分类： News

Turkish authorities have arrested 21 suspected members of the Islamic State group, according to state media.

They were picked up early on Friday in a series of raids in Istanbul and the nearby town of Kocaeli, as well as locations near the Syrian border.

Three of those detained are foreigners who were allegedly planning to cross into Syria.

Turkey has been accused of not doing enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters across its long Syrian border.

The Turkish government rejects those accusations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that the country had deported 1,300 foreigners thought to have links to IS.

The Turkish citizens arrested on Friday are suspected of recruiting foreign nationals to join the militant group.

A group which had gathered in front of Thailand’s embassy in Turkey’s capital of Ankara to protest Bangkok’s expulsion of nearly 100 Uighur Muslims back to China attacked a woman they thought was Chinese on Thursday.

The woman was walking in front of the protesters when she got attacked by the angry group. Police officers intervened and took her to safety.

The Doğan news agency said the woman was a tourist but her nationality was not known.

Protests have been held across Turkey over the last week to condemn bans imposed on religious practices by the predominantly Muslim Uighur people in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, or East Turkistan as is known in Turkey, and the killings of Uighurs by Chinese police. During the protests, a Chinese restaurant, its owner Turkish and its cook ironically Uighur, was vandalized, while a group of Korean tourists mistaken for Chinese citizens were attacked in İstanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district.

The Thai honorary consulate in İstanbul was also attacked by protesters on Wednesday night.

The head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has raised some eyebrows by saying both Chinese and Koreans “have slanted eyes” while touching on attacks on Chinese people in Turkey to protest the alleged abuse of Uighurs in Xinjiang/East Turkestan.

“These are young people,” the MHP chair Devlet Bahçeli said in an interview to daily Hürriyet, playing down the recent ultranationalist attacks on Asian tourists.

“Some can pull these young people and they may follow them. Moreover, what is the difference between a Korean and a Chinese? They both have slanted eyes,” he added.
继续阅读Thai consulate attacked in Turkey Please credit and share this article with others using this link:http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/618268/thai-consulate-general-attacked-in-turkey. Vie

SINGAPORE — AirAsia, Asia’s largest low-cost carrier, is embarking on a massive aircraft sale and leaseback plan involving as many as 120 aircraft to cut its debt.

“Over the next 10 years, we will have an aircraft disposal programme of 120 planes. We expect to have a net cash gain of US$2.5 billion (S$3.38 billion) over that period… Investors haven’t really given us the credit for the fact that we own everything and that there is US$2 billion worth of cash there,” founder and chief executive Tony Fernandes told TODAY in an exclusive interview.

继续阅读AirAsia to sell and lease back 120 planes, revitalise operations