Ankara prosecutors ordered the arrest of 36 people in an expanded investigation into the 2009 helicopter crash that killed nationalist politician Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu and five others, alleging premeditated murder linked to the Gülenist network (FETÖ). Police searched 45 addresses across 16 provinces in the operation. The crash, in Kahramanmaraş, has been officially investigated for more than 17 years.
Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz chaired the second meeting of the Terror-free Türkiye board, formally the National Solidarity and Social Integration Board, the body overseeing the initiative to get PKK fighters to disarm and disband. Verification that fighters have laid down weapons and disbanded is still under way; the legal steps that would follow remain on hold until that is confirmed.
Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said legal proceedings against those suspected of manipulating thinly traded stocks to trigger losses at investment funds are continuing, with arrests now up to 51, from the 25 suspects who had faced prosecution earlier in the probe. He said the measures needed to keep liquidity flowing to the market would stay in place, and that 90 percent of stock market trading is functioning normally.
Hungary's parliament voted to lift the immunity of Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who asked for the move himself to answer prosecutors' claim that he took a man's phone during an altercation in a Budapest nightclub and threw it into the Danube, and of two former ministers from Viktor Orbán's government accused of corruption. One faces embezzlement allegations over 40 million euros in public funds; the other is accused of taking bribes worth more than 37 million dollars. Orbán's Fidesz and its ally, the KDNP, boycotted the vote.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said a planned emergency protocol for hybrid, gray-zone attacks should spell out what member states can actually do, unlike NATO's consultative Article 4, and that it must work with the alliance rather than duplicate it. She said the EU's Operation Aspides, which protects Red Sea shipping lanes, needs more resources to keep up the mission.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said it is too soon to attribute a suspected explosives plot near RAF Fairford, the British base used for US strikes on Iran, to any foreign state, after the five British nationals arrested on suspicion of terror offences, whose detention this paper already reported, remain in custody. Police declared a major incident near the base as the investigation, including a possible Iran link, continues.
President Trump dismissed as a “hoax” reports that his administration had offered Iran sanctions relief and access to frozen funds, three days after he had publicly rejected Tehran's own seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held further indirect talks with US officials through Qatari mediators in New York and said a formal US response was expected within days, with the standoff over shipping through the strait still unresolved.
The United Arab Emirates confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an undisclosed weekend visit to Abu Dhabi to meet President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, a month before Israeli elections in which Netanyahu trails challenger Gadi Eisenkot in polls. The visit comes as Netanyahu threatens legal action over reports, which he denies, that the UAE had warned him of a planned Hamas attack ahead of October 7, 2023.
Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson returned her exploratory mandate to form a government, saying “at present, there is no possibility,” after the Left Party voted to back incumbent speaker Andreas Norlén, of the Moderate party, rather than the centre-left bloc's own candidate. Parliament's speaker is now expected to task Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson with a fresh attempt, though the Centre Party still refuses to govern alongside the Sweden Democrats.