Turkish Press Review
The majority of dailies cover the NATO summit in Wales, which Erdogan will attend, and the overpass collapse in Istanbul that killed one person.
The Anadolu Agency does not verify these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
Most of Thursday's papers are devoting their front pages to the NATO summit in Wales, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is attending, and the overpass collapse in Istanbul, which killed one person.
“Turkey’s first popularly elected president Erdogan will dominate the NATO summit in the Wales,” SABAH reports with a headline “Appointment list of presidential palace is full.”
Erdogan will meet with over 10 world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, the paper says.
The summit will take place on Sept. 4-5, as NATO prepares to withdraw its 11-year mission in Afghanistan. World leaders from some 60 countries will also attend to the summit.
VATAN stresses that the NATO gathering will be Erdogan’s first international summit as president. The daily says that Erdogan will ask at the NATO summit for the fulfillment of promises given to Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former Soviet republics, fought a war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988 until 1994. The two signed a ceasefire in 1994, but never agreed on a peace settlement. Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in essence independent, remains unrecognized internationally as a separate state.
Turkey maintains that any resolution of the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict should take into account Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations.
AKSAM reported that Erdogan paid his second foreign visit to Azerbaijan and met with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev. He is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in Wales on Thursday.
In regards to Wednesday's overpass accident, VATAN runs with the headline “We are living by coincidence.”
One person was killed and four others were injured after a tanker hit a pedestrian overpass in Avcilar district of Istanbul. The busy Avcilar-Topkapi highway was closed to traffic for hours after the accident.
The daily said, “There was a tragedy on E-5 highway yesterday. The driver of the tanker did not pull the vehicle with raised dump bed over. Instead, he stepped on the gas and collapsed the overpass, killing one person.”
AKSAM said: “Accident like a murder,” while STAR calls the driver a "murderer," quoting him as saying, “The control malfunctioned and I was not able to get the dump bed to fold down.”
On its front page, HURRIYET also mentions Turkish policeman Ahmet Sahbaz, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for a Gezi murder. The paper says, “The sentence was reduced from life imprisonment to seven years.”
A Turkish court convicted policeman Sahbaz on Wednesday for the premeditated murder of a 26-year-old anti-government protester during street protests in Ankara in June of last year.
Ankara High Criminal Court no:6 sentenced Sahbaz to seven years and nine months in prison for shooting to death Ethem Sarisuluk on June 1, 2013, near Guvenpark in central Ankara during the Gezi Park protests.
The protests began as an environmental demonstration in Istanbul and quickly mushroomed into nationwide anti-government protests over plans to replace Gezi Park in Istanbul with a shopping mall.
A postmortem examination suggested that Sarisuluk was shot in the head by a 9mm bullet. CCTV and media footage showed the encounter between the protesters, including the deceased, and the accused policeman, Sahbaz, who was seen running from the scene holding a pistol.
