★ According to the Turkish daily Duvar, The Council of State, Turkey's highest administrative body, has ruled to reinstate 178 judges and prosecutors to their posts dismissed by government decrees. The ruling Justice and Development Party administration accused them of being members of the Fethullah Gülen network.

  The court also ordered the state to pay the judges and prosecutors for their absence of duty, the pro-government daily Sabah reported as a scandal.

  After the decision, the government reinstated 122 of the judiciary. The Board of Judges and Prosecutors will decide whether to appeal or not the decision for the 56 members.

  Initially, the Gülen network members cooperated with Mr. Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party in governing Turkey. However, cracks appeared later in their coalition. A 2016 failed coup attempt said to be orchestrated by the Gülen network put an end to the partnership.

  After the attempted coup, Mr. Erdoğan's administration removed more than 100,000 people from their jobs.

  Since 1999, Fethullah Gülen has lived in the U. S. He and his followers deny involvement in the coup attempt.

★ On October 20, the ruling Justice and Development Party submitted a bill to meet the concerns of the Alevi community to the Turkish Parliament.

  The bill includes free electricity and water for the Alevi houses of worship. Similar to the subsidy that the government offers to Sunni mosques.

  Alevis constitute about 20% of Turkey's population. Their beliefs and religious practices are different than that of the Sunni majority. The Turkish government does not recognize them as a separate community. However, they constitute a significant voting block, and Turkey's president Mr. Erdoğan has recently been courting them. Currently, most Alevis support the opposition parties.

★ Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party co-chair Mithat Sancar told the daily Duvar that their party aims to get at least 15% in the 2023 elections.

  Mr. Erdoğan's administration has a lawsuit against the party, which may result in its closure by the constitutional court.

★ Speaking of Kurds, Turkish officials denied allegations that the Turkish military has used chemical weapons in their operations against the rebel Kurdistan Worker's Party militants.

  The allegations came from media outlets close to the Kurdistan Worker's Party. The media published videos this week claiming to show chemical weapons use against the Kurdish militants.

  An international federation of medical professionals called for a separate independent investigation of possible violations of the 1997 chemical weapons convention.

★ Elizabeth Rosenberg, the U. S. assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes visited Turkey this week to discuss sanctions on Russia.

  Although it condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has not been implementing some of the sanctions.

  However, Turkish officials also pledge that Turks will not circumvent the sanctions. At the same time, it has ramped up trade and tourism with Russia.

  Some Turkish firms have purchased or sought to buy Russian assets from Western partners pulling back due to the sanctions, while others maintain significant holdings in the country, daily Duvar writes.

★ According to Dorian Jones of the VOA, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has decided to accept the offer of Russian President Vladimir Putin to turn Turkey into a Russian natural gas hub.

  He said to his deputies on Wednesday that Turkey secured a vital opportunity.

  Last week, Putin said the gas would be redirected through Turkey from the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea, which blasts damaged them last month.

  Russia is the biggest supplier of natural gas to Turkey already.

  Turkey's Western allies are already worried about the deal.

★ According to Lisa Schline of the VOA, UN human rights officials warn that escalating fighting in northern Syria could spread and lead to more deaths and mass displacement.

  Dozens of civilians have been killed and injured in intensified fighting between the militant Islamist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and some Turkish-affiliated armed groups in northern Syria.

★ VOA reports that Finnish officials will travel to Turkey next Tuesday to discuss Finland's membership bid for NATO.

  The officials will meet the head of foreign relations at the Turkish Ministry of Justice.

  Turkey threatened to block the NATO membership of Finland and neighboring Sweden, saying that the two countries harbor terrorists from the Kurdistan workers party and followers of Fethullah Gülen. Turkey wants concrete actions for the extradition of these individuals to Turkey. Turkey also wanted Sweden to lift its arms embargo against it.

★ Although all economists assert to fight inflation, interest rates have to go up, Turkey's president has the opposite view.

  Mr. Erdoğan has been putting pressure on the central bank to reduce the interest rates, and the bank has been obliging.

  On October 20, the bank lowered its policy interest rate to 10.5%.

  However, statistics point out that Mr. Erdoğan's views are not correct. Since the bank started lowering its interest rates several months ago, every month, inflation has increased. Independent experts say that it was an annualized 186% in September.

  See the official interest rate, which is lower than the independent experts' here: Read more >> here <<

★ According to Reuters, the Turkish central bank took one more step to boost lira deposits, raising the securities maintenance ratio required for foreign exchange deposits to 5% from 3% of deposits. See the original article Read more >> here <<

★ According to the Turkish treasury and finance ministry statistics, the Turkish government budget showed a deficit of $4.23 billion in September.

  Read more >> here <<

★ According to the Anatolia news agency, archaeologists discovered late Roman-era rooms and earthen offering vessels in southern Turkey amid ongoing excavations of the ancient city of Antiocheia, the head of the dig said on Friday.

  Excavations around the Church of St. Pierre, a pilgrimage site for many Christians, began on October 10 in the province of Hatay, launched by a 12-person team led by the local archaeology museum.

  Speaking to Anatolia News Agency, Ayşe Ersoy, the head of the Hatay Archaeology Museum, said:

  "We think that at that time, people who visited the church on pilgrimage bought offering vessels from here and filled it with holy water in the Church of St. Pierre."

  Seleukos I Established Antiocheia in 300 BC. Seleucus I Nicator was a Macedonian Greek general who was an officer and successor of Alexander the Great.

★ Istanbul's Koç University Global Executive MBA program went up by 14-ranks in the Financial Times rankings and is now the 31st worldwide, the University announced.

  The ranking considers 16 criteria, including accomplishments by graduates such as current salary, salary increase, career progress, work experience, and aims achieved, faculty and student gender diversity, international diversity, corporate social responsibility, and research based on the number of papers published in the leading academic journals.

★ 24 local and international theater, performance, and dance shows come together in the program of The 26th Istanbul Theater Festival.

  At the festival, theater lovers will have the opportunity to discover two prominent directors who swept England and Europe.

  One of the directors is Ben Duke, who will meet the Istanbul audience for the first time with his play Juliet and Romeo.

  The other is Euripides Laskaridis with his play the Titans.

  Juliet and Romeo show the audience the legendary love of famous lovers who have not died but have reached the age of 40 while fluttering in the webs of daily life. Read more >> here <<

  Euripides Laskaridis, the Greek representative of the Theater of the Absurd, describes a metaphysical realm where reason has not yet formed in Titans. He created it as part of a tragicomic trilogy with his band Osmosis.

  The theater festival will take place from October 25 to November 26. See the Festival pages >> here <<

★ The 32nd Akbank Jazz Festival took place in 22 different venues with special performances by more than 120 artists from the world and Turkish jazz stages.

  Akbank Jazz Festival, one of Turkish bank Akbank's longest-running culture and arts projects, hosted 15 thousand participants in its 32nd year with its rich program, including different rhythms and colors of jazz.

  Aiming to bring jazz music to large masses, Akbank Jazz Festival brought children together with the colorful world of jazz with workshops for children.

  In the talk show program of the festival,

• "Visual and Audio Experiences in the New Media Age,"
• "Listening Club: A Piece You Will Listen While Walking in the Streets of the City,"
• "Names Forgotten by Time,"
• "Stop! Listen!: Jazz and Jazu Kissa in Japan" and
• "Women and Music in Antiquity,"

topics met with the participants.

  The Jazz Festival was on from September 24 through October 9.

  See the Festival pages Read more >> here <<

★ Turkish scholar Dr. Filiz Çalışlar Yenişehirlioğlu is a faculty member at Koç University's school of Archeology and Art History. She is also the director of Vehbi Koç Ankara Studies Application and Research Center.

  She recently received the French award Chevalier dans l'Ordre national du Mérite, considered one of the significant knighthoods in France.

  At the ceremony held at the French Embassy building in the Turkish capital Ankara, Ambassador Hervé Margo, presented the medal to Dr. Yenişehirlioğlu.

  At the ceremony, Dr. Yenişehirlioğlu shared that her emotional bond with France started with the songs she listened to and the movies she watched as a child.

  She stated that education and culture were the only way to establish understanding and tolerance between people.

  Dr. Yenişehirlioğlu said the dialogue and bond between French and Turkish people would endure, and academic life would always support cooperation.

  She continued her words with the wish to strengthen and increase them.

★ An organization titled Anatolian Taste is bringing Aegean food culture to airports under the consultancy of Chef Dilek Yetkiner.

  The organization had an event to promote and strengthen Aegean Cuisine in Istanbul on October 11-14.

  Known for her work on Aegean and Refugee Cuisine, Chef Dilek Yetkiner said:

  "Aegean cuisine is diverse. One of the reasons is that the region has more than 800 endemic plant species. It results in more than 50 plant dishes.

  "I am excited to present the centuries-old Aegean recipes to our guests, together with the flavor of Anatolia, with their originality."

  The Aegean Cuisine event took place under the leadership of Chef Dilek Yetkiner at Anatolian Taste restaurants in Izmir Adnan Menderes on October 18-19 and will be at Ankara Esenboğa airports on October 25-26.

★ There is a new short film competition for students of Fine Arts, Communication, Film, Television, and Media schools of universities. The Fair Play Commission of the Turkish National Olympic Committee has organized the competition.

  The first prize in the competition is 25 thousand Turkish liras. The jury consists of the Olympic committee's Fair Play Commission members and leading names in the film industry.

  The deadline for participation in the competition is January 31, 2023. While the main criterion of the competition will be the fair play message that the film will give in the sports or social field, the other will be on film and television film techniques.

  Fiction films of less than 10-minute length can participate in the competition.