Turkey’s Ruling Party Suffers Heavy Losses in Key Local Polls

VOA’s Turkish and Kurdish services contributed to this report.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party suffered heavy losses in Sunday’s local elections, losing critical cities across the country, while the main opposition party is on course to win the capital Ankara.

In Istanbul, election results remain too close to call, with opposition claims of voter manipulation.

Erdogan, speaking in Istanbul to reporters, acknowledged his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had suffered setbacks and vowed to learn “lessons” from the poll.

“We had some wins; we had some losses,” he said.  Erdogan went on to promise to introduce measures to boost the economy, which is mired in recession.

Possible defeat in Ankara

Some analysts see Erdogan’s avoidance of his traditional fiery rhetoric against the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) as a sign of accepting defeat in the capital Ankara.

Ankara’s CHP candidate, Mansor Yavas, appears set for a historic but narrow victory for the opposition.

In addressing thousands of supporters gathered in the heart of the capital, Yavas gave a conciliatory speech, promising to focus on services, adding there would be no purge of workers with ties to the AKP.

In Istanbul, the contest remains mired in controversy. AKP candidate Binali Yildirim claimed victory in a short speech. However, CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu immediately shot back, saying it was shameful to claim success, given that only a few thousand votes separate the candidates and some ballots remain uncounted.

Imamoglu called on his supporters not to sleep for the next 48 hours, warning their victory was being stolen from them.

Earlier Sunday evening, Imamoglu challenged the integrity of the counting of the vote, claiming there were disparities in results in the announced elections.

With 98.5% of votes counted in Istanbul, results appeared frozen with no update for several hours. Most of the outstanding uncounted ballots are in CHP strongholds.

Recent elections in Turkey have been marred by controversy over voter manipulation and outright fraud allegations by the opposition, a charge denied by the governing AKP. Critics, however, claim the Supreme Electoral Board, which administers elections, is run by the government and presidential appointees.

Sunday evening, the electoral board stopped sending results to the opposition parties for 40 minutes, claiming it was upgrading its system. Leading members of the opposition party went to the electoral board headquarters, demanding an explanation.

Beyond Ankara and Istanbul, the AKP lost several key provincial cities, while narrowly avoiding defeat in many others. Several other important results remain in the balance.

Recession, inflation

The AKP appears to be paying a heavy price for an economy in recession and soaring inflation.

“Our economy is getting worse and worse because of their (government) bad management,” said Erdem, an engineer, speaking before voting in Istanbul. “Most of my friends are now looking for a job and some my friends lose their job because of economic crisis.”

Voters in Ankara spoke about the country’s economic problems.

“The youth in this country are unemployed. We know the hardships of people who don’t have a job. The only solution to this is creating jobs,” Orhan Kurubacak told VOA.

“I don’t think things are going well. There is nothing more else to say. There are a lot of economic factors,” Hakan Akyürek said.

Diyarbakir AKP candidate, Cumali Attila, told VOA’s Kurdish service, “I hope these elections would end with gumption. It is our responsibility to claim democracy.”

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) heavily defeated Attila. However, the AKP scored some crucial victories in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, winning key provinces. In Sirnak, the AKP won with a 30 percent swing to the party from the HDP.

Such success will likely do little to soften the blow Erdogan has suffered in the Sunday polls. Even though Erdogan was not on the ballot, he took personal control of the local election campaign. In the last few days held more than a dozen rallies across Istanbul in a bid to consolidate his party’s support.

Realities in country

Despite such efforts, analysts say Erdogan could not escape the economic realities facing the county.

“I think that the most powerful and effective opposition parties are not the classical parties, like the Republican People’s Party or the Good Party. However, the key issue for the elections is the increasing prices of vegetables. Let’s say the prices of cucumbers or tomatoes. These are the most effective oppositions of Turkey,” Doster added.

The loss of Ankara and possibly Istanbul is the worst electoral defeat for Erdogan, who has enjoyed unparalleled success. Analysts say  Erdogan’s reputation of electoral invincibility has received a significant blow.

Meanwhile, HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan said votes cast Sunday for her party “will contribute to peace, freedom and equality.”

Buldan said, however, obstacles their party faced, such as receiving no television coverage during the election, might not be enough to win.

“Every day we tried to clear and explain the truths told our people about the lies, slanders, threats and the perception that created against us. We did our duty today. I believe that our people will do their duty at the polls, too,” she said.

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Israel, Hamas Cease-Fire Appears to Be Holding

A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appeared to hold Sunday, with Israel easing some restrictions on a commercial crossing into Gaza and expanding the Mediterranean fishing zone.

Sunday’s relative peace and quiet came after days of violence, including Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel, followed by Israeli retaliatory airstrikes.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian protesters rallied in Gaza Saturday — far fewer than organizers hoped for. Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire despite efforts from others to keep the marchers away from the fence along the Israeli border.

Many of the deaths of protesters during previous marches came when soldiers opened fire at militants apparently trying to sneak into Israel across the fence.

Militants fired a rocket at southern Israel early Sunday, setting-off air-raid sirens but failing to hit its target. No one claimed responsibility and Israel did not respond with force.

Hamas officials say Egyptian mediators are trying to negotiate a firmer and more definitive cease-fire. Israel has not commented on any such talks.

Palestinian protesters have been demanding the right of return to lands they say were stolen from their families when Israel was founded as a nation in 1948.

They also want an end to Israeli settlement activity in areas they see as part of a future Palestinian state.

Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist group that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel says it will do all it can to defend itself.

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Police: Ride-Share Mistake Led to Death of South Carolina College Student

The man accused of killing a woman who got into his car thinking it was her Uber ride had activated the child locks in his backseat so the doors could only be opened from the outside, police in South Carolina say.

Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook also said investigators found the victim’s blood in Nathaniel David Rowland’s vehicle. Rowland, 24, was arrested and charged in the death of 21-year-old Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina student from Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Investigators would not say what they think Rowland did to Josephson from the time she got into his black Chevrolet Impala in Columbia’s Five Points entertainment district around 1:30 a.m. Friday until her body was dumped in woods off a dirt road in Clarendon County about 65 miles (105 kilometers) away.

Josephson had numerous wounds to her head, neck, face, upper body, leg and foot, according to arrest warrants released Sunday by the State Law Enforcement Division. The documents didn’t say what was used to attack her.

Josephson’s blood was found in the trunk and inside Rowland’s car along with her cellphone, bleach, window cleaner and cleaning wipes, Holbrook said.

“This was a bad scene,” the police chief said at a news conference late Saturday.

Hunters found Josephson’s body Friday afternoon just hours after it was dumped, despite being left in an area that was “very difficult to get to unless you knew how to get there,” Holbrook said.

Rowland has recently lived in the area, he said.

The night after Josephson was kidnapped, a Columbia police officer noticed a black Chevrolet Impala about two blocks from the Five Points bars where Josephson was kidnapped. The driver ran, but was arrested after a short chase, Holbrook said.

Rowland is charged with kidnapping and murder, Holbrook said. He was being held in the Richland County jail. It wasn’t known if he had a lawyer.

Rowland decided not to appear at a hearing in jail Sunday. The judge allowed Josephson’s mother to speak, The State newspaper reported.

Marci Josephson said her daughter was planning to go to law school after graduating in May and described her as “bubbly, loving, kind and full of life.”

“Unlike him, Samantha had love within her heart and purpose in her life,” Marci Josephson said.

Safety advocates urged college students to match the vehicle color and model, the license tag number, and the photo of their ride-share drivers before getting in a vehicle and make the driver say their names to them before they introduce themselves.

“She simply, mistakenly, got into the car thinking it was an Uber ride,” Holbrook said.

The crime shook Columbia, the state capital where the University of South Carolina is one of the main economic engines.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and his wife, Peggy, asked on a message on Twitter for prayers for Josephson’s family.

“Peggy and I are devastated and crushed over the Josephson family losing their beautiful daughter Samantha. She was one of the brightest young stars,” McMaster wrote.

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Cameroon NGO Struggles to Protect Waters from Invasive Plants

The spread of invasive water hyacinths in and around Cameroon’s port city of Douala is causing problems for residents. The hyacinths’ stubborn growth hampers shipping, reduces fish catches, blocks streams and invades houses. But local NGOs are working to clean them up and artists are finding new uses for the hyacinths. Moki Edwin Kindzeka narrates this report by Anne Mireille Nzouankeu from Cameroon’s port city of Douala.

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Cameroon NGO Struggles to Protect Waters from Invasive Plants

The spread of invasive water hyacinths in and around Cameroon’s port city of Douala is causing problems for residents. The hyacinths’ stubborn growth hampers shipping, reduces fish catches, blocks streams and invades houses. But local NGOs are working to clean them up and artists are finding new uses for the hyacinths. Moki Edwin Kindzeka narrates this report by Anne Mireille Nzouankeu from Cameroon’s port city of Douala.

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Arab Leaders to Seek UN Security Council Resolution on Golan

Arab leaders said on Sunday they would seek a U.N. Security Council resolution against the U.S. decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and promised to support Palestinians in their bid for statehood.

Arab leaders, long divided by regional rivalries, also ended their annual summit in Tunisia calling for cooperation with non-Arab Iran based on non-interference in each others’ affairs.

Arab leaders who have been grappling with a bitter Gulf Arab dispute, splits over Iran’s regional influence, the war in Yemen and unrest in Algeria and Sudan sought common ground after Washington recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.

But the abrupt departure from the summit shortly after it began by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is locked in a row with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, suggested rivalries were not easily buried. No reason was given for his departure.

“We, the leaders of the Arab countries gathered in Tunisia … express our rejection and condemnation of the United States decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said.

He said Arab countries would present a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council and seek a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice on the U.S. decision. It warned other countries away from following Washington’s lead.

Trump signed a proclamation last week recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, which annexed the area in 1981 after capturing it from Syria in 1967.

Trump’s earlier decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital also drew Arab condemnation. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz told the Arab leaders his country “absolutely rejects” any measures affecting Syria’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said Arab nations needed to ensure the international community understood the centrality of the Palestinian cause to Arab nations.

In their final communique, Arab states renewed support for an Arab peace initiative that offers Israel peace in exchange for withdrawal from all lands occupied in the 1967 war and said they would seek to revive peace talks with the Jewish state.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who also addressed the meeting in Tunis, said any resolution to the Syrian conflict must guarantee the territorial integrity of Syria “including the occupied Golan Heights”.

The Tunis summit brought together the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the first time at the same gathering since 2017 when Riyadh and its allies imposed a political and economic boycott on Doha.

But Qatar’s emir left the summit hall shortly after Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit praised the way Saudi Arabia handled its rotating Arab League presidency last year, live television footage showed.

Qatar’s state news agency did not say why the Qatari emir left, but Tunisia’s state news agency TAP said the rest of Qatar’s delegation stayed.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism and say it has been cosying up to Iran, a charge Doha denies.

The row has defied mediation efforts by Kuwait and the United States, which called on Gulf Arab states to unite in opposition to Iranian influence in the region.

The final communique said Arab states called for ties with Iran to “be based on good neighborliness, non-interference in internal affairs, the non-use of force or threats, and refraining from practices and actions that would undermine confidence and stability in the region.”

Arab states remain divided over other issues, including how to deal with pro-democracy protests that have erupted in the region since 2011. The presidents of Sudan and Algeria, two nations roiled by anti-government protests, did not attend the summit.

Syria’s seat at the summit was vacant. Damascus as been suspended from the League since 2011 over its crackdown on protesters at the start of its civil war. The League has said no consensus has yet been reached to allow Syria’s reinstatement.

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German Train Car Arrives in New York for Auschwitz Exhibit

On a Sunday morning, a crane lowered a rusty remnant of the Holocaust onto tracks outside Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage — a vintage German train car like those used to transport men, women and children to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.

The windowless boxcar is among 700 Holocaust artifacts, most never before seen in the United States, which are being prepared for one of the largest exhibits ever on Auschwitz — a once ordinary Polish town called Oswiecim that the Nazis occupied and transformed into a human monstrosity.

The New York exhibit opens May 8, the day in 1945 when Germany surrendered and the camps were liberated.

German-made freight wagons like the one in the exhibit were used to deport people from their homes all around Europe. About 1 million Jews and nearly 100,000 others were gassed, shot, hanged or starved in Auschwitz out of a total of 6 million who perished in the Holocaust.

That fate awaited them after a long ride on the kind of train car that’s the centerpiece of the New York exhibit.

“There were 80 people squeezed into one wooden car, with no facilities, just a pail to urinate,” remembers Ray Kaner, a 92-year-old woman who still works as a Manhattan dental office manager. “You couldn’t lie down, so you had to sleep sitting, and it smelled.”

She and her sister had been forced to board the train in August 1944 in occupied Poland, after their parents died in the Lodz ghetto where Jews were held captive.

The Germans promised the sisters a better new life.

“We believed them, and we schlepped everything we could carry,” she said. “We still had great hope.”

Once in Auschwitz, “they took away whatever we carried,” and prisoners were beaten, stripped naked and heads shaved bald.

Titled “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away,” the upcoming exhibit will transport visitors into the grisly faceoff between perpetrators and victims.

On display will be concrete posts from an Auschwitz fence covered in barbed and electrified wires; a gas mask used by the SS; a desk belonging to Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss; and a dagger and helmet used by Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of Hitler’s “final solution.”

The collection of prisoners’ personal items includes a comb improvised from scrap metal; a trumpet one survivor used to save his life by entertaining his captors; and tickets for passage on the St. Louis, a ship of refugees whom the United States refused to accept, sending them back to Europe where some were killed by the Nazis.

The materials are on loan from about 20 institutions worldwide, plus private collections, curated by Robert Jan van Pelt, a leading Auschwitz authority, and other experts in conjunction with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland and Musealia, a Spanish company that organizes traveling shows.

The New York one will run through Jan. 3.

The eight-decade-old box car brought to New York on a cargo ship came from a German auction, in terrible condition. Van Pelt’s team bought it and restored it.

“The dark, smelly car represents that moment of transition from the world of the living that people understood and trusted to the radically alien world of the camps where the doors opened and families were separated forever,” said van Pelt, whose relatives in Amsterdam lived down the street from Anne Frank’s family.

“The Nazis wanted to wipe out every last Jew in the world,” and at the end of a train trip, “this is where the last goodbyes were said.”

The exhibit items all belonged to somebody — most now gone, either because they were murdered in camps or survived and have since died. Some people who inherited artifacts came forward with stories attached to them.

Thousands of survivors live in New York City, among the last who can offer personal testimony.

And that’s why the exhibit is important, said real estate developer Bruce Ratner, the chairman of the museum’s board of trustees.

“While we had all hoped after the Holocaust that the international community would come together to stop genocide, mass murder and ethnic cleansing, these crimes continue and there are more refugees today than at any time since the Second World War,” said Ratner. “So my hope for this exhibit is that it motivates all of us to make the connections between the world of the past and the world of the present, and to take a firm stand against hate.”

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Biden Denies He ‘Acted Inappropriately’ Toward Female Candidate

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a possible Democratic challenger to President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, denied Sunday that he “acted inappropriately” in the face of allegations from a Nevada lawmaker that he unexpectedly  touched her shoulders and kissed her hair at a 2014 political rally.

Lucy Flores, a former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in the western state of Nevada, recalled the incident on CNN, saying that “very unexpectedly and out of nowhere, I feel Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head.”

She called the moment “shocking,” adding, “You don’t expect that kind of intimacy from someone so powerful and someone who you just have no relationship (with) whatsoever to touch you and to feel you and to be so close to you in that way.”

Biden said: “In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”

Political surveys show the 76-year-old Biden leading a long list of Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to oust Trump from the White House, but he has not yet formally declared his candidacy even as he has made frequent speeches at campaign-style rallies in recent weeks.

He has twice unsuccessfully sought the party’s presidential nomination, before serving for eight years as vice president under former President Barack Obama, ending in early 2017.

In the lead-up to his presumed candidacy, Biden has faced new questions about his public hands-on attention to women in public settings over the years and notably his 1991 treatment of Anita Hill when Biden, as a U.S. senator, chaired the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Hill is a college law professor who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when they worked together at a U.S. government agency, but the all-male panel headed by Biden largely dismissed her allegations, with Thomas winning narrow confirmation to the country’s highest court, where he still sits.

Biden in recent days has said he regretted that he “couldn’t come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved,” even though he led the committee.

Biden is not believed to have apologized personally to Hill in the nearly three decades since the hearing. But as he seemingly moves toward another presidential candidacy in an era of new accountability for men in powerful positions of their treatment of women in years past, Biden is facing new calls for further explanation of his role in the Thomas confirmation hearings.

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