ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has cracked down more aggressively on dissent and political opponents ahead of Turkish elections with censorship and prison sentences, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Presidential and parliamentary elections are set for no later than mid-June but Erdogan has said they could come earlier.

Polls show he and his AK Party could lose after 20 years in power.

MAAN, Jordan: Striking Jordanian trucker Suleiman Abu Al-Zait spent several long nights on a national highway along his native city of Maan, manning a picket line that created havoc to overland trade.
“Diesel is my lifeline,” said 54-year-old Abu Al-Zait, who has seen his livelihood thrown into jeopardy by high fuel price rises since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The month-long sit-in cost Jordan tens of millions of dollars in losses when it paralyzed unloading at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, according to officials and industrialists.

AMMAN: The Jordanian Armed Forces said on Wednesday that they are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to follow up on the discovery in Jerusalem of what might be the remains of 15 Jordanian soldiers.

It is believed they were killed in the town of Beit Hanina in northern East Jerusalem during the June 1967 war, the Jordan News Agency reported.

A JAF source said a military task force was sent on Wednesday to investigate and examine the remains but additional laboratory tests will be required to determine the identities of the individuals.

RAMALLAH: Officials from the Israeli armed forces have been making plans to forcibly move about 1,000 Palestinians from villages in Masafer Yatta, near southern Hebron in the southern West Bank, without the Israeli government’s knowledge, according to Israeli sources.

The army’s Central District Command began preparations in November to displace the residents so that the military can conduct regular training exercises in the area, the sources said.

ANKARA: Turkiye, Syria and Russia aim to schedule a meeting of their foreign ministers this month and possibly before the middle of next week, though no date or location has yet been chosen, a senior Turkish official said on Wednesday.

Such a meeting would mark the highest-level talks between Ankara and Damascus since the Syrian war began in 2011 and signal a further thaw in ties.