President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Türkiye will keep pursuing what he called “peace-oriented diplomatic initiatives” to end tensions between Iran and the United States, speaking after a phone call with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on September 4. He said Ankara “never approves of attacks on brotherly countries” in the region, a week after the US and Iran traded strikes in the Gulf.
MİT chief İbrahim Kalın met his Greek counterpart Themistoklis Demiris in Athens in a rare, previously unannounced meeting, reported September 4. The two intelligence chiefs discussed the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, NATO security, migration and counterterrorism, and agreed to deepen bilateral intelligence cooperation. The meeting came as the two NATO allies remain at odds over Greek marine parks and Turkish claims to Aegean “gray zones.”
The Üsküdar municipal council could not reach quorum on September 5 after CHP and the New Party group stayed away from the session electing a replacement for suspended mayor Sinem Dedetaş. CHP spokesperson Müslim Sarı said the boycott was meant to let detained council members cast their votes too. The council will try again on September 8, four CHP members having defected to the AK Party the day before the first attempt.
Vladimir Putin ordered a 72-hour halt to strikes on Kyiv from midnight on September 5, after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met him at the Kremlin for over three hours. The two travel to Kyiv on Sunday for their first visit to Ukraine's capital in the peace process; Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will hold off hitting Moscow through Monday in return.
The five countries agreed on shared rules for financing and running centres to hold rejected asylum seekers outside the bloc, aiming to send the first migrants there in 2027; Uganda and Rwanda are seen as likely hosts, though no partner country has been named. Rights group Picum called the plan a way of “uprooting children, adults and families” into prolonged detention abroad.
A commemoration for Ratko Mladić, convicted of genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and dead in The Hague on August 27, opened in Belgrade on September 5, with burial set for Monday without state or military honours, artillery salutes or serving officials present. Justice Minister Nenad Vujić had earlier said Mladić would get “all military and state honours”; EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos, who cancelled a planned visit, called any glorification “incompatible” with EU values, and President Vučić dismissed her warning as “stupid.”
US Central Command said it disabled two Iranian oil tankers and destroyed a third, near Kharg Island and in the Gulf of Oman, after Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired ballistic missiles at two US Navy warships on September 5; no American personnel were hurt. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said the tankers were part of a network funding the Guard and its regional proxies: “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost.” Iran called the strikes “illegal and aggressive” and warned of a “significant response”; the war, now in its seventh month, has killed 18 US service members.
The UN General Assembly voted 164 to 1 on September 4 to endorse the Equal Earth map projection, which shows Africa at roughly 14 times the size of Greenland rather than the near-equal sizes the standard Mercator map suggests. Togo sponsored the resolution on behalf of the African Union; the United States cast the only vote against, while Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine abstained. The nonbinding text encourages governments and schools to use the more accurate projection but does not ban the Mercator map.
In an interview with Israel's i24NEWS aired September 6, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “I attacked Qatar, I also bombed it” during the war, days before the anniversary of Israel's September 2025 strike on Doha that killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer. He also defended Qatari funds channelled into Gaza, saying they made up “2 percent of all the money that entered the Strip” and were transferred on Israeli security agencies' advice; Qatar has previously called the Doha strike “cowardly” and denies funding Hamas.
Internal emails obtained by The Local show the European Commission demanding an account of how Sweden's Migration Agency has supported vulnerable British citizens facing removal under the Brexit withdrawal agreement, after reports on a 78-year-old former nurse, Joyce Thomas, and George "Horace" Mason, a man in 24-hour Alzheimer's care. Sweden has issued 458 removal or deportation orders to Britons since Brexit and rejects 27.5 percent of late applications, far above the roughly 4 percent EU average; migration minister Johan Forssell insists Sweden "has fulfilled its commitments."
Demoskop's latest barometer, published September 3 from polling taken August 25 to September 1, put the opposition's lead over Ulf Kristersson's government at just 3.3 percentage points, its narrowest margin since August 2023. The Social Democrats fell sharply while the Sweden Democrats gained, though the four-party opposition still leads with the September 13 election a week away.