ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and UEFA President Michel Platini discussed a match-fixing investigation which has overshadowed Turkish football in talks ahead of UEFA meetings in Turkey this week, newspaper reports said on Tuesday.

Erdogan, himself a former footballer, met Platini at the ruling AK Party’s headquarters in Ankara on Monday ahead of the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday and Wednesday.

ISTANBUL, March 20 (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan and UEFA President Michel Platini discussed a
match-fixing investigation which has overshadowed Turkish soccer
in talks ahead of UEFA meetings in Turkey this week, newspaper
reports said on Tuesday.

Erdogan, himself a former footballer, met Platini at the
ruling AK Party’s headquarters in Ankara on Monday ahead of the
UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday and
Wednesday.

SILIVRI, Turkey (Reuters) – Two former heads of Turkey’s armed forces were called as witnesses on Friday in the trial over an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government in 2003, starkly demonstrating the battered image of a once all-powerful top brass.

While the generals’ influence has waned dramatically over several years, the summoning of two ex-chiefs of staff from NATO’s second largest army to give evidence on the same day was unprecedented.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – State prosecutors have abandoned an attempt to question Turkey’s spy chiefs over past secret contacts with Kurdish militants after government moves to curb their investigation of the intelligence agency (MIT), state media said on Monday.

In his first comments on the affair, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had pursued concession to end a 28-year-old conflict, rejected talk in media and political circles of a power struggle drawing in police, judiciary and the MIT.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A prosecutor’s investigation of Turkey’s top spy has exposed a deep rift between police and the intelligence agency which could scupper efforts to end a Kurdish separatist insurgency and damage the government’s democratization efforts.

The crisis, driven by police concern about the activities of National Intelligence Agency (MIT) spies uncovered by police operations against Kurdish militants, has also fed speculation, denied by both sides, of a row between the government and an influential Islamic movement.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A Turkish investigation of links between Kurdish activists and militants has uncovered evidence of state officials aiding the separatists, a prosecutor said on Monday, fuelling speculation about a power struggle within the security apparatus.

The statement from the Istanbul state prosecutor’s office coincided with police raids across Turkey to detain around 100 people over alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the same investigation.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A Turkish investigation of links between Kurdish activists and militants has uncovered evidence of state officials aiding the separatists, a prosecutor said on Monday, fuelling speculation about a power struggle within the security apparatus.

The statement from the Istanbul state prosecutor’s office coincided with police raids across the country to detain around 100 people over alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the same investigation.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish state prosecutors are demanding a life sentence for the former head of the armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, on charges he attempted to overthrow the government, media reports said Thursday.

Basbug, military chief of staff from 2008 to 2010, is currently being held in a high-security prison and is the most senior officer to be charged over alleged plots against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

ISTANBUL, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan branded acclaimed novelist Paul Auster as ignorant on
Tuesday for refusing to visit Turkey in protest at the jailing
of journalists, accusing the Jewish American writer of
double-standards for visiting Israel.

Though a foreign novelist made an easy target, there is
rising unease over press freedom under Erdogan among Turkish
liberals, many of whom had supported his mission to strengthen
democracy and tame Turkey’s coup-making generals.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The chairman of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) resigned on Tuesday along with his two deputies, further deepening the crisis in Turkish football over a match-fixing investigation with UEFA pressing for urgent action.

The TFF said chairman Mehmet Ali Aydinlar had resigned and Husnu Gureli would stand in until a new federation election is held on February 27.