President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan landed in New York on Sunday for the UN General Assembly's high-level week, his 16th appearance before the body. He is expected to address the assembly on Tuesday on Gaza, the case for Palestinian statehood and possible measures against Israel, hold bilateral meetings with other leaders, and speak at the UN secretary-general's climate summit on Wednesday.
The Turkish navy began the Denizkurdu-I exercise on Sunday, deploying about 100 vessels, 50 aircraft and drones and 14,000 personnel across the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean through 25 September. Greece put naval assets on alert to track the manoeuvres, the latest escalation in a dispute over Aegean airspace, territorial waters and the demilitarised status of Greek islands near the Turkish coast.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said Turkish prosecutors should drop terrorist-organisation-membership charges against three Etkin News Agency staff arrested after a February raid on their Istanbul office, and free editor Nadiye Gürbüz, the only one of the three still detained. CPJ says the case rests mainly on their journalism; all three have hearings in December.
Final results from Sunday's state elections gave the AfD 38.2% in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern against the SPD's 35.5%, while the CDU fell to 4.9%, missing the 5% threshold and losing every seat there for the first time in the party's history. In Berlin, the Left party topped the poll with about 26%, ahead of the CDU and the Greens. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, 16 months into his term, called the eastern result a 'disaster'.
EU ambassadors meet again on Monday to try to save the bloc's Russia sanctions regime, roughly half of all EU sanctions listings, which lapses at midnight on 22 September without unanimous agreement. Slovakia is withholding its vote unless oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov are delisted, and France now backs removing Usmanov alone, a move tied to Paris seeking the release of two French nationals held in Azerbaijan. The other 25 member states oppose delisting either man.
President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday he had asked the government to draw up a plan protecting critical infrastructure, including sensitive defence and technology sites, against drone and cyberattacks. He cited an intensifying 'Russian hybrid threat' to France and its neighbours and said any attack on French territory would not go unanswered.
Tehran said on Monday it has information the United States may be preparing a new round of strikes and warned it would respond 'without limitations' if Washington goes ahead. President Trump said the US options toward Iran are to 'obliterate' it, let it 'rot economically', or reach a deal.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met in New York on Sunday, covering trade, investment, artificial intelligence and rare earths, working to extend a tariff truce due to expire in November. The talks were the last scheduled session before Trump and Xi meet in Washington on Thursday.