istanbul — Five Turkish soldiers were killed Friday in an attack on a military base in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. Authorities blamed Kurdish militants.

Eight soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously, when the attackers attempted to infiltrate the base, the ministry said on social media. It indicated 12 militants had been killed and that operations were continuing in the area. The wounded troops were hospitalized for treatment.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan later expressed condolences for the families of the slain soldiers.

“We will fight to the end against the PKK terrorist organization within and outside our borders,” he said, referring to militants affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The clashes follow a similar attack in northern Iraq three weeks ago that led to the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers.

PKK-affiliated militants tried to break into a Turkish base in northern Iraq on December 22, according to Turkish officials. Six soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight. The following day, six more Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with the Kurdish militants.

Turkey responded by launching strikes against sites that officials said were associated with the PKK in Iraq and Syria. Defense Minister Yasar Guler said at the time that dozens of Kurdish militants were killed in airstrikes and land assaults.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Friday’s attack and the one three weeks earlier were at the same base or not.

The PKK, which maintains bases in northern Iraq, has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is considered a terror organization by Turkey’s Western allies, including the U.S. Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.

Turkey and the U.S., however, disagree on the status of the Syrian Kurdish groups, which have been allied with Washington in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
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TALLINN, Estonia — A Belarusian journalist went on trial Friday on charges linked to his professional work covering protests, the latest move in a government crackdown on dissent. 

Photojournalist Alyaksandr Zyankou faces up to six years in prison if convicted on charges of “participation in an extremist group” at Minsk City Court. Such accusations have been widely used by authorities to target opposition members, civil society activists and independent journalists. 

Zyankou has been in custody since his arrest in June, and his health has deteriorated behind bars, according to the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists. 

“Zyankou was just taking pictures to chronicle brutal repressions in Belarus, but the authorities hate anyone speaking about or taking images of political terror in the country,” said the association’s head, Andrei Bastunets. “Belarus is the most repressive country in Europe, where an attempt at free speech is punished by prison.” 

A total of 33 Belarusian journalists are currently in prison, either awaiting trial or serving sentences. 

Belarusian authorities have cracked down on opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko after huge protests triggered by the August 2020 election that gave him a sixth term in office. The balloting was viewed by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. 

Protests swept the country for months, bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets. More than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten in police custody, and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were shut down and outlawed. 

More than 1,400 political prisoners remain behind bars, including leaders of opposition parties, and renowned human rights advocate — and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner — Ales Bialiatski. 

Human Rights Watch strongly condemned the crackdown on dissent and free speech. 

“Over the past year, Belarusian authorities doubled down to create an information vacuum around raging repressions by cutting political prisoners off from the outside world and bullying their lawyers and families into silence,” Anastasiia Kruope, assistant Europe and Central Asia researcher at the group, said in a statement Thursday. “Widespread repression continues in an expanding information void.” 
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nairobi, kenya — Four Ukrainians were on a United Nations helicopter seized by al-Shabab militants in central Somalia this week, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

The U.N.-contracted chopper with nine aboard was conducting a medical evacuation when a technical problem forced it to land near Hindhere village, an area controlled by the Islamist group.

“Our citizens were members of the helicopter crew of the UN Mission in Somalia. … Their identities have been established,” Ukrainian spokesman Oleh Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.

He said that the aircraft belonged to a private Ukrainian company contracted to the United Nations, and that the government was contacting it to coordinate actions.

Security sources earlier told Reuters that nationals from Egypt, Uganda and Somalia were also on board. The sources asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Somalia’s government said on Thursday it was working to rescue the hostages, but military officers said it would be difficult in an area that has been under the al-Qaida-affiliated group’s control for more than a decade.

An internal U.N. memo seen by Reuters said one person on the helicopter had allegedly been killed and six taken hostage. Two people fled and their whereabouts were not known, it said.

All U.N. flights in the area were suspended until further notice, the memo said.

Ugandan army representatives said they had no information. The Egyptian government could not be reached for comment.

Separately, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia said a U.N. guard had been killed in a mortar attack by suspected al-Shabab militants near the capital’s Aden Adde International Airport.

Mortar rounds landed on Thursday night inside the airport area where the U.N. compound is located, UNSOM said.

Al-Shabab could not be reached for comment.

The militants, who control vast areas of the south and center of Somalia, have been fighting the government since 2006 in an attempt to establish their own rule based on their interpretation of Islamic law.
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the pentagon — The United States, Britain and a handful of other allies answered dozens of Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with a series of powerful airstrikes designed to severely degrade the Iranian-backed group’s capabilities.

U.S. Central Command late Thursday said the series of strikes hit more than 60 targets at 16 locations in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including command and control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, and production facilities.

“We hit them pretty hard, pretty good,” a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, told VOA, adding the strikes also targeted Houthi radar installations and air defense systems which did not fire back.

A spokesperson for the Houthi rebel group said the strikes killed at least five fighters and wounded six others, without specifying the targets that were hit.

The U.S. and British strikes, carried out with the help of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Bahrain, were launched from fighter jets, surface vessels and submarines, the defense official said.

The U.S. alone, dropped more than 100 precision guided munitions on the Houthi installations, officials said, with the naval vessels and submarines firing Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles to take out the intended targets.

The official also said the targets were chosen both because of their threat to shipping and the lack of a civilian presence.

In a statement from the White House late Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden called the strikes a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks” on international shipping, saying they were necessary after attempts at diplomacy were ignored.

“These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes,” Biden said. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak likewise condemned the Houthi attacks as destabilizing, confirming the participation of British fighter jets in Thursday’s strikes.

“Their reckless actions are risking lives at sea and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” Sunak said in a statement. “This cannot stand.”

It is the first time Houthi targets inside Yemen have been struck since the militants began attacking ships in the Red Sea following Hamas’ assault on Israel on October 7.

U.S. officials late Thursday were still studying the impact of the strikes against the Houthis, but an initial assessment suggested the damage to Houthi capabilities is “significant.”

“We were going after very specific capability in very specific locations with precision munitions,” said a senior U.S. military official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the operation.

“This was a significant action,” added a senior U.S. administration official. “[We have] every expectation that it will degrade in a significant way, the Houthis, a capability to launch exactly the sorts of attacks that they have conducted over the period of recent weeks.”

There have been 27 attacks launched from Houthi-held areas of Yemen since mid-November, impacting citizens, cargo and vessels from more than 50 countries, according to the U.S.

U.S. officials said in one instance last month, U.S. defensive action prevented a Houthi attack from hitting and likely sinking a commercial ship full of jet fuel.

The most recent Houthi attack, involving the launch of an anti-ship ballistic missile, took place earlier Thursday. The missile landed in the Gulf of Aden near a commercial vessel, causing no injuries or damage.

On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, said the Houthis launched a complex attack using 18 one-way attack drones, two cruise missiles and one ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen toward Red Sea shipping lanes where dozens of merchant vessels were transiting.

U.S. combat jets, along with U.S. and British military vessels, responded by shooting down the drones and missiles, averting any damage to ships or injuries to their crews in the area.

The senior U.S. administration official said it was Tuesday’s massive attack by the Houthis that prompted Biden to order Thursday strikes.

Before the U.S. and British-led strikes late Thursday, multiple U.S. officials warned both the Houthis and Iran against what they described as reckless and illegal behavior.

“There will be consequences,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday in response to a question from VOA.

“The Houthis are funded, trained, equipped by Iran to a large degree. And, so, we know that Iran has a role to play in terms of helping to cease this reckless, dangerous and illegal activity,” he said.

Last week, the United States and 12 allies issued a statement warning the Houthis of unspecified consequences if their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea continued.

“Let our message now be clear: We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” the statement said.

Signatories on the statement included Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and Japan.

The statement followed the launch in mid-December of Operation Prosperity Guardian by the United States, Britain and nearly 20 other countries to protect ships from Houthi attacks.

Since the launch of Prosperity Guardian, at least 1,500 vessels have passed safely through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

The commander of U.S. Navy operations in the Middle East last week called it “the largest surface and air presence in the southern Red Sea in years.”

The U.N. Security Council issued its own resolution Wednesday, calling on the Houthis to stop the attacks immediately.

There are questions, however, as to whether the statements, backed now by the U.S. and British strikes against the Houthis, will do anything to deter Tehran.

“Iran has the luxury of really fighting a, what I would call, a hidden-hand operation with very few Iranians on the ground,” the former commander of U.S. Central Command, retired General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, told a webinar on Wednesday.

“They’re choking world shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb [Strait] at a very low, very low price for Iran,” he said.

But McKenzie argued that even if Iran continues to encourage the Houthis, the risk of a wider regional escalation is slim.

“I do not believe the escalation ladder leads out of Yemen. I believe it stays in Yemen,” he said. “And I believe Iran will leave their partners down there, their proxies down there, to their fate.”

U.S. officials said while they were bracing for the Houthis to try to mount some sort of response to the strikes, a slew of initial claims of attacks late Thursday appeared to be nothing more than disinformation.

This is not the first time the U.S. military has targeted Houthi launch sites in Yemen in response to militant attacks against vessels in nearby waters. In October 2016, the American destroyer USS Nitze launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at three radar sites along Yemen’s Red Sea coast in order to degrade the Houthi’s ability to track and target ships.

Ostap Yarysh with VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
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ISTANBUL — Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania on Thursday signed an agreement to jointly tackle drifting sea mines that have threatened Black Sea shipping since the start of the Ukraine war.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said the agreement establishes a Mine Countermeasures Task Group among the three NATO allies to deal with the mines.

“We jointly decided to sign a protocol between three countries in order to fight more effectively against the mine danger in the Black Sea by improving our existing close cooperation and coordination,” Guler said at a news conference in Istanbul with Romanian Defense Minister Angel Tilvar and Bulgarian Deputy Defense Minister Atanas Zapryanov.

Zapryanov said mines pose a “danger to ports, communication networks and key water infrastructure. It is in our interest and NATO’s interest to develop countermeasures against this danger.”

Tilvar added that Russia’s “disdain for the norms of international law and its aggression in the Black Sea is not only a regional problem but also a problem with global consequences.”

The deal comes after Ankara last week refused entry to the Black Sea for two minesweeping vessels donated to Ukraine by Britain.

At the start of the war in February 2022, Turkey enacted the 1936 Montreux Convention to block the passage of Russian or Ukrainian ships through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. It also told non-Black Sea states not to send warships.

Guler said implementation of the Montreux Convention was important for regional security. He suggested that other countries could participate in mine-clearing at the end of the war.

Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for stray mines that have washed up near the Black Sea coast.

The initiative aims to make shipping safer, including for vessels transporting grain from Ukraine.

Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal in July 2022 to ensure the free passage of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea but Russia abandoned the deal a year later. Since then, Ukraine has shipped grain along a corridor through the western Black Sea.
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Istanbul / Washington — When it comes to gender equality in Turkish media, men are still dominating managerial roles, research by a journalist union has found.

The Journalists’ Union of Turkey, known as the TGS, released its latest findings on gender disparities in Turkish media to mark the country’s Working Journalists’ Day on Wednesday.

“Once again, we see that those who produce, go after and edit news stories are women, and those who manage media institutions are men in Turkish media,” Banu Tuna, the TGS secretary-general, told VOA.

The union analyzed 10 newspapers, 10 TV channels, four news agencies and six news websites.

Nearly half of the journalists in Turkey are women, but the survey showed that only four women hold senior positions such as editor in chief or managing editor among Turkey’s leading newspapers.

The research also showed that only a few women hold senior positions in the TV channels’ organizational structures, and those who do tend to work in advertising or public relations departments.

The gender imbalance in managerial positions was lower in Turkey’s digital media, where the report found websites doing “relatively better” than TV and print.

“While the presence of female journalists among the editor and reporter staff is undeniable, we saw once again that there is literally ‘no name of a woman’ in the mastheads and in the senior management staff,” the TGS wrote.

The union said that when female journalists cannot progress in their careers, they “move away from the profession due to the glass ceiling.”

A call for more inclusive media

The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report ranks Turkey 129th among 146 countries for gender equality — where 1 shows the best environment — and 133rd out of 146 in economic participation and opportunity.

The gender imbalance adds to challenges for Turkish journalists, who watchdogs already say contend with censorship and political and legal pressure.

“We are in an increasingly authoritarian environment. There are very challenging conditions for both journalism and women’s struggle,” said Evin Baris Altintas. “There is a need to fight for a more inclusive media for both women and different groups, but the lack of awareness on this issue is obvious.”

A co-chair of the Istanbul-based Media and Law Studies Association, Altintas has worked in journalism since 2005.

Another issue is the cost of living, with most media outlets based in Istanbul, the largest and most expensive Turkish city.

Work/family life challenges women

Ceren Sozeri, an associate professor of communication at Galatasaray University in Istanbul, said that women often have to balance their journalism career with domestic roles.

“In Turkey, women are responsible for the care, domestic labor and raising children,” Sozeri told VOA. “Women journalists are forced to make choices in the dilemma of marriage and raising their children.”

He For She Turkey, a United Nations-initiated project, states that women do three times as much unpaid house and care work as men worldwide, while this discrepancy reaches almost five times more unpaid house and care work for women in Turkey.

Tuna, who has worked in journalism for 25 years, said that the media sector is male-dominated.

“I have heard many male executives say that the editorial desk is not for women. They again blamed women for the lack of women in managerial positions,” she told VOA.

“According to them, working in the editorial office is a very arduous job that requires long hours, and women do not want it,” Tuna added.

Cultural norms can also make it harder for women to progress.

“While a man can go to dinner or a tavern with his boss or manager after work, women have less room here, as a woman’s going out to dinner with her manager can also be interpreted as an affair,” Sozeri said.

“Therefore, when favoritism comes before merit, men again have room for career advancement,” Sozeri noted.

To close the gender gap in Turkish media management, Sozeri thinks that “working conditions, overtime working and domestic labor roles must change.”

Tuna of TGS said having more women in leadership in media would be a positive move.

“If there were more women in executive positions, if the few rising women were not expected to become masculinized, I’m sure a lot would change in the Turkish media,” Tuna told VOA.

“The biggest problems today are not getting equal pay for equal work, not being able to work in managerial positions, and all kinds of gendered violence. If the media were not a boys’ club, all these problems would be improved.”

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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