Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz is chairing a new board tasked with overseeing the PKK's disarmament, which held its first meeting this week, more than a year after the group announced its dissolution. The body also includes the justice, foreign, interior and defence ministers, and will set up subordinate panels for weapons handover, court cases against former fighters and their reintegration.
An Istanbul court is expected to rule soon in a corruption case built around businessman Aziz Ihsan Aktaş, whose 579-page indictment names 200 defendants, among them seven CHP mayors: from Istanbul's Avcılar, Esenyurt and Beşiktaş districts to Adana and Adıyaman provinces. Aktaş has testified that municipalities systematically withheld payments to pressure firms into illicit cash transfers. Prosecutors have linked the case to a separate, larger trial against former Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said public-sector savings reached 484 billion lira over 2024 and 2025, more than the combined budgets of six ministries, and that the measures are continuing. He put the budget deficit at 2.5 percent of GDP as of June, down from 2.9 percent a year earlier, and said the freed-up fiscal space would go toward priority spending and disinflation.
The Greek Cypriot administration's UN representative has filed a complaint calling a new 101-kilometre gas pipeline between Türkiye and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) 'null and void', arguing it was agreed without consulting the Greek Cypriot side. Türkiye and the TRNC signed the deal on 10 July, framing it as energy infrastructure for a territory that faces international isolation.
President Zelenskyy said holding elections during the war would be a huge risk that could split the country, responding to a call for a wartime vote from Mykhailo Fedorov, the former digital minister he dismissed in July. Ukrainian law bars elections while martial law is in force, and a survey published in early August found 57 percent of Ukrainians want elections held only after the fighting ends.
The far-right AfD leads an Infratest dimap poll with 41 percent support ahead of Saxony-Anhalt's state election on 6 September, far ahead of the CDU's 24 percent. Every mainstream party has ruled out governing with the AfD, and the CDU says a 'firewall' against the party is necessary because, in the CDU's words, AfD 'poses a threat to Germany's fundamental principles'. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel dismissed that strategy, saying the CDU 'will never win another federal election'.
MEP Raphaël Glucksmann confirmed on French television that he will run for president in 2027, entering a social-democratic primary in October organised jointly by the Socialist Party and his own party, Place publique. He ruled out any electoral agreement with Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise if he wins, while leaving the door open to the Greens and Communists.
Exit polls gave President Tokayev's Adilet party 70 to 72 percent of the vote in Kazakhstan's first election to the new single-chamber Kurultai, with turnout above 74 percent. The party, formed this year by Tokayev's aides, absorbed the long-ruling Amanat party; four small opposition parties also won seats. The result cements Tokayev's hold over the oil, uranium and mineral-rich country.
President Pezeshkian said Iran's memorandum of understanding with the United States, agreed in June with a 60-day deadline that has since lapsed without resolving the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, involves 'not a single provision that amounts to capitulation'. The two sides remain far apart on reopening the strait, nearly six months after the US-Israeli campaign against Iran began, and hardline official Mohsen Rezaei warned of 'seismic' retaliation if neighbouring states join US economic pressure.
The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached 5,515 confirmed cases and 2,642 deaths, a case fatality rate of nearly 48 percent, making it the country's deadliest outbreak on record. Pope Leo urged the international community to act, and the WHO, which has declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, has so far sent 16,250 of a pledged 70,000 vaccine doses.
Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur said elections across the Baltic Sea region, starting with Sweden's on 13 September, raise the risk of Russian hybrid attacks and disinformation. He pointed to a suspected pro-Russian network, linked to the 'Matryoshka' campaign, that has circulated video clips carrying forged media logos and false corruption claims about the Swedish election. Swedish authorities say they do not see the election as a priority Russian target, but are preparing regardless.
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson said in SVT's party-leader interview that saving the Liberals' seats in parliament is not in his party's interest, a sharpening of tone SVT's commentator read as a sign the four-party Tidö cooperation could be fraying. Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson is next up in SVT's series of interviews, on 25 August, with the Liberals polling below the four percent threshold in every reading this year.