The central bank lowered its one-week repo rate by 100 basis points to 36 percent on Thursday, its first cut in nine months, after annual inflation fell to 29.7 percent in September, below 30 percent for the first time in nearly five years. The bank said it remains "highly attentive" to upside risks and would tighten again if the inflation outlook deteriorated; its next meeting is 10 December.
President Erdoğan and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signed defence, air transport and energy agreements in Ankara on Thursday, during the first visit to Türkiye by a sitting Canadian prime minister, and confirmed the free trade talks, expected in November, will formally begin before the year's end. The two leaders set a target of raising bilateral trade from roughly $3 billion to $10 billion, after years of strained ties over Canada's arms-export restrictions on Türkiye.
Deputy Foreign Minister Musa Kulaklıkaya called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan at the sixth consultative meeting on Sudan, held in Geneva, and said "peace-oriented approaches" must replace military solutions, criticising the exclusion of Sudanese parties from international talks on their own war. He said Turkish humanitarian supplies, including 80,000 prefabricated homes meant for Gaza, remain stuck at Egypt's El-Arish port and the Rafah crossing "just because they carry markings indicating they came from Türkiye," while Gaza receives only 100 to 150 aid trucks a day against an agreed 600 to 700.
Parliament President Roberta Metsola said the award recognises the International Criminal Court's work upholding international law, two weeks after President Trump sanctioned the court and vowed to dismantle it "brick by brick" over its 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the court "must be free to pursue its mission, independently, and without pressure or intimidation."
Russian forces fired three Iskander-M missiles carrying cluster warheads at central Kyiv overnight Wednesday into Thursday, part of a barrage of 21 ballistic missiles and 210 drones that killed at least two people and wounded 34, including five children, and damaged the historic Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery. President Zelensky said "the choice of weapon was deliberate," and the strike came hours after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg.
Interior ministers Matteo Piantedosi and Fernando Grande-Marlaska agreed to phase out the spot checks Italy imposed on travellers from Spain on 1 August, after more than 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco in late July, a measure Spain called "a disgrace" and matched with reciprocal checks of its own. Both governments said they would instead rely on increased information-sharing within the Schengen area.
President Macron will chair a defence council on 23 October and has ordered a 20 percent increase in police deployment, backed by Sentinelle soldiers, elite police and gendarmerie units, ahead of nationwide demonstrations on 24 October; only union-organised marches will be authorised, with prefects empowered to ban others. The move follows the 17 October protests, when the interior ministry counted 550,000 participants and the CGT union 800,000, against the cost of living, far above the 200,000 authorities had expected, and clashes and looting broke out that Macron called "criminal acts."
The US has deployed a third aircraft carrier to the Gulf, its largest naval and air presence there since the 2003 Iraq invasion, and Iran has warned that any strikes after November's US midterm elections would draw a response it called "100 percent certain." Seven oil tankers were damaged or caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, and French President Macron urged "extreme caution" during a Gulf tour meant to calm the tension.
Parties across Sweden's centre-left reached agreement on 22 October for emergency legislation offering 13-month residence permits to young people who lived in Sweden with their families and were refused residency on or after 20 July 2021, while excluding those who evaded authorities or face criminal or security-related deportation. Migration Agency director-general Maria Mindhammar said no law currently requires her to pause deportations while the bill proceeds.
With the parliamentary Speaker's mandate to explore a centrist government in Centre Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist's hands, her party is demanding Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson scrap work-permit salary thresholds, restore the pre-2023 "particularly distressing circumstances" deportation exception and widen UN refugee quotas, alongside a green tax reform, in exchange for support. Think-tank analyst Matilda Molander said the Sweden Democrats, whose backing keeps Kristersson in office, are unlikely to accept terms that cut against their own migration priorities, making Magdalena Andersson's rival Social Democrat-led bid the likelier outcome.