Global News Podcast - Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned growing protests in Turkey in the days since the arrest of a key opposition figure. Also: flights resume at London's Heathrow Airport after shutdown caused by fire at electrical substation.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn. It's very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk

about ice. And also in this series, we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Saturday the 22nd of March these are our main stories. Riot police in Turkey have clashed with demonstrators as tens of thousands come onto the streets of main cities in the country to protest against the detention of the popular

mayor of Istanbul. Heathrow Airport is beginning to get back to normal after a fire at a nearby electricity substation shut down Europe's busiest hub, causing chaos. A hearing is taking place in the US to decide on the legality of the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Also in this podcast. I think if America doesn't help Ukraine, that a ceasefire will be agreed soon, but on extremely unfavorable terms for Ukraine. As negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine continue, we hear from troops in the region of Sumy, close to the Russian border in the northeast.

For three consecutive nights, thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Istanbul and other cities over the arrest of Turkish President Erdogan's main rival Ekrem Ememoglu. On Friday night, there have been scenes of violence. The area around Istanbul City Hall was brought to a standstill with riot police deploying tear gas near to where Mayor Ememoglu is due to stand trial on charges of bribery. Addressing the protesters, Turkish opposition leader, Özgür Ozil, called for his release. Democrats are not afraid of the square. Democrats are brave, respectful of protest and understanding. But dictators are afraid of squares.

If Erdogan, you are afraid of this square, then you are a dictator. If you try to harm the mayor, Istanbul itself will break the hand that reaches out against its will. President Erdogan has denounced the demonstrations calling them acts of vandalism and street terror. I got this update from BBC's Hilkan Boran who's in Istanbul. We've heard of numerous reports about clashes in Istanbul and the capital Ankara in a major province called Izmir and other provinces across Turkey. And the interior minister Ali Alikaya has announced that there were clashes and that 97 people have been detained in relation to the demonstrations tonight. And just to remind you, there are protest bands in place in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir.

So technically, everyone who's going out in these provinces are in breach of law, but law enforcement officials have so far been tolerant of these protests, but we've seen some instances where the police employed tear gas and water cannons, as well as some protesters attacking police barricades with numerous different things. And President Erdogan has said he will not tolerate this. What is going to happen in this court case? So far we do not have a clear indication of what is going to happen, but we know that Imamoglu and other people who have been detained alongside him, who are almost numbering 100 people,

are charged with crimes like bribery, with corruption, with rigging tenders, etc. So we might expect some of those allegations to be officially leveled against Imamoglu and his associates when he faces this trial. Going forward, then, that we do not have an exact idea of what is going to happen. What we do know is that the main opposition party is planning to announce Imamoglu as their official candidate. They're going to declare Imamoglu as their official presidential candidate on Sunday with ballots going to be set up across Turkey in a show of support for Imamoglu. And are they calling on people to come onto the streets again? Yes, so far they have been calling on people to hold protests every night in Istanbul and in major

cities and we're expecting to see more protests throughout the weekend with the culmination possibly on Sunday with this ceremonial voting for Imam Wolos presidential candidacy for the main opposition party. Hilkan Boran in Istanbul. As we record this podcast, the situation at Heathrow Airport is still far from normal after Friday's blackout caused by a huge fire at an electricity substation nearby. Very few flights landed and took off mainly to relocate aircraft and to bring planes into London after so many were diverted or grounded on airfields around the world leaving passengers stranded like

Adam Brown on a British Airways plane en route from Washington to London. Somewhere over the Atlantic an announcement came over and said that there was a fire at Heathrow and that we had been diverted to go back to the Washington DC airport. So there were groans and grumbles of course and some confusion and slumber and then we got ready and turned around and came back to the airport. A normal day would see more than 1,300 flights carrying nearly 300,000 passengers. I spoke to our correspondent Tom Simons, who's at Heathrow. If flights have resumed, and they have, in a very small amount of cases, there aren't many of them. A plane is just taking off in front of me, but I've been here for about an hour,

I haven't seen anything really take off or land until the one that you can probably hear in the distance taking off. So this is very, very unusual for Heathrow, usually a flight every 45 seconds. There may be knock-on effects, but actually the airport says that by closing today it hopes to get everything running again and I think apart from one or two or perhaps a handful of flights that have been cancelled that is what is being promised passengers are being told turn up as normal you don't have to get here early you should be able to fly. And what about the investigation into what exactly happened because this fire has raised serious questions, hasn't it, about

why Heathrow is dependent on a single power source? Well the first thing to say is that the police have said this evening that there's no sign of foul play, any kind of sabotage here so far. That's their investigation. They haven't got evidence of that. But you're right, questions are being asked about the resilience of Heathrow. I got a chance to grill the chief executive of the company, Thomas Walby, earlier about exactly this. He told me that actually Heathrow has three electricity substations and a biomass generator which can also add to the power supply. Now what happened was the company affected one of the substations and its backup. Each of the three has its own backup as well as being, if you like, three power stations to power the airport. Now the two that remained after the fire could

have powered the whole of Heathrow but they needed to be switched into the system and that meant shutting them down, restarting them and then restarting all the systems in the airport and checking they're safe and we're talking about things like aircraft refuelling systems, we're talking about air bridges, escalators, and obviously all the lighting and power supplies in the terminals. And that takes a long time, the airport said. They felt they had got the airport back and running as quickly as they possibly could and they were not unhappy with the response.

But IATA, the International Airline Association, is not happy. It says there are many questions to be answered here and also the British government is saying it would like to take a look at what happened too. Tom Simons, Sudan's army chief says there'll be no talks with the paramilitary rapid support forces until they retreat and lay down their arms. General Abdel Fatah al-Borhan was speaking at the funerals of two soldiers killed shortly after his forces had captured the presidential palace in Khartoum. The BBC spoke to a woman in Omdurman close to the capital about

the latest situation there. Because of the poor quality of the line we have voiced up our answers. Actually this is a very good step for the people of Sudan. Actually, this is a very good step for the people of Sudan. Because you know, the Palace of Sudan is a kind of symbol of sovereignty for Sudan's people. People are very happy because now the palace is back to Sudan's people. We can say not just for the army or for the military, it's just for the Sudanese people. Today people are so happy that the army is controlling the palace, but they cannot celebrate because they fear gathering,

because wherever they're gathering there is bombing, so people are just celebrating in their homes. They can't go out because of the shelling. The other important thing for us that the palace is now with the Sudanese people, the place where the palace is located is the heart of Khartoum, which is the capital. That's where most of the ministries are located and the government institutions. So it's the heart of Khartoum. And when the palace is back, that means the area is back to the Sudanese people. And hopefully this war is coming to an end just in that area.

The last days were terrible actually. They were terrifying days because the shelling was going out and coming in. The RSF was bombing Omdaman. Today is the fifth day. After seven o'clock we hear the bombs every day until the middle of the night. Though some RSF units remain in Khartoum, its presence is greatly diminished. It still controls large parts though of southern and western Sudan. Two years of fighting between the army and the RSF has created what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Our correspondent Barbara Platasha reports from a military staging point as the Sudanese

army were preparing to enter Khartoum and looks at how civilians have borne the brunt of the country's bitter conflict. Sudanese soldiers gather at a rallying point to prepare for war. They're in high spirits getting ready they hope to take back the capital. It's the middle of the night we got rare access on the eve of a crucial battle and climbed on board one of the army's vehicles. These troops are heading into the battle zone in Khartoum, says the army, to carry out a special operation

against RSF fighters there. We'll be getting off at the last safe point. By morning, the military had advanced. This video posted by soldiers on social media showed troops ambushing RSF fighters in central Khartoum. In another, celebrations after taking more ground from the group. Then, footage of a massive explosion. The army says it destroyed an RSF convoy fleeing the presidential palace, blowing up the ammunition it was carrying.

But military successes don't ease the civilian cost of the war. We're outside the morgue at the Al-Naw hospital and have just seen seven bodies carried out. The victims of two recent shelling attacks were told. Two of them were a man and his wife, struck while taking their boy to preschool, a neighbour told us. Next to him, the dead man's brother Abazar Abdelhabib stood quietly, still in shock. We met him the next day at his local mosque. Friends gathered around him to offer a prayer for the dead. That's a regular ritual here. His community is in the line of fire

between the army and the RSF. At his home, a little girl, Omnia, wakes up in pain. She was in her mother's arms when the shell struck and escaped with only a foot injury. Her survival is seen as a miracle. She's been orphaned along with three brothers. Abazar says he'll raise them as his own. We'll tell them exactly what happened, about the shelling and the war. They are the generation of the future who will try to make up to them the affection of their mother and father, even though it's hard.

A few kilometres away, the scale of death is clearly visible. This is the Ahmed Sharfi graveyard. It's one of the big traditional graveyards in the capital, and it's really expanded over the past two years. In every direction I look I can see mound after mound of brown earth. Some of these graves have a marker, some of them do not. There's a smell of death around this place and so it really paints a picture of what's happened here during the war. These fresh graves were told hold victims of RSF fire. But both sides are condemned for war crimes. The army's accused of mass killings elsewhere.

Abdin Durma is digging a grave. He did that before the war. Now he does nothing else. Bodies come straight from the hospital, he says, 25, 30, sometimes 50 per day. There's no time to sleep until the last body is buried. And then I sleep for half an hour or 15 minutes until I get another call.

People die from bullets, from shelling. People are killed sitting in their homes. There's so much death. Abdin's phone rings again. Another body is ready for burial. Watching him work, it's clear the wounds of this war will continue to haunt Sudan, whatever the military outcome. Barbara Platasha reporting from Khartoum in Sudan.

One of the most important Western spies of the Cold War, Oleg Gordievsky, has died at the age of 86 at his home in England. He worked secretly for Britain's intelligence service MI6 for 11 years while he was employed by the Soviet KGB. He was credited with changing the course of the Cold War by helping the West understand the Soviet perspective. Speaking to the BBC in 2008, he explained why he did it. It was certainly the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and other communist countries. It was so outrageous that I decided, now it is the end. I will stop working for this criminal, awful regime.

Ben McIntyre is the author of The Spy and the Traitor, the greatest espionage story of the Cold War, about Oleg Gordievsky's double life. He spoke to Paul Henley about why Gordievsky is credited with stopping a Third World War. Well, Oleg Gordievsky was able to open up the KGB for the West in a way that had never happened before. He just cracked it open and he was able to tell both MI6 and latterly the CIA, not just what the CIA was doing, but what they were planning to do. And that is gold dust in intelligence terms. He was able to put the West one step ahead. The event you're referring to was a moment very little known in fact, when the world very nearly did have a full-scale nuclear confrontation. This was because the bosses in the Kremlin genuinely believed, they were paranoid, but

they genuinely believed that the West was planning a first strike. They deployed the KGB to go and find evidence of it. Indeed, they were ready to attack first if they found that evidence. And there was a particular moment, a sort of a kind of training exercise that was taking a NATO training exercise that was taking place. And Oleg Gordeevsky was able to warn the West that this was being seen as the run up to a genuine first strike. So the West backed off wound down that operation, and in fact began to sort of strip back some of the rhetoric that had been going on up until that point.

And in a way you can see Gordievsky's influence as being the beginning of the end of the Cold War in some ways. Tell us about his life, his upbringing in the Soviet Union. Well only Gordievsky was the child of the KGB. I mean his father had been a KGB officer involved in some pretty unpleasant stuff in the 30s and 40s. Oleg was born into the Soviet praetorian guard. But he's one of the very few spies I've ever come across who really was an ideological

spy. As he said in that clip, he didn't do it for money. He didn't even do it for adventure or ambition. He did it because he genuinely believed that the system that he was working for was a barbarous, brutal anomaly. He worked for 11 years. He worked from inside the regime to try to bring it down. And it's almost impossible to exaggerate the courage that that required. I mean, I think he was a complicated man. He could be very difficult at times. But his raw bravery is quite extraordinary because had he been caught, he was going in

front of the firing squad, probably with some torture in between. So he knew the stakes he was playing for and yet he stuck to it and he paid a huge price in many ways. The author Ben McIntyre. Still to come in this podcast. If you approach someone that's yelling at you and you approach them back, you know, yelling at them, then you might actually get into a fight. And that's the same with these little songbirds. What bird becomes more aggressive when exposed to the noise of traffic?

Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn! It was very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing history music recording with Brian Eno

and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. Israel has warned Hamas that unless it starts releasing the remaining hostages, Israeli forces will begin seizing and permanently occupying territory in the Gaza Strip. The message came from the defence minister Israel Katz, who also said that the longer Hamas holds hostages captive, the more ground the military will occupy. Israel's army says it's killed the head of Hamas' military intelligence. According to the Hamas-Ran Health Ministry, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past few days, around 200 of them women and children. I asked our correspondent in Jerusalem, Ermen Indada, how much of a threat is posed by Mr Katz's remarks.

I think it is serious. This statement today has talked about using all military and civilian means of pressure so it does seem like he is trying to give the impression that the Israeli military now is prepared to use any means possible in order to return the hostages from Gaza. So we've seen in the past days the ground forces start to return slowly and only in limited campaigns, but starting to return to parts of the Gaza Strip where previously they had withdrawn from at the beginning of the ceasefire deal. Now this hardline statement is coming from the government. How much support is there in Israel generally do you think for reoccupying Gaza? We understand that there isn't from Israeli commentators such a great deal

of support for that. There are those on the right in Israel including the settlement movement, those who often are settling in the West Bank or who previously indeed settled in Gaza until those settlements were deconstructed around 20 years ago. There is a desire by some to reoccupy Gaza and that's why we saw when President Trump put forward his plan to turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East and this kind of playground for international leisure. There were some inside the Israeli government and indeed the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

came out in favour of it, saying that this was a plan that they wanted to pursue. However, opinion polls suggest that the majority don't favour that and neither does the Israeli military figures, security officials in it, see a myriad of problems and complexities in terms of administrating Gaza day-to-day, directing traffic, being responsible for the reconstruction of Gaza in whatever form it might take. So there are different views even within the government and the security establishment. So what are the chances that Hamas will start releasing hostages? Is there any indication they might do so quickly? I mean, Hamas has said in the past few days that they are prepared to return to the negotiating

table, that they are in fact still there and that they continue to study the different proposals put forward not only by the US but other mediators including Egypt. Obviously, Israel's increased pressure in the past few days is intense in a military sense but also on the civilian population where now for over two weeks there's been no aid entering the Gaza Strip, no food going in there. So the pressure is intense on Hamas but still the crux of this comes down to the fact that Israel for their part want to renegotiate the original

ceasefire deal so they want to try and extract further hostages from the Gaza Strip but they don't want to commit to a permanent cessation of the war and discussing the next day after of the war and what kind of administration might be there. Whereas Hamas on their part are trying to do exactly that they want to use the remaining hostages to try and get in return some sort of win for their part. Emo Nada. In the United States, President Trump's legal battles continue. Government lawyers have been criticised at the start of a hearing considering the deportation of

alleged Venezuelan gang members and whether that can be permitted. Meanwhile, the administration has cancelled temporary legal status for more than half a million people. I spoke to our Washington correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, and asked him first about Judge James Boesberg, who had strong words for government lawyers. Particularly, he took issue with the way the government had talked about this case in its court filings, and he described their language as intemperate and disrespectful. He also

really questioned the government lawyers in terms of whether or not they were being straight with him. He said to them, he told his law clerks that their best assets were credibility and reputation and that was directed at the government lawyers. That was clearly his view that they weren't being straight with him and then on the the subject of this hearing the substantive subject Which is president Trump's use of something called the alien enemies act to deport these alleged members of a Venezuelan gang last weekend He said the policy implications of the use of that act which is incredibly rarely used only in wartime Were as he put it, incredibly problematic, concerning and troublesome. So you can really see which way this judge is

going and of course Donald Trump has already been incredibly vocal about this judge. What's he said? Remind us. Earlier this week he said he was a radical left lunatic and he called for him to be impeached, which in other words is the removal of a judge, the only means of removing a federal judge like this. That drew an extraordinary intervention from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John

Roberts, who doesn't say much publicly three times in 20 years, who said that this was no way to deal with judicial decisions that you didn't agree with. The appeals process is what that's for. Donald Trump has repeated these attacks on this judge. And this is becoming, this case is becoming, as well as the rights and wrongs of who these people are and the basis in which they were deported, this is becoming the symbol of the battle between Donald Trump, who believes he should be able to get his way and a judiciary which is another branch of government in this country and is part of the system of checks and balances that the Republic of the United States and its constitution is based upon.

And meanwhile the administration, the Trump administration, it's cancelled temporary legal status for more than half a million people, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. They're not pulling back, are they? They're not pulling back. In fact, they've evoked the AEA Act again this afternoon to arrest another individual. So they're not pulling back at all. And the political implications of this are quite interesting because once you start, you know, messing with the immigration status of large numbers of people, and bear in mind this is what Donald Trump said he

would do. He wanted to deport millions more than it ever been done before so he's not doing something he didn't say he would do but once you start doing that I think you do have to wonder politically when it starts touching the lives of so many people aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, whether that increased support that he got particularly among Hispan, whether that will continue. Gariya Donohue. As negotiations continue to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are still fighting in Russian territory, in Kursk. They now occupy less than a third of the territory they first took in their surprise offensive last August. Our defence

correspondent Jonathan Beale is one of the first Western journalists to report from the neighbouring Sumi region following Ukraine's partial withdrawal. We're travelling at speed and at night in a Ukrainian armoured vehicle from Sumi towards the Russian border. Ukraine's been forced to retreat in the neighbouring Kursk region, but it's still conducting raids across the border. And Ukrainian forces are still fighting inside Russian territory. Sir, he is the commander with us, says. The main threats that you'll be looking out for tonight are Russian glide bombs, FPV drones, possibly missile strikes too.

Less than 10km from the Russian border, and they meet their first obstacle. There's just trees that they're looking at, which have just fallen across the road. Recent strike. You can tell it's fresh. There's debris all over the road here. That's artillery going off.

It's a cassette bomb. Yeah, cluster munitions. Serhii himself says he's made dozens of trips into Russia, the country where he was born. He says he wants peace, but accuses the US and Russia of trying to do a deal behind Ukraine's back. As for Europe, he has little faith in its coalition of the willing.

I think if America doesn't help Ukraine, that a ceasefire will be agreed soon, but on extremely unfavorable terms for Ukraine, because Europe clearly cannot resolve this conflict alone. They are not strong enough. They've been focused on rebuilding their own economies instead of thinking about their own security. And this looks like the damaged Bradley vehicle. The crew confirms they've been fighting inside Russia.

The commander says the situation's difficult, but we're holding on. But Ukrainian forces have been forced to retreat in Kursk. They now control less than a third of the territory they first took. 27 year old Artem shows me the video of his unit leaving the town of Sude, now back in Russian hands. Past dozens of burnt out Ukrainian vehicles targeted by Russian drones. That's a drone. They too were almost taken out by one. It was pretty chaotic.

Many units left in disarray. I think the problem was the order to withdraw came too late. Most Ukrainian troops, like Artem, managed to escape, many on foot. But while a fighting in Kursk continues, others are talking peace. To Artem, it's absurd. To me, these calls between Trump and Putin are just surreal. Trump wants to end the war because he promised to do it. And Putin wants to deceive Trump to continue his war.

I can't take their conversation seriously. The initial morale boost of Ukraine's Kursk offensive is over. But Ukraine isn't giving up. And Aten, whose own home is now in Russian-occupied Luhansk region, isn't prepared to swallow its loss or accept a peace at any price. Jonathan Beale reporting. As you may know, we broadcast a special Q&A podcast on Ukraine a couple at any price. associations, Donald Trump's intervention and anything else. Our email address is globalpodcasts.bbc.co.uk. And if possible, please record your question as a voice note. And finally, a new study has revealed that even the birds on isolated islands with little

human traffic are not immune to the stresses of modern life. Researchers from Anglia Ruskin University here in England discovered that native yellow warblers in the Galapagos Islands became noticeably more aggressive when exposed to vehicle noise. Theo White reports on why some feathers on the Pacific Ocean archipelago have been ruffled. The researchers used speakers to simulate

the sound of a male yellow warbler at 38 locations. This was a reply from the local population. The point was to observe how the local males responded to an intruder on their patch and to find out whether this was affected by the proximity of roads. The team found that birds closer to noise pollution were more likely to display physically aggressive behaviours. Some also increased the length of their characteristically bright song and became shriller to stand out from the rumble of traffic. One of the co-authors of the report, Dr. Charla Achai from Anglia Ruskin University, said

if the birds can't make themselves heard, they may be resorting to physical confrontation, or road rage, to you and me. When you approach another male, or you think you're approaching another male, you're basically risking a physical fight. It's the same where, you know, if you approach someone that's yelling at you and you approach them back, you know, yelling at them, then you might actually get into a fight. And that's the same with these little songbirds. And those fights can be risky because even if you've been in the fight, you might still get injured during the fight.

The population of the Galapagos Islands is going up by more than 6% a year and there's been a huge increase in traffic. For example, in 1980 there were just 23 vehicles on the archipelago's second largest island, Santa Cruz. By 2013 this had risen to 1,326. Theo White and we're flying off now because that's it from us. But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Zabihullah Qarush. The producer was Stephanie

Tillitzen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn! It was very well done that because in the script it does say, wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.

And also in this series we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts.