ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Didier Drogba impressed on his Champions League debut for Galatasaray but the Turkish side were held to a 1-1 draw by Schalke 04 after an entertaining last 16 first leg on Wednesday.

The Ivory Coast striker, last year’s Champions League hero for Chelsea who moved to the Istanbul club last month after a spell in China, linked up well with Burak Yilmaz in attack.

ISTANBUL, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Didier Drogba impressed on his Champions League debut for Galatasaray but the Turkish side were held to a 1-1 draw by Schalke 04 after an entertaining last 16 first leg on Wednesday.

The Ivory Coast striker, last year’s Champions League hero for Chelsea who moved to the Istanbul club last month after a spell in China, linked up well with Burak Yilmaz in attack.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Police arrested more than 100 people including union officials in raids across Turkey on Tuesday targeting a militant leftist group behind a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy.

Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their country.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Galatasaray will be fired up by the arrival of Didier Drogba, last year’s Champions League hero, and Dutch playmaker Wesley Sneijder when they host struggling Schalke 04 on Wednesday.

Drogba, who took the winning penalty for Chelsea in last season’s final, scored with a header five minutes into his Galatasaray debut on Friday, whetting the appetite of the 2000 UEFA Cup champions ahead of the last 16 first-leg match.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Galatasaray will be fired up by the arrival of Didier Drogba, last year’s Champions League hero, and Dutch playmaker Wesley Sneijder when they host struggling Schalke 04 on Wednesday.

Drogba, who took the winning penalty for Chelsea in last season’s final, scored with a header five minutes into his Galatasaray debut on Friday, whetting the appetite of the 2000 UEFA Cup champions ahead of the last 16 first-leg match.

ISTANBUL, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Galatasaray will be fired up by the arrival of Didier Drogba, last year’s Champions League hero, and Dutch playmaker Wesley Sneijder when they host struggling Schalke 04 on Wednesday.

Drogba, who took the winning penalty for Chelsea in last season’s final, scored with a header five minutes into his Galatasaray debut on Friday, whetting the appetite of the 2000 UEFA Cup champions ahead of the last 16 first-leg match.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Four retired Turkish generals have been jailed pending trial in an inquiry into the removal of an Islamist-led government in 1997, days after the prime minister met a convicted general in an apparent step to mend relations with the army.

The detention of the four, on top of dozens of other officers arrested, widened extensive judicial investigations into the once-all powerful military, whose power has been sharply curtailed in the last decade.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has drafted changes to the penal code, narrowing the definition of terrorist propaganda in a step to boost freedom of expression in line with EU demands and potentially encourage a fledgling peace process with a jailed Kurdish militant leader.

The bill, presented to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday and likely to be sent to parliament this month, may lead to the release of defendants accused of links to Kurdish rebels, a justice ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Sitting across the table from top Turkish officials, jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan wields the power to silence guns across southeastern Turkey which have killed more than 40,000 people in a three decade-old insurgency.

Reviled by most Turks and held in virtual isolation since his 1999 capture, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader has expressed in fledgling peace talks with Ankara a will to end a conflict which both sides realize they cannot win militarily.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The Kurdish militant PKK group said on Thursday media reports that its fighters had agreed to withdraw from Turkey as part of a peace pact to end their 28-year-old insurgency were lies and part of a psychological war.

The Sabah newspaper on Thursday said Kurdistan Workers’ Party guerrillas had agreed to withdraw to northern Iraq, where the group is based, by March 21 as part of peace talks with the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan started late last year.