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Dubai is known for its breathtaking architecture and iconic skyline. Now, artist Baber Afzal is capturing the city-state’s famous towers and spires in a new light through a series of stunning images that marry architecture, environment, and atmosphere.
“There are many places that I love out here in Dubai, especially the architectural landscape as it keeps evolving every year – and that evolution inspires me (because I’m) able to shoot from unique vantage points to share a different perspective of the city,” explains Afzal.
Afzal, 40, uses a combination of landscape and architectural photography, and visual art techniques, to illustrate the city of Dubai as he sees it.
“One thing that has remained constant in my work, whether it be capturing the cityscape or the dunes, is the hazy sunsets and sunrises in this region,” he says. “Awareness of the climatic conditions gave birth to a unique editing style and technique to express my visions.”
A Pakistani native, Afzal first started making art in 2007. “My interest in art grew after I experienced capturing and editing the beautiful landscape of Margalla Hills in Islamabad, Pakistan,” he says. “I gravitated toward the editing aspect since shifting color and contrast values really fascinated me.”
Afzal scouts locations prior to a shoot, and says it often takes him many hours to capture the perfect image. He then spends a few days in post-production, manipulating the image and executing his vision to create ethereal, striking pictures.
“Art provides a powerful means of expressing human emotion and experience, and it can be used to communicate complex ideas and feelings that might otherwise be difficult to express,” he says. “I aim to enhance this experience by showcasing visual concepts from a different light that will highlight the unseen beauty that exists in city life and in nature too.”
Afzal’s work has received awards from around the world and has been published both locally and internationally in magazines and photography books. Last month, his artwork “LUMINOUS” was showcased in New York City at the prestigious “NFT NYC 2023.”
He produces much of his work as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), capitalizing on the digital format to add animation and complex imagery to create one-of-a-kind dreamlike moving pictures.
He believes that technology will play a significant role in the future of the art scene in Dubai. “I expect to see more artists, including myself, experimenting with technology and incorporating it into our work in new and innovative ways in the years to come,” says Afzal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Sunday that the country’s intelligence forces had killed the leader of ISIS in Syria as he vowed to continue the country’s fight against terrorism.
In a broadcast, Erdogan said Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization had been tracking a man known as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini Al-Qurshi “for a long time.”
“This person was neutralized in the operation carried out by MIT (Turkish National Intelligence Organization) yesterday in Syria,” he said. “From now on, we will continue our fight without discrimination against terrorist organizations.”
He added that Turkey’s fight against terrorism contributes to Europe’s security, claiming that Europe “is not aware of this or does not want to be aware of it.”
Al-Qurshiwas named ISIS leader after the death of his predecessor, Abu al-Hasan al-Hashmi al-Qurayshi, who was killed last October by the Free Syrian Army in Syria.
Little was known about Al-Qurshi, but at the time of his appointment, ISIS described him as an “old fighter.”
Erdogan’s announcement came after a recent absence from the public eye due to illness.
Media reports had speculated that his health was deteriorating just two weeks before a crucial election.
The speculation followed a televised interview on Tuesday, which was interrupted after Erdogan left his chair in the middle of a question, before returning to explain he had a “serious stomach flu.”
Following Tuesday’s incident, Erdogan was advised by his doctors to rest at home and canceled a number of public events.
On Thursday, the Turkish government rejected news reports about his health as “baseless claims.” He appeared on video link the same day for the inauguration of the Akkuya nuclear power plant.
Erdogan made his return to public stage for the first time in three days on Saturday, at an aviation festival in Istanbul, where he rallied his supporters as he seeks to extend his 20-year stint in power.
Turkey goes to the polls on May 14, just three months after a devastating earthquake and amid soaring inflation and a currency crisis that last year slashed nearly 30% off the lira’s value against the dollar.
Turkish President discloses intelligence operation took place in Jinderes in northwestern Syria on Saturday.
Turkish intelligence forces have killed the suspected leader of the ISIL (ISIS) group, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced.
Erdogan said Turkish intelligence had been monitoring the alleged leader of the hardline group for a long time before launching their operation.
“This individual was neutralised as part of an operation by the Turkish national intelligence organisation in Syria yesterday,” Erdogan said in an interview with TRT Turk broadcaster on Sunday.
“We will continue our struggle with terrorist organisations without any discrimination,” the president added.
Syrian local and security sources said the raid took place near the northern Syrian town of Jinderes, which is controlled by Turkey-backed rebel groups and was among the worst-affected areas in the February 6 earthquake that hit both Turkey and Syria.
There was no announcement from ISIL (ISIS). The Syrian National Army, an opposition faction with a security presence in the area, did not immediately issue any comment.
A correspondent from the AFP news agency in northern Syria said Turkish intelligence agents and local military police, backed by Turkey, had sealed off a zone in Jindires on Saturday.
The compound allegedly housing #ISIS’s global leader was located outside the town of #Jinderes, surrounded by fields of olive trees.
The area was hit very hard by the earthquake, resulting in many visits by foreign media & some aid groups.
Residents told AFP that an operation had targeted an abandoned farm that was being used as an Islamic school.
One resident told the Reuters news agency that clashes started on the edge of the town overnight from Saturday into Sunday, lasting for about an hour before residents heard a large explosion.
The area was later encircled by security forces to prevent anyone from approaching.
The ISIL (ISIS) group took over vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, and its head at the time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared an Islamic caliphate across an area that was home to millions of people.
But the group lost its grip on the territory after campaigns by US-backed forces in Syria and Iraq, as well as Syrian forces backed by Iran, Russia and various paramilitaries.
Its remaining fighters are now mostly hiding in remote areas of Syria and Iraq, and still launch attacks from time to time.
Sudan’s rival military forces have accused each other of fresh violations of a ceasefire as their deadly conflict rumbled on for a third week despite warnings of a slide towards civil war.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands wounded since a long-simmering power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into conflict on April 15.
Both sides said a formal ceasefire agreement that was due to expire at midnight on Sunday would be extended for a further 72 hours, in a move the RSF said was “in response to international, regional and local calls”.
The army said it hoped what it called the “rebels” would abide by the deal, but it believed they had intended to keep up attacks. The parties have kept fighting through a series of ceasefires secured by mediators including the United States.
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said from Khartoum that people there “have not reacted much” to the extension announcement.
“They’ve seen how the previous ceasefires have played out. They’ve seen the repeated air strikes by the Sudanese army, the artillery strikes by the Rapid Support Forces,” she said. “So many of them say that this ceasefire is likely to end just like the other previous ceasefires.”
The situation in Khartoum, where the army has been battling RSF forces entrenched in residential areas, was relatively calm on Sunday morning, a Reuters journalist said, after heavy clashes were heard on Saturday evening near the city centre.
The army said on Sunday that it had destroyed RSF convoys moving towards Khartoum from the west. The RSF said the army had used artillery and warplanes to attack its positions in a number of areas in Khartoum province.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
‘No direct negotiations’
The fighting in Khartoum has so far seen RSF forces fan out across the city as the army tries to target them largely by using air strikes from drones and fighter jets.
The conflict has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing across Sudan’s borders and prompted warnings that the country could disintegrate, destabilising a volatile region and prompting foreign governments to scramble to evacuate their nationals.
Sudanese journalist Mohamed Alamin Ahmed told Al Jazeera from Khartoum that people there have many reasons to flee.
“People are fleeing Khartoum not only because of the humanitarian situation and the bombs that have fallen on houses of civilians because of random shelling and air strikes, but also because of looting civilians in the streets, and even inside their houses,” he told Al Jazeera.
According to the US Department of State, the US government and multinational partners have helped nearly 1,000 Americans leave Sudan since recent violence began, while a second government convoy arrived in Port Sudan on Sunday.
American nationals board a US Navy ship during evacuation in Port Sudan, Sudan [Stringer/Reuters]
US citizens and others eligible for the convoy would continue on to Saudi Arabia, where personnel were staged to help facilitate emergency travel, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement on Sunday.
The UK announced it had arranged an extra evacuation flight from Port Sudan on the eastern Red Sea coast on Monday.
But, underlining the extent of the instability, Canada said it was ending its evacuation flights because of “dangerous conditions”.
The prospects for negotiations have appeared bleak.
“There are no direct negotiations, there are preparations for talks,” the United Nations special representative in Sudan, Volker Perthes, told journalists in Port Sudan, adding that regional and international countries were working with the two sides.
Perthes, who told Reuters on Saturday that the sides were more open to negotiations than before, said he hoped a direct meeting between representatives of the sides would be held as soon as possible aimed at “achieving an organised ceasefire with a monitoring mechanism”.
Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said he would never sit down with RSF chief General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who in turn said he would talk only after the army ceased hostilities.
The conflict has derailed an internationally backed political transition aimed at establishing democratic government in Sudan, where former autocratic President Omar al-Bashir was toppled in 2019 after three decades in power.
At least 528 people have been killed and 4,599 wounded in the fighting, the health ministry said. The UN has reported a similar number of dead but believes the real toll is much higher.
There are fears the conflict could disrupt the precarious situation over the border.
The conflict in Sudan has entered its third week despite the warring sides agreeing to a ceasefire.
The rival generals are playing the blame game, accusing each other of targeting civilian neighbourhoods, hospitals and people trying to leave the country.
Ceasefire after ceasefire has collapsed.
Analysts fear powerful regional players may be involved behind the scenes, intentionally prolonging the violence.
Some have drawn parallels to the situation in neighbouring Libya.
So, is Sudan heading the same way?
Presenter: Tom McRae
Guests:
Benoit Faucon – Middle East correspondent, Wall Street Journal
Hamid Khalafallah – Non-resident fellow, Tahrir Instite for Middle East Policy
Jason Pack – Senior analyst, NATO Defense College Foundation and Author of, Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder
Russian pilots tried to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, according to a spokesman for US Central Command, part of a recent pattern of more aggressive behavior.
The Russian pilots do not appear to be trying to shoot down American jets, a US official told CNN, but they may be trying to “provoke” the US and “draw us into an international incident.”
In military aviation, dogfighting is engaging in aerial combat, often at relatively close ranges.
A video released by US Central Command from April 2 shows a Russian SU-35 fighter jet conducting an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept of a US F-16 fighter jet.
A second video from April 18 shows a Russian fighter that violated coalition airspace and came within 2,000 feet of a US aircraft, a distance a fighter jet can cover in a matter of seconds.
Over the last several years, the US and have used a deconfliction line between the two militaries in Syria to avoid unintentional mistakes or encounters that can inadvertently lead to escalation.
US officials have reached out to their Russian counterparts over the recent incidents, and the Russians have responded, the official said, but “never in a way that acknowledges the incident.”
Since the beginning of March, Russian jets have violated deconfliction protocols a total of 85 times, the official said, including flying too close to coalition bases, failing to reach out on the deconfliction line, and more.
That also includes 26 instances in which armed Russian jets flew over US and coalition positions in Syria.
“It looks to be consistent with a new way of operating,” the official said. US pilots have refused to engage in the dogfights and are adhering to the protocols of the deconfliction measures, the official added.
The US has approximately 900 service members in Syria as part of the ongoing campaign to defeat ISIS.
The more aggressive behavior from Russian pilots has occurred outside of Syria as well.
In March, a Russian SU-27 fighter jet collided with a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in international airspace over the Black Sea.
The collision damaged the drone’s propellor, forcing it down in the water in an incident the US described as “unsafe, unprofessional” and even “reckless.”
“It’s concerning because it increases the risk of miscalculation, and given incidents like the MQ-9 intercept and subsequent downing over the Black Sea, it’s not the kind of behavior I’d expect out of a professional Air Force,” the commander of US Air Force Central Command, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said in a statement earlier this month.
Russia subsequently presented state awards to the pilots of the Russian jets.
Neither side has acknowledged whether Iran’s capture of the Turkish-operated fuel tanker was a tit-for-tat move.
Tehran, Iran – Iran and the United States have again found themselves on opposite sides as they provided contradictory accounts of events that led to Tehran’s seizure of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.
Iran’s state television on Friday showed footage of the country’s navy commandos boarding the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Advantage Sweet in a helicopter operation a day earlier.
The Turkish-operated, Chinese-owned tanker entered the Gulf of Oman after moving through the Strait of Hormuz and was reportedly bound for Houston, Texas carrying Kuwaiti crude oil for US energy firm Chevron Corp.
Iran said the tanker collided with an unidentified Iranian vessel hours before its seizure, leading to several crew members falling overboard and going missing and others getting injured. The tanker then fled the scene and ignored radio calls for eight hours before its seizure based on a court order, the Iranian army said.
“We repeatedly called on the vessel to stop so we can conduct a more comprehensive investigation, but there was no cooperation,” Mostafa Tajodini, deputy for operations at the Iranian navy, told state media.
The vessel’s manager, a Turkish firm called Advantage Tankers, said similar experiences have shown that crew members – all 24 of whom are Indian – are in no danger.
The Middle East-based US Navy 5th Fleet had said Iran’s actions constituted a violation of international law and called on Tehran to immediately release the tanker.
“Iran’s continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights in regional waters are a threat to maritime security and the global economy,” it said, adding this was at least the fifth commercial vessel taken by Iran in the past two years.
Tit-for-tat move
On Friday, the Reuters news agency reported the seizure of the vessel came as a response to the confiscation of an oil tanker by the US in an effort to enforce its unilateral sanctions on Tehran.
The report said the Iran-linked tanker was the Marshall Islands-flagged Suez Rajan that had a Greece-based manager and was last reported to be positioned near Southern Africa before being seized several days prior to the taking of the Advantage Sweet vessel by Iran.
There are precedents for such tit-for-tat moves, with the US trying to confiscate a cargo of Iranian oil near Greece last year, prompting Tehran to seize two Greek tankers and hold them for months. The supreme court in Greece ultimately ordered the cargo returned to Iran, and the Greek vessels were also released.
Washington imposed its harshest-ever sanctions on Iran, which include a major focus on impeding Tehran’s oil sales, after former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.
Amid deadlocked efforts to restore the nuclear accord, which put curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, Iran has been circumventing the embargoes and steadily boosting its oil sales.
Twelve US senators on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to remove Treasury Department policy hurdles that have impeded the seizure of more Iranian oil shipments in a call that is likely to increase tensions.
ISTANBUL — Two of Turkey’s most senior opposition politicians, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, cried foul over the way the state-run Anadolu news agency was reporting results of Turkey’s election on Sunday night, saying it was giving a distortedly high early count to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In its results based on 30 percent of ballots counted at 7.30 p.m., Anadolu reported that Erdoğan was racing ahead with 54 percent of the vote, while his challenger for the presidency Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had only 40 percent. By 11 p.m. the margin had narrowed to 49.9 percent versus 44.3 percent, with 89 percent of the vote counted. Both camps predicted they would win, though a second-round on May 28 started to look possible as neither candidate was on track to secure the more than 50 percent required to claim the presidency outright.
Anadolu’s early numbers are highly contentious because they are widely used as the feed for live election coverage on TV. The opposition argues the state agency is deliberately releasing data from electoral districts in favor of Erdoğan and his AK party first — and holding back numbers on opposition ballots — so that election observers might lose heart and not wait for every last vote to be counted.
For this reason, the opposition is insisting that its election observers must stay in place until all the ballots are counted to prevent any manipulation. The two mayors said Anadolu had used the same strategy in the mayoral elections of 2019, initially saying the votes were on course for big AK party wins, while the opposition eventually took Istanbul and Ankara in late counting.
Adding to the confusion, the Supreme Election Council said at about 10.30 p.m. only 47 percent of votes had been official processed, while Anadolu was giving data based on almost 90 percent of votes. At around the same time, dozens of trucks with blaring horns and AK party flags roared through central Istanbul, seemingly celebrating although Erdoğan was dropping beneath the 50 percent required to win the presidency outright, making a second round on May 28 the most likely option.
İmamoğlu said AK party observers were also contesting the counts at polling stations where the opposition is traditionally strong, and opposition activists urged their members to head to the schools where the votes were held to stop intimidation of their observers. Yunus Başaran, a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey from the southern coastal city of Antalya, said that some ballot boxes had been counted seven times. “This time they’ve found this path,” he said. Journalist Nevșin Mengü tweeted she had information that in the Ankara neighborhood of Çankaya — a traditional opposition bastion — one ballot box had been counted 11 times.
Slamming the public announcement of the results as a “fiction,” opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu called on his teams to stay vigilant. “We will not sleep tonight,” he said. Erdoğan made the same call: “I ask all of my litigants and colleagues to stay at the ballot boxes, no matter what, until the results are officially finalized.”
The main opposition party, the CHP, said data from its election observers suggested it was winning as results from its strong holds . “We are ahead,” Kılıçdaroğlu tweeted amid the controversy over the vote count.
“I urge citizens not to rely on the [Anadolu agency’s] results. When we look at the ratios, we believe that Kılıçdaroğlu will be comfortably declared as the president of the country, but it’s too early to say when we look at the data,” İmamoğlu told reporters in Istanbul.
Yavaş said: “Let’s keep our morale high.”
Ömer Çelik, spokesperson for the AK party, defended the Anadolu agency and told the mayors that their remarks were “not very becoming.”
“There’s no need to be suspicious,” he said. “They can look at other channels, but our president is winning by a large margin.”
Other political analysts noted early results can favorErdoğan because small conservative constituencies can report their results relatively quickly.
Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said the situation mirrored the local election night in 2019 and estimated Kılıçdaroğlu would get more votes toward the end of the vote.
“I think Kılıçdaroğlu is going to finish the race ahead of Erdoğan, but maybe not get 50 percent,” he told POLITICO.
It’s now easy to forget that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once hailed as the paragon of a “Muslim democrat,” who could serve as a model to the entire Islamic world.
In the early 2000s, hopes ran high about the charismatic, lanky, former football striker, who received only one red card in his playing career, unsurprisingly for giving an earful to a referee. The man from the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of Kasımpaşa promised something new: Finally, there was a master-juggler, who could balance Islamism, parliamentary democracy, progressive welfare, NATO membership and EU-oriented reforms.
That optimism feels a world away now, as Turkey heads into crunch elections on May 14 marked by debate over the centralization of powers under an increasingly authoritarian and divisive leader — dubbed the reis, or captain. Prominent opponents are in jail, the media and judiciary are largely under Erdoğan’s thrall and the kid from Kasımpaşa now rules 85 million people from a monumental 1,150-room presidential complex he built, commonly referred to as the Saray, meaning palace.
Little wonder, then, that the opposition is focusing its campaign on undoing the “one-man regime.” The six-party opposition bloc is vowing to take a pick-ax to the all-powerful presidential system Erdoğan introduced in 2017 and to shift to a new type of pluralist parliamentary democracy. (POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, meaning there will probably be a second round in the presidential vote on May 28.)
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition leader challenging Erdoğan for the top job, describes the restoration of Turkish democracy as the “first pillar” of the election race. “In a manner that contradicts its own history … our veteran parliament’s legislative power has been consigned to the grip of the one-man regime,” Kılıçdaroğlu, an avuncular, soft-spoken former bureaucrat, said in a speech on April 23 commemorating the founding of parliament.
Know your onions
But is this talk of democratic restoration seizing the imagination in an election that is, quite literally, about the price of onions and cucumbers?
Turkey’s brutal cost of living crisis is the No. 1 electoral battleground. Kılıçdaroğlu hit a nerve when, onion in hand, he delivered a warning from his modest kitchen — no Saray for Mr. Kemal — that the cost of a kilo of onions would spike to 100 lira (€4.67) from 30 lira now, if the president stays in power.
Stung, Erdoğan insisted his government had solved Turkey’s food affordability problems, saying: “In this country, there is no onion problem, no potato problem, no cucumber problem.” But most Turks know Kılıçdaroğlu’s arithmetic is not outlandish; he is an accountant by training, after all. Annual inflation hit a record high of 85.5 percent last October, and ran at just over 50 percent in March. The Turkish lira has plunged to 19.4 to the dollar from about 6 to the dollar in early 2020.
In contrast to those bread-and-butter campaign issues, the main thrust of the opposition’s manifesto for switching power away from the presidency sounds legalistic. There are provisions to end the president’s effective veto power, ensure a non-partisan presidency and impose a one-term limit. Parliament will be strengthened by measures ranging from a lower threshold for a party to enter the assembly to greater use of independent experts in committees.
Important reforms, certainly, but will they strike a chord with voters? They could well do. İlke Toygür, professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, observed that while constitutional reforms might not be the “daily conversation,” the big themes of one-man rule and Turkey’s historical attachment to parliament did resonate.
One-man rule, for example, is widely linked to mismanagement of the economy and skyrocketing prices, she noted. Erdoğan has been lambasted for pouring fuel onto the inflationary fire by advocating for slashing interest rates — a stance euphemistically described as “unorthodox.”
“If you link everything to each other and link the one-man rule to the cost of living crisis, to the democracy crisis, and to all the problems in foreign policy, then you are defining this system and you are providing an alternative,” she said.
Toygür also stressed parliament played a crucial role in creating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s independent Turkish republic a century ago, and that still counted. “Parliament has a very strong symbolic value in Turkey,” she said, adding that voters appreciated teams in decision-making, something that Kılıçdaroğlu is playing up. “One of the biggest complaints now is that people lost their links to decision-making candidates.”
In stark contrast to the image of Erdoğan as the lone almighty reis, Kılıçdaroğlu portrays himself as building consensus, ready to draw on a broad pool of talent. In videos, he shows himself discussing earthquake-resistant construction, education and nutrition with high-profile mayors, Mansur Yavaș from Ankara and Ekrem İmamoğlu from Istanbul, his vice-presidents in the wings.
What’s more, Kılıçdaroğlu has pushed this vision of himself as an inclusive leader to a dramatic new level by publicly declaring himself to be an Alevi, a member of Turkey’s main religious minority that long suffered discrimination. His Twitter declaration on his identity, in which he called on young Turks to uproot the country’s “divisive system,” went viral. It’s a risky gambit against a populist president from the Sunni mainstream, but the message is clear: Kılıçdaroğlu is styling himself as the pluralist antidote to Erdoğan’s polarizing politics. The humble 74-year-old may be a bit dull after the caustic current leader, but the opposition’s gamble is that’s what Turkey needs.
Power to the president
Most observers looking back to identify a turning point where Erdoğan decided to centralize power around himself select the Gezi Park protests of 2013, when an unusually socially diverse band of demonstrators sought to stop a green space in Istanbul from being bulldozed for a shopping mall.
The protests — eventually smashed with tear gas and water cannon — swelled into a nationwide roar against Erdoğan’s cronyism and strongman style. Demir Murat Seyrek, adjunct professor at the Brussels School of Governance, said it was the first time Erdoğan felt “the threat was against him” rather than the ruling AK party.
Turkish President and People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Atlan/AFP via Getty Images
The final straw was an attempted coup in 2016 — the facts of which remain opaque — that pushed Erdoğan to hold a referendum in April 2017 on shifting to a presidential system. He won by the narrowest of margins (51.4 percent) and the opposition still disputes the result, not least because the vote was held during a post-coup state of emergency.
Seyrek noted the irony that the presidential system also had downsides for Erdoğan, particularly as he requires 50 percent of votes (+1) to stay in office. Now deserted by bigwigs from his AK party’s early days — former President Abdullah Gül and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have turned against him — he has to find increasingly extreme partners for his coalition to make up the numbers. “Each time, he wins by losing political power to other parties. He is winning by sharing power with more and more people,” he remarked.
A hardened political brawler, Erdoğan is punching back hard against the accusations that he’s the man undermining Turkish democracy.
As he has done for years, Erdoğan is turning the tables and casts himself as the voice of the majority, underlining Islamic propriety and family values, while saying his adversaries are in hock to terrorists, the imperialist West, murky international high-finance and LGBTQ+ organizations. Mainstream rival parties are dismissed as fascists and perverts, and he predicts his voters will “burst” the ballot boxes with their tide of support on May 14.
In an episode typical of Erdoğan’s combative instincts, he scented blood when Kılıçdaroğlu was photographed stepping on a prayer rug in his shoes at the end of March. Although his rival apologized for this unwitting accident, the president whipped up a crowd to boo him, accusing Kılıçdaroğlu of taking his instructions from Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based preacher and former AK party ally, whom Erdoğan now accuses of inciting the failed coup in 2016.
Clutching a prayer rug himself, Erdoğan intoned through his microphone: “This prayer rug is not for standing on with shoes. God willing, we’ll be able to perform the prayer of thanks on this prayer rug on May 15.”
Opposition politicians know full well they can easily be typecast by Erdoğan as reactionary voices of an old elite. That’s why they are being careful not to describe their proposed constitutional overhaul of the presidency as turning back the clock to some fictional glory days, but rather as creating something new: What the opposition manifesto calls “a truly pluralistic democracy” that “has never been possible” before.
Free but not fair?
Given the fears about Erdoğan’s lurch toward authoritarianism, speculation is intense over how fair the elections will be, and whether Erdoğan can rig them. Indeed, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu only fanned the concerns that the government could crack down on the democratic process by describing May 14 as an attempted “political coup” by the West — hardly words to be taken lightly given Turkey’s history of putsches.
With the full resources of the state and pliant media at his disposal, the president can certainly command disproportionate influence. In only the past few days, for example, Erdoğan has been able to offer free Black Sea gas as a pre-election perk.
But Seyrek at the Brussels School of Governance stressed that voting itself in Turkey should never be compared with Russia or Belarus. He argued the vote in each polling station would be closely monitored by all the political parties and other civilian observers. “I still feel in Turkey, what you can do against the result of elections is quite limited,” he said.
The consensus is that Erdoğan will be unable to fix the result in the case of a significant defeat. The greater danger, as noted by several analysts, is that he could attempt some high-risk stratagem in case of a tight result, demanding a recount or calling a state of emergency in case of some diversionary “incident.” That would, however, only inflame the country’s febrile politics just as Ankara needs stability to attract foreign investors and resuscitate the economy.
The more surreal idea — but not an implausible one now — is that Erdoğan could tactically see the time is ripe to lead the opposition and attack Kılıçdaroğlu’s new government. The new president would be highly vulnerable to Erdoğan’s vitriolic rhetoric as he tries to hold together a fissiparous coalition in the teeth of an economic crisis. Paradoxically, though, Seyrek noted that the AK party members in opposition could even support reforms to shake up the presidency and ensure media freedoms, as that would be in their interest. That could prove important as constitutional change would need a hefty parliamentary majority.
Or would Erdoğan simply take umbrage in defeat and quit the country?
Seyrek found that inconceivable.
“In his mind, he is a second Atatürk, he would rather die than escape.”
In the run-up to Sunday’s too-close-to-call election, he has ramped up his poisonous invective against homosexuality, as he seeks to shore up his conservative Islamist base. Almost every other speech from the campaign trail accuses the opposition of undermining family values and of being in the thrall of improbably powerful LGBTQ+ networks — sometimes with hints they are run by paymasters abroad.
“The AK Party has never been an LGBT supporter,” Erdoğan roared at a recent Istanbul rally, referring to his governing party. “We believe in the sanctity of the family. Family is sacred.”
Adding a menacing note, he followed up with: “So are we ready to bury these LGBT supporters in the ballot box?”
To some extent, the homophobic focus of the campaign is easily explicable. Increasingly deserted by his early supporters, Erdoğan is having to form coalition partnerships with more extreme Islamists in this year’s elections.
But even so, his language smacks of a fixation, and an attempt to divert attention from the country’s most pressing ailments — including a snowballing cost of living crisis and scorching inflation.
Diversionary tactics
Fulden Ergen, editor of Velvele.Net, an online debate platform for LGBTQ+ rights, said she was taken aback by the ubiquity of Erdoğan’s propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community in this year’s campaign.
She reckoned the attacks were an attempt to mask how few answers to Turkey’s profound problems the AK Party now has.
“I was not expecting them to be this devoid of policies and just talking about LGBTI,” she said. “The alliance does not have much to give people anymore,” she added, referring to the conservative coalition backing the president. “They don’t know how to deal with the economic crisis. They have no policies left, I see this campaign as a defeat.”
Though he may be running out of ideas, Erdoğan could still win. And that is now a serious concern to LGBTQ+ people.
Life is already tough, and could get significantly worse. LGBTQ+ flags are banned, gatherings are arbitrarily blocked by the government and participants in pride parades are regularly attacked or detained by police. The fear is that their organizations could now be made illegal, and — in the worst case scenario — that laws to protect families could be extended to outlaw homosexuality itself.
Activists say that if Erdoğan stays in power, violence could follow his hate speech.
An anti-LGBTQ+ rally in Istanbul in 2022 | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
One of the dangers is that his government could use security laws to crack down on homosexual relations — casting them as part of a foreign conspiracy. The government is playing on perceptions that “people don’t believe LGBTI can be from Turkey,” Ergen said.
One of the biggest setbacks for women and LGBTQ+ people has been Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the — ironically named — Istanbul Convention, which is intended to prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and promote gender equality.
Domestic violence is a severe problem that kills at least one woman every day in Turkey. According to data from the Monument Counter, a website that commemorates women who lost their lives to domestic violence, 824 women have been killed in just the past two years.
Gender parity is another failing across the country’s political spectrum. According to the country’s Women’s Platform for Equality, a rights group that has been tracing the candidates on the various parties’ electoral lists, a mere 117 female deputies are set to be elected to Turkey’s 600-seat parliament.
‘I have seen many Erdoğans in my life’
Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, who has been an activist for trans rights for 30 years, looks set to be an exception to that trend. She is a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey and the first openly trans woman with a good chance of making it to parliament.
In a café in Kurtuluş, a neighborhood in Istanbul where there are significant numbers of trans voters, Esmeray told POLITICO that, if elected, she would fight for the rights of LGBTQ+ people against discrimination, hate crimes and violence. “I am getting very positive feedback from the streets,” she said. “If we can judge it by looking at the streets then I’ll definitely be getting into the parliament.”
If Erdoğan stays in power, Esmeray believes he will take the country in a more religiously conservative direction, even aiming for Sharia law.
Ergen, the Velvele.net editor, echoed Esmeray’s line of thought. She feared that Article 10 in Turkey’s constitution — a part of the national charter that gives some vague protection to gender equality — might be doctored, paving the way to the possible criminalization of homosexuality.
“This is my biggest fear,” she says. “If they win, they are going to do it.”
Still, the fear of Erdoğan does not mean the LGBTQ+ community feels completely protected by the opposition, whose candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is leading in the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round vote.
Ergen thinks the right-wing parties within the wide-ranging opposition alliance could also lobby to make life harder for LGBTQ+ groups.
Kılıçdaroğlu himself is fairly guarded in his LGBTQ+ remarks, knowing that the government could easily turn the subject against him.
To Erdoğan, Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community represents “deviant structures” | Burak Kara/Getty Images
He is, however, committed to a trajectory toward EU norms. When asked for his stance by POLITICO, he said: “We defend all human rights. It is our common duty to defend human rights. Democracy demands it. You cannot alienate people based on their beliefs, identities and lifestyles, you have to respect everyone.”
Both Esmeray and Ergen believed the priority should be for Turkey to return the Istanbul Convention to reinforce some basic freedoms.
And both reckoned Turkey’s population was ahead of its politicians.
“I am more optimistic about people, not political parties,” said Ergen, who based her hopes on the breadth of civil society activities in Turkey.
Esmeray added: “I have seen many Erdoğans in my life. If he wins, we will continue fighting. If it comes to that, I will face him and tell him to kill me.”
The US is imposing new sanctions on groups in Russia and Iran accused of taking Americans hostage as it works to prevent more captive-taking and potentially secure the release of citizens currently being detained.
The move comes amid several high-profile cases of Americans being wrongfully detained. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine, are being held in Russia on espionage charges they each vehemently deny.
American citizens Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz are all being held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where there have been reports of torture.
The sanctions ordered up Thursday would punish organizations the US accuses of being responsible for holding hostage or wrongfully detaining Americans. In Iran, four individuals are also coming under new sanctions.
The groups are Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Intelligence Organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Officials said the steps should act as a warning to those thinking of taking Americans hostage.
“We are also showing that one cannot engage in this sort of awful behavior using human beings as pawns, as bargaining chips, without paying consequences and these are some of the consequences,” a senior administration official said.
But questions remain about the real impact of these sanctions because many of the entities hit on Thursday were already sanctioned under different authorities by the US.
On Thursday, Neda Sharghi, the sister of Emad Shargi, praised the White House for taking the action, but urged President Joe Biden to bring home those who are wrongfully detained.
“Deterrent actions like this one are an important tool in our country’s efforts to stop countries from engaging in detentions with impunity,” she said. “But they are deterrents of future behavior and no deterrent is going to resolve the ongoing detention of Americans that is going on right now.”
She also urged Biden to meet with the families of the three men held in Iran – a request that the families have made for months.
“Regardless of how positive this action is, it does not absolve the president for refusing to meet with the families of the three Americans being held in Iran – collectively for a total of 18 years. We continue to plead with the White House to let us meet with our president,” Neda Sharghi said.
The executive order seeks to punish organizations or criminals responsible for holding Americans captive.
It draws heavily from an existing law – the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act – which laid out the criteria for who is considered wrongfully detained, expanded the tools to help free those US detainees and hostages, authorized sanctions and was meant to foster increased engagement with families. That law was named in honor of Robert Levinson, an American detained in Iran for decades and who is believed to have died there.
Following Wednesday’s sanctions, Levinson’s family said in a statement that he “spent his life working for justice.”
“As Americans continue to be targeted around the world, we hope today’s action serves as a warning that those looking to deprive innocent U.S. citizens of their freedom, just as he was, to use them as political pawns, will be held accountable for their abhorrent behavior,” he said.
The executive order mandated a better flow of information to the families of Americans held hostage or detained overseas, and was signed the measure amid criticism from the family members of some hostages, who said the administration wasn’t being aggressive enough in securing their loved ones’ releases.
Since then, the administration has secured the release of numerous Americans being held overseas, including American basketball player Brittney Griner from Russia and seven jailed Americans from Venezuela.
But several high-profile cases remain unresolved. Officials said the sanctions issued Thursday were only a part of the overall strategy in preventing Americans from being taken hostage and in returning those currently in detention.
“Sanctions are a piece of holding accountable bad actors for their role in perpetrating appalling activity in the world,” the official said, noting assets would be frozen and cut off from the global financial system.
Officials said they consulted throughout the US government before deciding on the sanctions. They said they were confident the steps would not hamper current efforts to secure Americans’ releases.
“From time to time diplomacy requires some consequences being introduced, negative consequences be introduced, toward bad actors, particularly in this area of detaining, wrongfully detaining, taking hostage Americans,” a second senior administration official said.
In taking these actions the US government has to be careful not to put more barriers in the way of getting out Americans who remain wrongfully detained. Officials said it was possible the sanctions could be lifted if Americans held in Russia or Iran were released.
“I don’t think we rule things out if they could be the difference between Americans being in detention, where they never should have been, versus home with their families,” the second official said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday shrugged off Disney’s lawsuit against him as politically motivated, and said that it was time for the iconic company to stop enjoying favorable treatment in his state.
The legal filing is the latest salvo in a more than year-old feud between Disney and DeSantis that has engulfed the governor in criticism as he prepares to launch an expected 2024 presidential bid.
“They’re upset because they’re having to live by the same rules as everybody else. They don’t want to pay the same taxes as everybody else and they want to be able to control things without proper oversight,” DeSantis said during a visit to Israel. “The days of putting one company on a pedestal with no accountability are over in the state of Florida.”
DeSantis was speaking on the third leg of an international trip meant to burnish his foreign policy credentials ahead of a potential campaign for the Republican presidential nomination as a key rival to former President Donald Trump.
DeSantis has dived headlong into the fray with Disney, a major driver of tourism and a font for employment in Florida, as business leaders and White House rivals have bashed his stance as a rejection of the small-government tenets of conservatism.
The fight began last year after Disney, in the face of significant pressure, publicly opposed a state law that bans classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades, a policy critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”
DeSantis then took over Disney World’s self-governing district and appointed a new board of supervisors to oversee municipal services in the sprawling theme parks. But before the new board came in, the company pushed though an 11th-hour agreement that stripped the new supervisors of much of their authority.
The Disney lawsuit asks a federal judge to void the governor’s takeover of the theme park district, as well as the DeSantis oversight board’s actions, on the grounds that they were violations of the company’s free speech rights.
In a speech to a conference at Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance, DeSantis also spelled out his Middle East policy, speaking of the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance. He said Israel was the only authority that could protect freedom of worship for all in combustible Jerusalem and that the U.S. embassy was rightfully moved to the city by the Trump administration, despite opposition from Palestinians.
He repeated his opposition to the deal that aimed to rein in Iran’s nuclear program, saying it empowered that country’s rulers rather than held them back. The Iran nuclear deal passed under former President Barak Obama. His successor, Trump, revoked the U.S. agreement to it.
In a critique of President Joe Biden, DeSantis also said that the U.S. shouldn’t interfere in the way that Israel chooses to be governed. Biden voiced concerns last month about a contentious Israeli government plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary.
DeSantis began his multi-country trip in Japan and then traveled to South Korea. After Israel, he heads to Britain.
Sudanese families have been massing at a border crossing with Egypt and at a port city on the Red Sea, desperately trying to escape their country’s violence and sometimes waiting for days with little food or shelter, witnesses say.
In the capital, Khartoum, the intensity of the fighting eased on the second day of a three-day truce, and the military said it had “initially accepted” a diplomatic initiative to extend the current ceasefire for another three days after it expires on Thursday.
With the possibility of any future truce uncertain, many people took the opportunity presented during the lull in fighting to join the tens of thousands who have streamed out of the capital in recent days, trying to get out of the crossfire between the forces of Sudan’s two top generals.
Food has grown more difficult to obtain, and electricity is cut off across much of the capital and other cities. Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations, a heavy blow in a country where a third of the population of 46 million relies on humanitarian assistance.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said only one in four hospitals in the capital is fully functional and the fighting has disrupted assistance to 50,000 children who are acutely malnourished.
Many Sudanese fear the two sides will escalate their battle once the international evacuations of foreigners that began on Sunday are completed. The British government, whose airlift is one of the last still ongoing, said it has evacuated about 300 people on flights out and plans four more on Wednesday, promising to keep going as long as possible.
Large numbers of other people have been making the exhausting daylong drive across the desert to access points out of the country – to the city of Port Sudan on the eastern Red Sea coast and to the Arqin crossing into Egypt at the northern border.
Crowds of Sudanese and foreigners have waited in Port Sudan, trying to register for a ferry to Saudi Arabia. Dallia Abdelmoniem, a Sudanese political commentator, said she and her family arrived on Monday and have been trying to get a spot. “Priority was given to foreign nationals,” she said.
She and some of her extended family, mostly women and children, took a 26-hour bus journey to reach the port, during which they passed military checkpoints and small villages where people offered them cold hibiscus juice.
“These folk have very little, but they offered every single passenger on all these buses and trucks something to make their journey better,” she said.
At the Arqin crossing, families have been spending nights outside in the desert, waiting to be let into Egypt. Buses have lined up at the crossing.
“It’s a mess – long lines of elderly people, patients, women and children waiting in miserable conditions,” said Moaz al-Ser, a Sudanese teacher who arrived along with his wife and three children at the border a day earlier.
Tens of thousands of Khartoum residents have also fled to neighboring provinces or even into already existing camps within Sudan that house survivors of past conflicts.
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (AP) — It’s become an unmistakable hallmark of the anti-government protests roiling Israel for the last few months: the country’s blue and white national flag adorned with the Star of David.
For most Jewish Israelis, the flag has been a potent symbol of their foundational narrative — of a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to build a modern-day miracle, with a strong military and at the forefront of technology.
However, those protesting now say that the flag has increasingly been co-opted by nationalists claiming to have greater legitimacy to decide the country’s character and its future.
As Israel marks 75 years since its creation, the protesters say they are turning that argument on its head by reclaiming the flag.
As flags are strewn across the country to mark Independence Day on Wednesday — along avenues and down skyscrapers, on military bases and in West Bank settlement outposts — the fight over the flag on the milestone anniversary has laid bare the country’s divisions everywhere you look.
With the protests awash in them, the flags have been a dominant image in the Israeli consciousness for months.
The protests erupted after the country’s most right-wing government in history announced its planned judicial overhaul, which critics say would imperil Israel’s democratic fundamentals. The government claims it is meant to rein in what it portrays as an interventionist legal system. The plan has plunged Israel into one of its worst domestic crises, exposing deeply rooted divisions and sending tens of thousands of people into the streets each week, even after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paused the overhaul because of the intense pressure.
There are other disagreements over the flag. Many of the country’s Palestinian citizens, who make up one-fifth of Israel’s 9.7 million people, do not feel represented by the flag — one of the reasons they have not joined the anti-government protests. For Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the flag is an emblem of a 56-year-old occupation that includes military control and increased settlement building, further dimming their hopes for an independent state. ___
Residents of Khartoum describe going days without electricity and water as fighting rages around them.
Khartoum, Sudan – Majid Maali, 39, was excited to return to his home country, Sudan, on April 5. For the past 14 years, he had been based in Uganda, where he worked as a capacity-building officer for the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, an organisation that protects and promotes human rights defenders in the region.
He had returned to Khartoum to set up an office for the organisation there and was looking forward to spending time with friends and visiting his family in Darfur.
Ten days later, that all changed.
Maali was staying with a friend in a Khartoum neighbourhood just west of where he lives when he got a call from someone in his building. That morning, fighting had broken out between Sudan’s army, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. The caller told Maali that his apartment had been bombed.
“I couldn’t go right away as the clashes were intense,” he said. When Maali eventually managed to reach his apartment late that afternoon he “found a really bad situation”.
The damage to Majid Maali’s apartment [Courtesy of Majid Maali]
When he opened the door to his apartment, he discovered that the balcony had been blown out. Broken glass and shattered furniture lay all over the living room floor. The kitchen and bedrooms had also been damaged.
He quickly packed some of his belongings and is now staying in a rented apartment not too far from his place with friends who were also forced to leave their homes.
“We’ve been here for days with no electricity, no water,” he said. “We sleep and wake up to the sounds of gunfire and explosions and can’t leave, even to get basic needs.”
‘A nightmare’
Maali’s story is not unique as Sudan endures fighting that the United Nations said has killed more than 400 people and injured about 3,000 since it started on April 15.
People in Khartoum are experiencing electricity and water outages, and petrol stations and supermarkets are running out of supplies. As living conditions deteriorate, civilians are scrambling to find safe ways to escape the city.
Moneim Algash’s home was damaged by shelling [Courtesy of Moneim Algash]
Moneim Algash is a 55-year-old businessman and activist with the grassroots resistance committees whose family home in Khartoum’s Garden City was damaged by shelling. He said the violence shows that the warring parties do not care for the safety of civilians.
The army has conducted air raids on camps belonging to the RSF. The camps are scattered throughout Khartoum, including in residential areas.
“Over the past four years, many parties, including the resistance committees [neighbourhood groups at the forefront of Sudan’s pro-democracy movement] have been warning that setting up RSF camps near [residential] neighbourhoods is very serious and will lead to fighting between the armies,” Algash said, adding: “I hold the two warring parties responsible as well as the political parties.
“It’s brutal. They’re using civilians as hostages and human shields. We have nothing to do with the power struggle between these two, especially since they’re both against the revolution that overthrew the dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019.”
Algash said he is afraid that “unless they can contain this war quickly, it will become a very big humanitarian crisis”.
“It will be a nightmare not just for Sudan but also for the international community,” he said.
“Sudan is already very fragile. I’m afraid that we are expecting worse scenarios.”
Days after armed fighting erupted in Sudan, Dalia Mohamed and her mother were faced with an impossible choice: flee the capital of Khartoum or stay.
With their house located in the heart of a civil war, the constant sounds of bullets, rockets and shelling soon became too much to bear.
On Thursday, they packed a few basic items and fled after their home was damaged during a rocket attack.
“I was trying to delay the idea of leaving Khartoum,” Mohamed, 37, told Al Jazeera. “You always hear these stories about people needing to leave their homes, but it doesn’t hit you until you have to do it yourself.”
Khartoum has historically been a haven for people escaping civil wars in the far peripheries of Sudan, such as Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and South Sudan, before the latter became a country of its own in 2011.
For decades, civilian and army elites militarised and extracted resources from the margins such as oil and then gold in order to enrich themselves, while providing just enough to placate residents in Khartoum.
But now, the capital is the epicentre of armed conflict between the army and a violent paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Both have set up checkpoints and clashed indiscriminately, resulting in a mounting death toll and acute shortages of food, electricity and water.
The harrowing conditions have triggered a mass exodus and transformed Khartoum – a bustling city of five million residents that now feels like a ghost town.
“It was the hardest decision that I think I ever had to make,” said Mohamed. “Even now, if someone told me my area was safe and we could go back … we would go back in a second. But we can’t.”
Exit plan
Those fleeing Khartoum are heading east to Port Sudan, a region relatively safe and with sea routes connecting to Djibouti and Egypt.
Others are driving north to Egypt, although only children, the elderly and women are able to enter the country without visas. Young Sudanese men from the ages of 16 to 49 must apply for visas one day in advance at the Egyptian consulate in Wadi Halfa, a city near the border with Egypt.
It’s a requirement that risks momentarily separating families, with many preparing to say goodbye to their sons, brothers and fathers in hopes that they will reunite with them soon.
Roads to Egypt also are not entirely safe following reports that RSF fighters are robbing and looting cars at gunpoint, several people making the journey told Al Jazeera.
The ambivalent security situation has made coordinating an escape a nightmare.
Shaima Ahmed is in London and trying to convince her parents and siblings to leave Khartoum. The 27-year-old said it is difficult to advise her family from abroad.
“Not being able to give [my family] credible information is stressful. I’m pushing them to go [to Egypt] but I don’t want to push them too much. But if something happens to them, then it will be my fault,” said Ahmed.
Raga Makawi, a Sudanese-British citizen who was visiting her family in Khartoum when the war broke out, added that the logistics are not easy.
With bus stations down, and small vehicles ill-equipped for the journey, she said that families need to try to find buses on their own, as well as drivers that know how to avoid RSF checkpoints.
“As of an hour ago, the cost of a large bus from Khartoum to Cairo is $10,000,” Makawi told Al Jazeera, the night before she left for Egypt.“ [A bus] was just $4,000 a few days ago. But anyone can charge whatever they want and people will pay to … save their lives.”
Staying behind
The war in Khartoum is also separating families, as some elect to stay behind while their loved ones leave.
Dania Atabani, 23, said that her parents, aunt and cousins all left the city, yet she has decided to stay and take care of her grandparents and help out where she can.
She said that now she can barely recognise her city, which was once the source of so many memories and the pulse of a nationwide pro-democracy movement.
“Khartoum changed from a city where we would clean [people’s] wounds from tear gas canisters, to now giving [people] CPR and trying to stop them from bleeding [to death],” Atabani said.
“I miss being a normal 23-year-old with dreams and not running [away] from tanks, while in a constant need to save people’s lives,” she added.
Other young people such as 26-year-old Sammer Hamza are still undecided about whether to leave or stay. Clashes continue to escalate in her area, making it perilous to go outside.
But even if it does become safe to escape, she said that leaving her home – and city – will be the most difficult choice she’s ever had to make.
“I don’t want to leave my house, really,” she told Al Jazeera, as she held back tears over the phone. “I hoped that a [war] would never happen in Sudan. I hoped that a [war] would never happen in Khartoum.”
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, speaking from the capital, said that after a brief lull in hostilities overnight, heavy fighting resumed this morning, with plumes of smoke seen rising above the Khartoum skyline.
Residents in the city of Omdurman, the capital’s northwestern twin, also report heavy shelling and air raids.
Civilians and casualties
The UN says more than 400 people have been killed and more than 3,500 injured in the fighting.
Thousands of people are fleeing Khartoum as well as Darfur and seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad.
Widespread food, water and electricity shortages continue.
The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors and Sudan’s Doctors Union have estimated that 70 percent, or 39 out of 59 hospitals, in Khartoum and nearby states have closed.
Reports of the worst violence have come from Darfur. A UN update on Saturday said looters had taken at least 10 World Food Programme vehicles and six other food trucks after overrunning the agency’s offices and warehouses in Nyala, south Darfur.
Medecins Sans Frontieres appealed for safe passage. “We need ports of entry where we can bring specialist trauma staff and medical supplies,” said Abdalla Hussein, Sudan operations manager for the medical charity.
More than 150 students from the International University of Africa in Khartoum have arrived in Gadarif in the southeast so that they can be evacuated to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, according to government sources.
In the city of Darduk, north of Khartoum, people have been rallying to call for an end to hostilities overnight.
Internet connectivity is nearly entirely down in Sudan, according to the organisation NetBlocks.
Diplomacy
France has begun to evacuate its citizens and diplomatic staff from Sudan.
The US military evacuated US embassy staff from Khartoum, President Joe Biden said late Saturday, calling for an end to the “unconscionable” fighting in Sudan’s capital between the army and the RSF.
The Dutch Foreign Minister, Wopke Hoekstra, has announced that the Netherlands has also joined an international effort to evacuate its citizens from Sudan.
The UK says it is “integrated” into the operations of international partners to evacuate staff.
Saudi Arabia has evacuated Gulf citizens from Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Jordan will use the same route to evacuate its nationals.
South Korea says a military plane is in Djibouti and arrangements will be made to evacuate nationals.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — American embassy staffers were airlifted from Sudan early Sunday, as forces loyal to rival generals battled for control of Africa’s third-largest nation for a ninth day amid fading hopes for deescalation.
The warring sides said they were helping coordinate the evacuation of foreigners, though continued exchanges of fire in Sudan’s capital undermined those claims.
A senior Biden administration official said U.S. troops are carrying out the precarious evacuation of U.S. Embassy staffers. The troops who airlifted the staff out of Khartoum have safely left Sudanese airspace, a second U.S. official confirmed.
The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, which has been battling the Sudanese army, said the U.S. rescue mission involved six aircraft and that it had coordinated evacuation efforts with the U.S.
But the U.S. denied the group did anything to help the evacuation.
“You may have seen some assertions in social media in recent hours, that the Rapid Security Forces somehow coordinated with us and supported this operation. That was not the case,” said Under Secretary of State for Management John Bass. “They cooperated to the extent that they did not fire on our service members in the course of the operation.”
The RSF, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamad Dagolo, said it is cooperating with all diplomatic missions and that it is committed to a three-day cease-fire that was declared at sundown Friday.
Earlier, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan said he would facilitate the evacuation of American, British, Chinese and French citizens and diplomats from Sudan after speaking with the leaders of several countries that had requested help.
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said Sunday that France was organizing the evacuation of its embassy staff, French citizens in Sudan and citizens of allied countries. She said France was organizing the operation “in connection with all the involved parties, as well as with our European partners and allies.”
However, the situation on the ground remains volatile. Most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out of the capital has proven intensely dangerous. The two rivals have dug in, signaling they would resume the fighting after the declared three-day truce.
Questions have swirled over how the mass rescues of foreign citizens would unfold, with Sudan’s main international airport closed and millions of people sheltering indoors. As battles between the Sudanese army and the powerful paramilitary group rage in and around Khartoum, including in residential areas, foreign countries have struggled to repatriate their citizens — many trapped in their homes as food supplies dwindle.
The White House would not confirm the Sudanese military’s announcement. “We have made very clear to both sides that they are responsible for ensuring the protection of civilians and noncombatants,” the National Security Council said. On Friday, the U.S. said it had no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of the estimated 16,000 American citizens trapped in Sudan.
Saudi Arabia announced the successful repatriation of some of its citizens on Saturday, sharing footage of Saudi nationals and other foreigners welcomed with chocolate and flowers as they stepped off an apparent evacuation ship at the Saudi port of Jeddah.
Officials did not elaborate on exactly how the rescue unfolded but Burhan said the Saudi diplomats and nationals had first traveled by land to Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport on the Red Sea. He said that Jordan’s diplomats would soon be evacuated in the same way. The port is in Sudan’s far east, some 840 kilometers (520 miles) from Khartoum.
President Joe Biden ordered American troops to evacuate embassy personnel after receiving a recommendation earlier Saturday from his national security team with no end in sight to the fighting, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the mission.
The evacuation order was believed to apply to about 70 Americans. U.S. forces were flying them from a landing zone at the embassy to an unspecified location.
With the U.S. focused on evacuating diplomats first, the Pentagon said it was moving additional troops and equipment to a Naval base in the tiny Gulf of Aden nation of Djibouti to prepare for the effort.
Burhan told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite channel on Saturday that flights in and out of Khartoum remained risky because of the ongoing clashes. He claimed that the military had regained control over all the other airports in the country, except for one in the southwestern city of Nyala.
“We share the international community’s concern about foreign nationals,” he said, promising Sudan would provide “necessary airports and safe passageways” for foreigners trapped in the fighting, without elaborating.
Two cease-fire attempts earlier this week also rapidly collapsed. The turmoil has dealt a perhaps fatal blow to hopes for the country’s transition to a civilian-led democracy and raised concerns the chaos could draw in its neighbors, including Chad, Egypt and Libya.
“The war has been continuous since day one. It has not stopped for one moment,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, secretary of the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties.
The clashes have killed over 400 people so far, according to the World Health Organization. The bombardments, gunbattles and sniper fire in densely populated areas have hit civilian infrastructure, including many hospitals. Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org said Sunday there was a “near-total collapse of internet connectivity.”
The international airport near the center of the capital has come under heavy shelling as the RSF has tried to take control of the compound. In an apparent effort to oust the RSF fighters, the Sudanese army has pounded the airport with airstrikes, gutting at least one runway and leaving wrecked planes scattered on the tarmac. The full extent of damage at the airfield remains unclear.
The conflict has opened a dangerous new chapter in Sudan’s history, thrusting the country into uncertainty.
“No one can predict when and how this war will end,” Burhan told the Al-Hadath news channel. “I am currently in the command center and will only leave it in a coffin.”
The current explosion of violence came after Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
The rival generals rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of popular uprisings that led to the ouster of Sudan’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019. Two years later, they joined forces to seize power in a coup that ousted the civilian leaders.
Both the military and RSF have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of atrocities in crushing a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Many Sudanese fear that despite the generals’ repeated promises, the violence will only escalate as tens of thousands of foreign citizens try to leave.
“We are sure both sides of fighting are more careful about foreign lives than the lives of Sudanese citizens,” Atiya said.
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Associated press writers Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem, Fay Abuelgasim in Beirut, Angela Charlton in Paris, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.
Sudan’s army and paramilitary group RSF began a violent power struggle last Saturday with more than 400 people killed since.
Heavy fighting is continuing in Sudan’s capital Khartoum between warring factions that have plunged the country into chaos with foreign expatriates preparing to flee via military escort.
The Sudanese army said on Saturday it was coordinating efforts to evacuate diplomats from the United States, Britain, China and France out of the country on military aeroplanes.
Diplomats and their families from Saudi Arabia had already made it out of Sudan. Jordanian nationals were set to leave later.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan spoke to leaders requesting safe evacuations of their citizens and diplomats from Sudan, which has been roiled by bloody fighting for the past week.
Countries have struggled to repatriate their citizens amid deadly clashes that have killed more than 400 people so far. With Sudan’s main international airport closed, foreign countries have ordered their citizens to simply shelter in place until they can figure out evacuation plans.
Al-Burhan said diplomats from Saudi Arabia had already been evacuated from Port Sudan and airlifted back to the kingdom. He said Jordan’s diplomats would soon be evacuated in the same way.
Safe enough to venture out?
Fighting in Sudan’s capital entered a second week on Saturday as crackling gunfire shattered a temporary truce.
Al-Burhan’s army has fought the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed “Hemdti” Hamdan Dagalo.
Heavy gunfire, loud explosions and fighter jets roared in many parts of Khartoum early Saturday as terrified civilians hunkered down in their homes.
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said it remains to be seen if the foreign nationals are able to make it to safety. Some trapped Sudanese, meanwhile, say they are too scared to venture out of the battle zone.
“Many people we talked to say they don’t believe it’s safe enough to venture out of their homes, with many still trapped in the vicinity of the presidential palace and military headquarters” Morgan said, adding other foreign nationals, including from Hungary, were able to evacuate via Egypt.
“While the evacuation has been planned, nobody knows if they can make it out safely to get on those planes and out of Sudan,” she said
Witnesses reported a major battle in north Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces and RSF fighters involving air strikes, artillery and small-arms fire.
People gather at a bus station to flee Khartoum during clashes [El-Tayeb Siddig/Reuters]
‘Paying the price’
Meanwhile, many civilians report basic supplies such as water and food are running out after seven days of war.
Khartoum resident Moez Ahmed told Al Jazeera in an emotion-filled voice: “I want to say to both leaders: ‘We are the civilians. We are paying the price. We are not supposed to live in this situation.’”
Sudan borders seven countries and sits between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Africa’s volatile Sahel region. The hostilities risk fanning regional tensions.
The violence was triggered by disagreement over an internationally backed plan to form a new civilian government four years after the fall of authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir and two years after a military coup. Both sides accuse the other of thwarting the transition.
Calls for ‘complete’ ceasefire
RSF leader Hemedti said early on Saturday he received a phone call from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The two “emphasised the necessity of adhering to a complete ceasefire and providing protection for humanitarian and medical workers, especially UN staff as well as regional and international organisations”, Hemedti said in a post on his official Facebook account.
The RSF said late on Friday it was ready to partially open all of Sudan’s airports so foreign governments could evacuate their nationals.
The group said in a statement it would “cooperate, coordinate and provide all facilities that enable expatriates and missions to leave the country safely”.
It was unclear to what extent the RSF controls Sudan’s airports. The Khartoum airport has been caught in the fighting with aircraft burning on the tarmac, and commercial airlines halted flights several days ago.
More gunfire from the airport was reported on Saturday.
Heavy fighting continues in the Sudanese capital even after Sudan’s army declared a truce, residents told Al Jazeera, dealing a blow to international efforts to end almost a week of fighting between the military and a rival paramilitary group.
The army said on Friday evening it agreed to a three-day truce to enable people to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Its adversary, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), said earlier in the day it had agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire, also to mark Eid.
“The armed forces hope that the rebels will abide by all the requirements of the truce and stop any military moves that would obstruct it,” an army statement said.
The army’s announcement followed another day of hostilities in Khartoum and the army’s first deployment on foot in the capital since the fighting began last Saturday.
Soldiers and armed men from the RSF shot at each other in neighbourhoods across the city, including during the call for special early morning Eid prayers.
‘Residents have little hope for truce’
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said residents around the capital reported continuous artillery attacks.
“Residents say there is intense fighting and direct confrontations between the army and the RSF in the southern part of the capital,” she said.
Morgan said despite a fifth attempt at a ceasefire, residents in various parts of the country say the clashes continue and they believe the truce will not hold.
Gunfire crackled without pause all day, punctuated by the thud of artillery and air raids. Drone footage showed plumes of smoke across Khartoum and its Nile sister cities of Omdurman and Bahri – together one of Africa’s biggest urban areas.
The fighting has killed hundreds, mainly in Khartoum and the west of Sudan, tipping the continent’s third-largest country – where about a quarter of people already relied on food aid – into a humanitarian disaster.
With the airport caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Spain have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.
In Washington, DC, the US State Department said without elaborating that one US citizen in Sudan had been killed. The White House said no decision had been made yet to evacuate US diplomatic personnel but it was preparing for such an eventuality if it became necessary.
At least five aid workers have been killed, including three from the World Food Programme, which has since suspended its Sudan operation – one of the world’s largest food aid missions.
A worker at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was killed in the city of El-Obeid on Friday after his vehicle was hit by crossfire as he tried to move his family to safety.
Paul Dillon of the IOM said the staff was killed at a time the fighting between the warring sides in Sudan intensified in El-Obeid.
“Our staff member, his wife and their newborn child got into a private vehicle and headed south to relocate to a safer place,” Dillon told Al Jazeera from Geneva.
“About 50km outside of El-Obeid, they found themselves in crossfire between two factions,” he said.
“Our staff member was critically injured but he managed to drive the car some distance away to a health clinic. Unfortunately, he died of his injuries,” Dillon added.
Humanitarian issues
The fighting is making it more difficult for people to leave their homes and join the droves departing Khartoum.
Khartoum resident Mohamed Saber Turaby, 27, wanted to visit his parents 80km (50 miles) from the city for Eid.
“Every time I try to leave the house, there are clashes,” he told the Reuters news agency. “There was shelling last night and now there is presence of army forces on the ground.”
Army troops brandishing semiautomatic weapons were greeted by cheers on one street, a video released by the military on Friday showed.
Reuters verified the location of the video, in the north of the city, but could not verify when it was filmed.
The World Health Organization said at least 413 people have been killed and thousands injured, with hospitals under attack and up to 20,000 people fleeing to neighbouring Chad.
“An increasing number of people are running out of food, water, and power, including in Khartoum,” the UN humanitarian office said.
Sudan borders seven countries and sits between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Africa’s volatile Sahel region. The hostilities risk fanning regional tensions.
The violence was triggered by disagreement over an internationally backed plan to form a new civilian government four years after the fall of former leader Omar al-Bashir to mass protests, and two years after a military coup.
Both sides accuse the other of thwarting the transition.
The two sides are also fighting in the Darfur region in the west, where a partial peace deal was signed in 2020 in a long conflict that led to war crime charges against al-Bashir.
