Sayyid Badr, Turkish counterpart discuss means of boosting cooperation
Muscat: Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, Foreign Minister and Hakan Fidan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye explored means of boosting cooperation between Oman and Türkiye in various areas, in a manner that serves the joint interests.
During a phone call made between the two ministers on Wednesday, both sides exchanged views on several regional and international issues, underscoring the importance of dialogue and diplomacy in addressing challenges and promoting security and stability.
Sayyid Badr expressed his sympathy and solidarity with Türkiye following the earthquake that struck Istanbul earlier on Wednesday. On his turn, the Turkish Minister conveyed his country's appreciation for Oman's efforts in facilitating talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America to reach a just and lasting agreement that serves the security and stability of the region.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
9 hours ago
- Observer
Land of warriors... where ‘honour' is sullied, respect is lost
How can an ethnic group, rich in culture and tradition, and numbering more than 30 million people, not have a home to call their own? The Kurdish people are a proud people, gentle, yet, in protecting their 'honour,' become utterly mindless, brutal. The Kurdish, says proud young Kurd Danyil Kamil, are people of the mountainous, stateless region, that spans four nations Iran, Iraq, Türkiye , and Syria, once known as Mesopotamia. Culturally strong, and mostly Sunni Muslim. Ironically, following WWI, the Western allies having conquered the Ottoman Empire, made provision for a Kurdish state, even giving it the name of Kurdistan, in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. However, the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, which established the post-war boundaries of modern-day Turkey, saw the Kurdish homeland fractured and according to Kamil, 'out of sight, out of mind.' Autonomous governance of the Iraqi sector has been touted since 1946, when Mustafa Barzani created the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which 15 years later, frustrated with their political progress launched an armed offensive against the government. In March1988, Saddam Hussein cruelly unleashed a chemical attack against Halabja, on the Iranian border, killing 5,000 Kurds. Iran's Ten million Kurdish Muslims, who have long sought formal allegiances with their fellow Levantine mountain-dwellers. However, successive Iranian governments have proven reluctant to cede a strong social presence, in country, and suppression of Kurdish autonomy and activism is widespread. Turkish Kurds too have suffered as successive Turkish governments have rejected autonomy since the 1920s, with Kurdish identity made unlawful. In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan inspired a bid for Kurdish independence, only to be arrested and gaoled in 1999. He is still imprisoned, alone, in Imrali Prison. It is conservatively estimated that more than 36,000 people have perished in the Turkish/Kurdish 'troubles. Syria only has a modest Kurdish population, denied citizenship, homes, land, and businesses, they were victims of widespread genocide until in 2012, Bashir Al Assad was forced to protect urban Syria from other rebel forces. Even today, Syria's fractured leadership refuses to negotiate Kurdish autonomy. This then, is the adversity that is Kurdistan, and hardly of its own making. But that's no excuse... Maybe the earlier generations would settle for peace and quiet, but as in every society, there is youth, and with youth comes restlessness, and a desire to be seen and heard, maybe ill-disciplined and free-spirited, but undeserving of the pathos surrounding one lost soul. Fairooz Azad was a Kurdish teenager, living in Erbil, population 879,000, and Kurdistan's largest city. She was pretty, vibrant, and bold, who successfully blended her beauty, fashion, personality and opinions, influencing thousands of Kurdish followers on social media. Her posts offered a very different perspective to the normally mundane existence where the only local excitement was their football team. A pretty girl, Azad would 'dress to impress,' frequently blogging and posting on TikTok and Snapchat, becoming prominent across the region's social media. Not everyone though, was impressed, and in November 2023, two rival influencers, feigning interest in her success, instead brutally assaulted and violated the 18-year-old and threw her from the balcony of Erbil's Eskan Towers. Miraculously, she survived with a broken leg, pelvic and spinal injuries. Incredibly, a tribal mediation saw her assailants given only a brief term of imprisonment, and they were released from jail before Azad was discharged from hospital. Then, in April 2024, believing Azad was now 'impure,' her father, uncle, cousin, a brother, and others, entered her bedroom and shot her dead while she was sleeping. To think young Fairooz Azad is now little more than a statistic, one of an average thirty women who perish each year in this region alone, in the name of 'honour?' This is not honour! For any culture, any tradition, no matter how disappointed, frustrated, or bitter with their lot, to seek solace in ritual gendercide, is completely wrong! Nyala Ali Khan, author, lecturer, and a global advocate for women's rights, in an interview on 'Counterpunch,' in 2016, that the 'discourse of honour killings,' speaks only to the 'incorrigible bestiality,' of the practice. How can a culture, a civilisation, a way of life, that regards honour so wretchedly, seek freedom, respect and independence so robustly?
Observer
5 days ago
- Observer
Ukraine attack on Russia overshadows peace talks
ISTANBUL: Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul ended barely an hour after they began on Monday, a day after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's nuclear-capable strategic bombers. The talks — the second such direct contacts between the sides since 2022 — had already begun nearly two hours later than scheduled with no explanation of the delay. Although the atmosphere was subdued and dialogue brief, the talks did yield an agreement to conduct a new prisoner exchange and Ukraine said another round of talks was on the agenda. In Russia, before the talks began, angry war bloggers had called on Moscow to deliver a fearsome retaliatory blow against Kyiv after Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its most ambitious attacks of the war, targeting Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Siberia and elsewhere. Ukraine and Russia have issued starkly different assessments of the damage done to Russia's fleet of strategic bombers — a key element in its nuclear arsenal - but it was clear from publicly available satellite imagery that Moscow had suffered some serious equipment losses. "The eyes of the whole world are focused on the contacts here," Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had told the Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the start of talks as they faced off against each other on opposite sides of the room in the sumptuous Ciragan Palace by the Bosphorus. He said the aim of the meeting was to evaluate the conditions for a ceasefire, to discuss a possible meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, and to look at more prisoner exchange opportunities. Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who headed Kyiv's delegation, announced after the talks that a new prisoner exchange had been agreed to follow up on the biggest prisoner swap of the war brokered at the last round of talks. He said the new exchange would focus on those severely injured in the war and on young people. Umerov also said that Moscow had handed its own draft peace accord to Ukraine and that Kyiv - which has drawn up its own version — would review the Russian document. Ukraine has proposed holding more talks before the end of June, but believes that only a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin can resolve the many issues of contention, Umerov said. Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv's delegation had handed over a list of children it said had been deported to Russia and which it wanted back. Moscow says such children were moved in order to protect them from fighting. The two sides had been expected on Monday to discuss their respective and wildly different ideas for what a full ceasefire and a longer term path to peace should look like amid pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has said the US could abandon its role as a mediator if there is no progress. But Umerov said Kyiv had been unable to react to Russia's proposals for peace because it had only seen them on Monday. While both countries, for different reasons, are keen to keep Trump engaged in the peace process, expectations of a breakthrough on Monday had been low. Ukraine regards Russia's approach to date as an attempt to force it to capitulate — something Kyiv says it will never do — while Moscow, which advanced on the battlefield in May at its fastest rate in six months, says Kyiv should submit to peace on Russian terms or face losing more territory. Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war last June: Ukraine must drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia. According to a proposed roadmap drawn up by Ukraine, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Kyiv wants no restrictions on its military strength after any peace deal, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow's forces, and wants reparations. — Reuters
Observer
31-05-2025
- Observer
Ukraine expands evacuations in Sumy amid offensive fears
KYIV: Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday amid fears Moscow was gearing up for a fresh ground assault. Russia claims to have captured several villages in the northeastern region in recent weeks, and has massed more than 50,000 soldiers on the other side of the border, according to Kyiv. The evacuations came just two days before a possible meeting between the two sides in Istanbul, as Washington called on both countries to end the three-year war. Russia has confirmed it will send a delegation to the Turkish city, but Kyiv has yet to accept the proposal, warning the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of doing "everything" it could to sabotage the potential meeting by withholding its peace terms. Authorities in Ukraine's Sumy region said on Saturday that they were evacuating 11 villages within a roughly 30-kilometre range from the Russian border. "The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life as a result of shelling of border communities," the regional administration said on social media. A spokesman for Ukraine's border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, said on Thursday that Russia was poised to "attempt an attack" on Sumy. In total, 213 settlements in the region have been ordered to evacuate. Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had taken another Sumy region village, Vodolagy. Moscow's attack on Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of towns and villages across parts of the east and south of the country. The Kremlin's army now controls around a fifth of the country and claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions as its own, including Crimea, which it seized in 2014. Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire guns toward Russian positions, in Donetsk region. — Reuters US President Donald Trump has spearheaded diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the fighting, but Kyiv and Moscow have both accused each other of not wanting peace. The Kremlin has proposed further negotiations in Istanbul on Monday, after a May 16 round of talks that yielded little beyond a large prisoner-of-war exchange. Kyiv has not yet said whether it will attend the Monday meeting, and said on Friday it did not expect any results from the talks unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance. Russia says it will provide its peace memorandum in person on Monday. But Ukraine suspects it will contain unrealistic demands that Kyiv has already rejected, including that Ukraine cede territory still under its control and abandon its Nato ambitions. In a statement to the United Nations on Friday, Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia suggested the memorandum might call for Western countries to halt armed supplies to Kyiv and for Ukraine to abandon its military mobilisation. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has fostered warm relations with both Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, has become a key mediator amid efforts to end the conflict. In a call with Zelensky late on Friday, the Turkish leader urged both sides to send "strong delegations" to ensure momentum towards peace, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu. Turkiye has offered to host a summit between Putin, Zelensky and Trump, but the Kremlin has turned down the offer. Putin has consistently rebuffed calls for a 30-day, unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian shelling and air strikes on southern Ukraine overnight killed a man and a nine-year-old girl in separate attacks, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday. In the Zaporizhzhia region, "Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs", killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said on the Telegram platform. One house was destroyed and several others damaged by the blast, he added. In a separate assault on the city of Kherson, a "66-year-old man sustained fatal injuries" from Russian shelling, Oleksandr Prokudin, Kherson region's governor, wrote on Telegram. — AFP
