and with the election just three days away, he’ll struggle to get it up again.
It appears Turkey’s President Erdogan hasn’t quite managed to bury the hatchet with Boris Johnson, after awkward footage emerged yesterday of Biden having to grab the PM’s arm after Erdogan made a joke at his expense. After the inaudible banter between Biden and Erdogan, Boris began pointing a finger at Recep before Biden reportedly clarified “this is a joke, a joke, calm down Boris”. Boris repeats the phrase “Çok guzel”, either Turkish for “very good” or an instruction to Erdogan. Clearly the Turkish president hasn’t forgotten Boris’s old penmanship for the Spectator: “There was a young fellow from Ankara, Who was a terrific wankerer. Till he sowed his wild oats, With the help of a goat, But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”
Last night several major Twitter accounts posted tweets showing a swastika symbol and the words “Nazi Germany” and “Nazi Holland” written in Turkish. Some accounts had their header image changed to the Turkish flag in what seems to be a mass hack by supporters of the Turkish autocrat Erdogan. Affected accounts include Forbes, Amnesty International, the European Parliament, Justin Bieber, Dortmund football club, the UK Department of Health and EyeSpy.MP. It seems the hack happened via a third-party app – possibly Twitter Counter – rather than the accounts themselves being compromised. Twitter Counter claimed in November that they had secured their accounts after a hack…
Hurriyet reports:
Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov Gennadiyeviç in Ankara, Contemporary Arts came under armed attack at the opening of an art exhibition at the Centre. During the opening speech, it was learned that Karlov, who had been attacked by a gun, was taken to the hospital as a seriously injured person.
Now confirmed dead.
Video:
Here is latest longer video of Russian ambassador attack. gunman says Islamic words in Arabic then speaks in Turkish pic.twitter.com/D8ILO7Tpce
— Mohamed Hemish (@MohamedHemish) December 19, 2016
Uh oh…
Diplomatic sources tell AFP:
“The EU will open new membership talks with Turkey as planned in a few days, EU diplomatic sources said Wednesday, just as Ankara’s accession becomes a hot-button issue in Britain’s vote on its future in the bloc.
One source, who asked not to be named, told AFP that EU member states will meet June 30 to agree to open a new negotiating chapter with Turkey.”
This morning John Major admitted it could happen in the next ten years. Yet Dave wants you to believe Turkey won’t join ’til the year 3000…
Chief adviser to the Turkish government Ilnur Chevik was on Newsnight last night, where he expressed surprise that Cameron is now claiming Turkey won’t join the EU:
“We are really, really flabbergasted, let’s put it that way. We thought Mr Cameron was our chief supporter for our quest for European Union membership. Turks thought that the British were the driving force behind our EU membership and that they were supporting us right to the hilt.”
It ain’t the Turks he was fooling…
