Global News Podcast - Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

Thousands of demonstrators take to the streets in cities in Turkey and clash with riot police as the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu appears in court. Also doctors say Pope Francis will leave hospital on Sunday

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Zing Zing. And I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names. Yep. LeBron James and Martha Stewart, to name just a few. And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good,

bad or just another billionaire. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Bernadette Keough and and in the early hours of Sunday, the 23rd of March, these are our main stories. In Istanbul, protesters take to the streets for the fourth day running following

the arrest of the city's mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, who's appeared in a Turkish court. Pope Francis is being discharged from hospital on Sunday. Lebanese state media say eight people have been killed in two waves of Israeli airstrikes. Also in this podcast, an urgent inquiry is ordered into the power outage that closed Heathrow. The airport's chief executive has defended the response. I'm proud of what the people did to get us out of the situation. Don't forget the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport.

It was created outside the airport, and we had to deal with the consequences. And? I still believe that one day the Taliban will allow schools and universities to reopen, and I will realize my dreams of becoming a heart surgeon. The girls of Afghanistan still denied education, clinging on to their dreams. We begin in Turkey, where thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in cities across the country for the fourth day running

following the arrest of Istanbul's mayor Ekrem Imamolu, who's now in court. He was arrested on Wednesday and detained on charges of corruption and aiding terrorist groups, allegations that he's dismissed as immoral and baseless. It came days before he was due to be announced as a candidate for the 2028 presidential election. In a televised statement, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the protests. They attempted to provoke our nation over this corruption operation. They have been doing everything they can for four days to disturb the peace of the nation and polarize our people. From insulting anyone they encounter to attacking our police officers who are only doing their jobs, from intimidating our members of the judiciary who are investing corruption reports to suppressing the national will

with street terrorism, they have it all. They're trying every way to create an atmosphere of tension and chaos in our cities, especially in Istanbul. Our correspondent Emily Wither is in Istanbul. The protests definitely appear to be building and they also appear to be becoming more violent with the police cracking down quite hard. We were at a protest earlier outside the Istanbul municipality building, which is Imamolu's office. His staff have been sleeping there since Wednesday because they don't want to leave the building empty in case the government tries to take it over. Before the protest had even really begun, the air was thick with tear gas. And then later into the evening, pepper spray was used. We also saw a very

violent crackdown in Ankara, the capital, and also in the coastal city of Izmir, where police violently broke up demonstrations and fired water cannons at the crowd. Also in Istanbul, there is this court hearing that's happening now with Imimolu, and there were supporters of Imimolu that gathered outside the court, and they also clashed with police. One thing I noticed this evening was that when these protests first broke out on Wednesday, it was mostly students on the streets. But tonight it really felt like a mix of ages. And one thing that was interesting that all the protesters said to us is that they weren't necessarily on the streets because they support the opposition party, the CHP that Ima Molu belongs to, but that they were on the streets because they were fighting

for the country's democracy, for the future of Turkey, and because of this what they say is injustice happening right now. And clearly the protests have been building up as the week has gone along. Yes, that's right. And I think we could really see the protest grow in the coming days depending on what the decision this evening will be. Ekrem Imomolu is currently being questioned in a courthouse here in the city alongside 90 other opposition figures. The questioning before the judge is clearly going late into the night and everybody is waiting to hear what that decision will be. Will Imomolu be charged or will he be released?

The feeling on the street is that he will be charged and that will of course ramp up anger because many people, not just the opposition, not just Human Rights Watch, but people on the streets too say that this is a coup. President Erdogan has condemned the protests. How worried do you think he is? President Erdogan has condemned the protests. How worried do you think he is? President Erdogan wrote on social media this evening, yet again dismissing the protests and

saying that justice and politics should not be decided on the streets. He dismissed people on the streets as engaging in street terrorism and he has vowed that there will be a harsh crackdown on anyone going out to protest. I don't think Erdogan will be too concerned at the moment because we are talking tens of thousands, we're not talking hundreds of thousands. There have been hundreds of opposition mayors in other towns and cities that have been detained, business leaders, journalists, but Erdogan is likely gambling that there also won't be too much international pressure and cities that have been detained, business leaders, journalists, but everyone is likely gambling that there also won't be too much international pressure depending on what happens.

Emily Wither. Pope Francis will be discharged from hospital on Sunday after five weeks of treatment. He's been suffering from a severe respiratory infection. The chief surgeon at Gemelli Hospital is Dr Sergio Alfieri. The Holy Father will be discharged tomorrow, as we said before, in a stable clinical condition with a prescription to partially continue drug therapy and a convalescence and rest period at least two months. Our correspondent Bethany Bell who's in Rome

gave us this update. The Pope has been showing improvements over recent days so the Vatican bulletins have shown an improvement in his stability of his health and today the doctors who've been treating him at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome said that the Pope was now able to be discharged. They said that he had had very serious crises during the time he was in hospital to what they called life-threatening episodes, but that he'd never been intubated and he'd always remained alert and oriented. Now they say he's in a stable clinical condition, he'll be allowed to go home but he needs to have two months at least they say of convalescence and with drug therapy

and rest so that he can improve and start work again. So what will his schedule be like in the coming months because of that? They haven't offered any detail about what his schedule might be. At the moment they say the very important thing is for him to continue his therapy, his physiotherapy, his drug therapy and this convalescent period. But they say that before he leaves hospital he will appear from his window in from the papal apartment in the Gemelli Hospital and offer a blessing there and that will be the first time he'll appear in public since he was admitted to hospital which happened on February the 14th and then he'll return to his residence at the Vatican. Apart from a photograph that was released last week and a voice message by the Pope. He hasn't been seen at all since

he was taken into hospital so it's expected that the faithful will gather below his window to receive that blessing. Bethany Bell. Here an urgent investigation has been ordered into the power failure triggered by a fire which led to the closure of London's Heathrow Airport for much of Friday. The British government said that lessons must be learned after hundreds of thousands of people's travel plans were disrupted. More from our business correspondent, Mark Ashdown. Questions continue to circle around the resilience of Europe's busiest airport,

taken out of action for 18 hours by a fire at one electrical substation. Heathrow's chief executive Thomas Waldbeil said planes could have taken off and landed yesterday but it was not safe to do so without backup power to critical infrastructure such as runway lights, fuel systems and air bridges. He defended the way the crisis had been handled. I'm proud of what the people did to get us out of the situation. Don't forget the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport. It was created outside the airport and we had to deal with the consequences. Of course we look at what we can do better.

There's no discussion about that. I'm sure there will be questions. But I don't know of an airport that has back-up supply that can switch on in minutes to the magnitude of what we experienced yesterday. The same would happen in other airports. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam has invested heavily in alternative energy supplies to act as a contingency to deal with power outages. With Heathrow recently announcing a multi-billion pound expansion plan, there are calls for it too to prioritise alternative measures to ensure its infrastructure remains robust.

With vital freight goods left in limbo for a day, business leaders say there had been a financial and reputational impact. One described the UK as a laughing stock. The Government Commission investigation, to include the regulator Ofgem, will look at the full circumstances surrounding the shutdown and consider how the network could be improved. Mark Ashdown. State media in Lebanon has said that Israeli airstrikes have killed at least eight people. According to the country's health ministry, six of them died in southern Lebanon. One

was a child. Israel said that its targets were rocket launch sites belonging to the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Israel also said that it was responding to rockets fired over the border by Hezbollah, which denies this and insists that it's committed to November's ceasefire. Earlier, I got the latest from our correspondent in Beirut, Hugo Bichega. It's just after quarter past eight o'clock at night here and just moments ago we had confirmation from the Israeli military that a second wave of Israeli airstrikes were being carried out across Lebanon. There's been footage posted online of destruction in Tyre, which is the largest Lebanese city in the south of the country. There have been reports on Israeli radio saying that only today the Israeli military attacked

50 targets across Lebanon in response to those rockets that were fired from Lebanese territory into Israel. So this is the worst violence since the ceasefire came into effect here in November, the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. And I think we're seeing that Hezbollah is denying any kind of involvement in the attack. A number of armed groups operate in Lebanon, especially in southern Lebanon. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But I think this is another demonstration of the challenges that the Lebanese authorities

are facing in trying to control those areas in the south, where for decades militants, armed groups, including Hezbollah, have operated. And I think it is also very interesting that the attack that happened today from Lebanon happens just days since the Israeli military renewed its offensive in Gaza. So what we saw here today could be a reaction to that. But again, a huge wave of Israeli attacks and I think a lot of destruction across the country after months of relative quiet. And are there fears of a total breakdown of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon now? This has been a very fragile truce and Hezbollah hasn't reacted to these Israeli attacks that have been

happening almost every day. Since the implementation of the ceasefire the Israeli military has attacked positions, people it says are related to Hezbollah. It says that these attacks are trying to prevent Hezbollah from regrouping and rearming. The Israeli military also continues to occupy five positions in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese authorities say that these are breaches of the deal that was signed with Israel so it really shows that despite the ceasefire violence has continued here. Hugo Bachega.

Schools reopened in Afghanistan on Saturday and for the fourth school year running girls will be unable to attend. In 2021, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan and banned girls aged 12 and over from going to school. However, they are permitted to attend madrassas, educational centres focused on religion. Critics argue madrassas do not replace mainstream schools and that girls are being pushed towards a hardline interpretation of Islam. Majib Ben-Arazi from the BBC Afghan Service gained rare access to madrassas in Kabul and sent this report.

I was sick and a female doctor operated on me. She inspired me. I wanted to be a doctor and save people's lives like her. Amina's hopes of becoming a doctor were halted when the Taliban government banned girls aged 12 and above from going to school. When my dad told me that schools were closed, I was in year nine. I felt really bad. All my dreams of becoming a doctor were shattered. I met Amina in a cold, dimly lit basement in Kabul. Teenage girls huddled together, reading books and sewing together material with the yellow and red flower pattern. Once finished, it will be addressed. They are students, not at mainstream school, but at a madrasa, an educational center offering mainly a religious education.

Since the Taliban banned schools for girls, some have expanded the teaching of subjects like languages and science. While schools remain closed, madrassas are the only option available to girls over the age of 12. Before the Taliban returned, the number of registered madrassas is believed to have been around 5,000. The Taliban say there are now more than 21,000. There is fear among critics that limiting education and focusing on religion is pushing a hotline agenda. I wanted to visit another madrasa to get more of a sense of what is

being taught in the classes they offer. At a madrasa in the center of Kabul I met 13 year old Taqwa who told me about her studies. Religious topics are my favorite. I like learning about what kind of hijab a woman should wear, how she should treat her family, how to treat her brother and husband well, and never be rude to them. I want to become a religious missionary and share my faith with people around the world. The focus on religion seemed much stronger here. When I asked about what other subjects were taught, the teacher showed me a handful of tattered maths and science textbooks. While they do offer opportunities to learn and socialise, one of the teachers in Aminah's madrasah

is adamant that they are not enough. Madrasahs can never replace traditional schools and universities. They are 100% necessary for us. If schools are not open, knowledge will die. Despite the closures of school, girls in Afghanistan remain hopeful and determined to learn in any setting they can. Majib in Arasi. Still to come in this podcast. It's able to triage whether it thinks that this is a lesion that needs to have further assessment by a specialist or if it thinks it's completely harmless or benign. Using AI, an iPhone and a magnifying lens to help detect signs of skin cancer.

I'm Zing Zing. And I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names. Yep, LeBron James and Martha Stewart to name just a few. And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good, bad, or just another billionaire.

That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. President Trump's special envoy has described the British Prime Minister's plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine as a posture and a pose. Steve Witkoff also repeated Russian claims that Ukraine was a false country and territories occupied by Russia were rightfully theirs. He was speaking to the pro-Trump podcaster Tucker Carlson. From Kyiv, here's our diplomatic correspondent James Landale. Steve Witkoff is a property billionaire charged by Donald Trump to end a war that's left hundreds of thousands dead. Ten days ago he spent several hours with Vladimir Putin and yet in his interview Mr. Witkoff revealed himself ignorant of

basic facts and willing to repeat false Russian narratives. He was unable to recall the names of the four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Russia but he nonetheless said their status was the elephant in the room. He said Russia regarded these regions and annexed Crimea as rightfully theirs. He said the key question was whether the world would acknowledge they were Russian territories. He said Russia considered Ukraine to be a false country and this was the root cause of the war. This has long been President Putin's excuse for his unprovoked invasion.

In what was an extraordinary interview, Mr. Witkoff said Mr. Putin told him he'd prayed for Mr. Trump after the attempt on his life last year. He went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president, not because he was the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend. As for Sakir Starmer's plan to send a British and other forces to Ukraine to guarantee its security after the war, Mr. Witkoff said this was a posture and a pose based on a simplistic notion of European leaders wanting to be

like Winston Churchill. Downing Street chose not to comment. What may worry European diplomats most is that Mr. Wickhoff's remarks suggest the US still sees this war as a territorial dispute not an attempt to end Ukraine's statehood. James Landale. Amongst the frenzy of international diplomacy we're seeing on defence spending and aiding Ukraine, Europe's countries bordering Russia are the ones particularly feeling a sense of urgency

and threat from Moscow. This week, Estonia, an EU and NATO member, announced it will spend 5% of GDP on defence as of next year. Its Parliament is expected to approve withdrawing from the 1997 global convention against the use of anti-personnel mines in order, the country says, to give it more means and flexibility to defend itself. Its government is also introducing a new law making it mandatory for all new apartment and office blocks to be built with bomb shelters. Our Europe editor Katja Adler reports from Estonia where she met people affected by the current geopolitical changes. I'm in an underground car park and I was just about to get into a car belonging to our fabulous local producer Lare and go off to an interview. He lives in this apartment block and we were talking about

new laws in Estonia to make it mandatory for buildings to offer underground shelters. When you told me Lare, you have your very own bunker right here. Can I have a look? Sure, let's have a look. My bunker slash storage unit. Let's switch on the light. So it's bigger than the average one. For example here I have water from the last crisis which was a couple of weeks ago. And it's sort of very solid looking stone walls. I think we are a bit too late with that. The Finland started, they have like a huge underground network of bunkers. But we don't have something like nothing to compare. But let's hope we can be fast and build those bunkers before anything happens. And in the inner sanctum, that's the tiny broadcast studio of Star FM.

It's a commercial Russian language radio station, and Julia Mango is one of the breakfast show hosts. Today is Friday, and it will be like this for everyone. More than a third of Estonians are ethnic Russian, and after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Estonia shut down Russian-speaking schools here. It said it wanted to stop parallel societies. I'm sad that this is happening with us now. My childhood was in Russian surrounding. I had Russian friends, Russian school, Russian teachers and home language was Russian. But I learned Estonian language in school. For

me in childhood it was like it's my world and this is another world. Do you feel like split between your Russian identity and your Estonian identity? It's difficult for me like identity like something. I have Estonian friends. We never spoke about the situation in the world, like Russia and Putin or like that. I don't want about this speak because it's for me, it's very personal. So it's like religion. I say that every time because in our family, we don't speak about that.

My colleagues here, they never speak about this. They know that I'm Russian and they have a Russian family and Russian parents. But they didn't ask about that. And your heart was like, Russia, Putin is okay or not. I don't want to speak about that because it's pointless. I've come to north-east Estonia now and what you can hear is the wind-pummelled river Narva. It's basically a dividing line with Russia. I can see the buildings on the other side and there is a bridge in between. One of the last pedestrian border crossings to Russia

still open in Europe. My name is Arnold Vaino. I'm at second level border check on Narva BCP. Narva border crossing point. And how long have you worked here? 23 years plus. I mean you must have seen it change a lot. We're just walking over the bridge between us here and... Until the middle. Until the middle. You're not going to walk right... you're not going to let us over into Russia but... It's not the best idea I think.

No. Does Russia feel like a different neighbour now? In my opinion, they are not predictable. Does that worry you as a border guard? I'm all the time worried. You're not scared, but you feel worried. Who's coming here? Are they okay?

Are they not? Of course we are worried. If you are not worried, you're not the smartest guy in here. That report by Katja Adler. Artificial intelligence has been hailed as a solution to many of the backlogs faced by healthcare services, but until now it's often worked alongside human doctors. A hospital in London is using AI to diagnose skin cancer with only an iPhone and a magnifying lens without requiring a

doctor to double check the findings. The team claimed that the tests are 99.9% accurate at ruling out the most serious types of skin cancer. Dr Lucy Thomas, who's a consultant at the Teledermatology Service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London explained what happened during a consultation. When they come in, rather than see a doctor, they have an appointment in a photography hub and the photographer will actually capture some really high quality images but also use this smartphone with a special dermoscopic lens attachment that's placed on the skin to capture an image of the lesion and then that's immediately analysed by the AI and

it's able to triage whether it thinks that this is a lesion that needs to have further assessment by a specialist or if it thinks it's completely harmless or benign then it can be discharged back to their GP with monitoring and other advice about skin cancer prevention. It's early days in terms of using the technology autonomously, but we have been using it with a secondary dermatologist in place for the last two and a half years, which is why we've been able to build confidence around using the technology and that it works well for our patients. And we did some surveys around patient sentiment of the AI at that stage in the pathway, and found that the majority of patients

were very accepting of the technology. And actually, a lot of them would rather be seen and analysed by the AI than wait for several weeks to see a dermatologist in person. It's actually assessed over 140,000 different NHS patients. It's been deployed at 22 different sites across the NHS and by doing that we know that we're able to gather really high quality evidence about how it's performing compared with dermatologists in that NHS pathway. So we know it's accurate for the populations in which it's being utilised.

Dr Lucy Thomas. The boxing legend George Foreman has died at the age of 76. He won the world heavyweight title twice, first in 1973 knocking out Joe Frazier. The following year Foreman lost the title to Muhammad Ali, in arguably the most famous fight of all time, the Rumble in the Jungle in what was then Zaire. He talked about it in a BBC interview in 2016. It was like I was mugged in the jungle. I went there with two title belts. I came home

with none. It was really strange. I thought I'd knock him out in one or two rounds but about the third round I hit him and he fell on me, I thought that's it and he started screaming that all you got George show me something and I knew then I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In later years he had huge success marketing his George Foreman grill, which sold millions, thanks in part to his memorable catchphrase, the lean mean grilling machine. But he'll be best remembered for his time in the ring. Joel Engel co-wrote George Foreman's autobiography by George.

He grew up in a part of Houston, Texas known as Fifth Ward, which is the slummiest slum you've ever heard of. And he was always angry. He wasn't sure why he was always angry, but he got in a lot of fights. His five older brothers and sisters used to call him Mohead. He didn't know why they did. He just knew he didn't like it. And he was much bigger than they were and he looked like he came from a different family, actually. And he did poorly in school and he got involved in something called the Job Corps, which took young people like him when he was a teenager and they put them in a place where they might be able to learn useful life skills. And it was from that when

he was in Oregon, they sent him to Oregon to do that, where he first was involved in boxing. Now, I don't mean street fighting because he did a lot of that. He was the town bully or the neighborhood bully. But he learned boxing from that. And from there, he went to Golden Gloves. And from there, he went to the Olympics. He once said the reason that Muhammad Ali had the neurological problems that he had was because his head wasn't made for getting hit. My head, he said, was made for getting hit. He could really take a punch but he was insanely strong. If you've ever seen the video of his fight when he won the heavyweight championship against Joe Frazier who was considered pretty much

unbeatable, he lifted him off the campus a couple times with blows to the midsection. He was incredibly strong and a large man. Joël Engel paying tribute to the legendary George Foreman who's died at the age of 76. Before we go we have another Q&A with our colleagues from Ukrainecast coming up soon and we'd like your questions to put to the team. Our email address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk and if possible please record your question as a voice note. Thank you. And that's all from us for now but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Philip Bull and the producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Bernadette Keough, until next time, goodbye. The versus Saturn! Well, 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.