Global News Podcast - Turkish President Erdogan's main rival jailed

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Protests against the arrest of Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, who denies corruption charges, continued on Sunday. Also: earrings worth $769,500 recovered by US police after they had been swallowed.

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 in the early hours of Monday 24 March these are our main stories. Huge demonstrations have again been staged across Turkey in support of the Mayor of Istanbul. Ekrem Imamoglu had urged his supporters to fill the squares with their voices after being formally charged with corruption. Canada's Prime Minister has called a snap general election for next month, opening a

campaign that will be dominated by President Trump's tariffs and threats of annexation. US officials have begun a week of negotiations on a ceasefire in Ukraine, saying they're optimistic of progress. Also in this podcast, an unusual journey for some earrings that police have now safely returned to their rightful owner. He swallowed whatever was in his mouth at that time, which a body scan at the Washington County jail later found to be foreign objects suspected to be Tiffany's earrings.

We begin in Turkey. Where demonstrators in Istanbul on Sunday threw fireworks at the police during protests in support of Ekrem Imamoglu, the city's mayor. He's been detained in prison on charges of corruption. The police responded with water cannon and pepper spray. In another part of the city, tens of thousands gathered for a rally outside Istanbul's City Hall. Meanwhile, Turkey's main opposition party, the CHP, held a presidential primary election with Mr. Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strongest rival,

as the only candidate. Our correspondent Berza Simsek from BBC Turkish has been out on the streets of Istanbul. I was in front of the Istanbul municipality building and there have been thousands of people chanting anti-government slogans calling for the government to resign. Mostly it was peaceful, but towards the end of the protest, I could smell tear gas and people behind my back were running towards me, saying that there was a police intervention. So it was mainly peaceful, but at the end, and it has been like that for the past five days,

there are small police interventions with tear gas and water cannon. What was the atmosphere like? What were people saying? People have been chanting slogans. They have been asking for the government to resign. And basically the main opposition party's leader was calling for snap elections. People and especially the critics of Erdogan see this as a coup because Ekremi Momolo, Istanbul's mayor, who is now imprisoned, is seen as Erdogan's main rival, who could stand up against him in the next presidential elections. Well, Mr. Imomolo, as you say, has been jailed. He's also been elected as his party's candidate for the next presidential election. Talk us through that process.

So basically there was an election today inside the main opposition party, CHP. Only the members were supposed to vote. But after his detention, basically the party called Turkish society to come and vote whether they are members of the party or not. And today the leader of the main opposition party, CHP, basically said that about 14 million people showed their support, which means that one in six people in Turkey have showed their support for Imamoglu and for CHP. Now, the Turkish government has tried to quell these protests. It now says it wants to close social media accounts in an attempt to contain the demonstrations. What do you know about that?

For the past couple of days, the internet has been really slow and it's no surprise we have gone through this before. In the time of big protests, basically the internet has always been slow. In the past, YouTube has been censored and basically now, X accounts formerly known as Twitter, dozens of X accounts have been blocked and those accounts have been calling for protests. Burza Simsek in Istanbul. Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a snap general election for next month,

saying he's seeking a strong positive mandate. It comes amid a souring of relations with the United States because of President Trump's trade tariffs and threats of annexation. Mr. Carney warned that President Trump wanted to break Canada so America could own it. I've just requested that the Governor General dissolve Parliament and call an election for April 28th and she has agreed. We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump's unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty. Our response must be to build a strong economy and a more secure Canada. be to build a strong economy and a more secure Canada. Matina Stivis-Gridneff is the Canada Bureau Chief for the New York Times. My colleague

Tim Franks asked her for more on why Mark Carney called a snap election at this time. Carney had to call an election very rapidly after being sworn in because he himself does not hold a seat in the House of Commons here in Canada, and his party, the Liberals, do not command a majority in the House of Commons. They have been a minority government. And so tomorrow, Monday, when Parliament would go back to business, they were expected to fall in a vote of confidence. So that's the technical reason why Carney had to call an election pretty, pretty swiftly.

The kind of more substantive reason too is that things have been looking pretty good for Carney. He has come with some momentum into this position of being neck and neck with the Conservative leader and he wants to utilise this momentum. He wants to capitalise on it. Yeah, I mean it is going to be fascinating. Carney, as you pointed out, he's not a career politician and he's up against a man who, I mean in his main challenge, the conservative Pierre Polievre, a politician who's got the reputation for being a bit of a brawler. Absolutely, yes. Polievre, who's a career politician, is, you know, what we would call an attack dog.

He's just sort of nailed the three-word slogan and that has been working really well for him for a really long time. His party has had a double-digit lead over the Liberals for two years or longer until Trudeau resigned and President Trump became president. Those two major developments that have happened just in the last few months have completely reversed the fortunes of the Liberal Party that's seen its support turbocharged at the back of this sort of change. So, Poliev has a really, really difficult task ahead of him. However, it's worth noting Poliev is a very seasoned campaigner. He knows what his message is.

He knows how to deliver it. Carney, not so much. He's never campaigned in this manner before and it's going to be a challenge. It's not easy. Do you think this election is going to be all about Mr Trump then? All about the tariffs, all about the threat of annexation? I think that the election is going to be about the economy and defence. I think it's going to be about Canada being existentially able to stand on its own feet. And the Trump question is sort of like the underlying current that will put an angle on everything. So, Connie and Poliev have very honed economic messages about what

they're going to do to support the economy to grow because it's under threat by Trump, because they want to be in a stronger position to negotiate with Trump. But really, I think what runs through the messaging is the question of sovereignty. A country that is strong, that has friends, that has a booming economy cannot be questioned as a sovereign country. I think that's the ballot question that Trump's put on the table. And whoever manages the next phase, honestly, I don't even think that the ideological slant

really is going to make a difference. We know that President Trump has such a chemistry-based sort of approach. And we also know, and I think if you've listened closely closely that he is quite serious about crushing the Canadian economy and picking its resources and so be it Carney or Poliev, this is going to be the battle of a lifetime and the nation goes to the polls knowing that this is an existential fight. Canada bureau chief for the New York Times, Matina Stivis-G Gridneff. Pope Francis has returned to the Vatican after more than five weeks in a Rome hospital where he was treated for a severe respiratory infection. Before being discharged, the 88-year-old pontiff

made a brief public appearance, waving to cheering crowds from a hospital balcony. Our correspondent Bethany Bell was there. Pope Francis appeared on the balcony to jubilant cheers from the crowd waiting outside the hospital. He was smiling. He waved, offered a blessing and then was wheeled away. For many of the faithful this was a moment of deep emotion. I feel like a fire inside me. We are all so passionate because the Pope really improved, his health improved, so it means that he's coming back today. It's fantastic.

To be honest, I felt a little relieved. I guess that was my first because we haven't seen him in so long and we know he's been seriously ill, but I felt just overjoyed. Shortly afterwards, the Pope was taken to the Vatican by car. He's had a severe respiratory infection that resulted in pneumonia, the most serious health crisis of his papacy. His doctors say he'll need to spend at least two months recovering and resting. They say he never stopped working during his stay in hospital but that he will need to wait before he starts meeting groups of people.

The Vatican says it's not making any predictions about whether he'll be able to take part in the Easter celebrations next month. Bethany Bell in Rome The US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff says he's confident that real progress will be made at talks on the conflict in Ukraine this week. He says negotiations in Saudi Arabia will include a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea and that he trusts the Russian President Vladimir Putin. I feel that he wants peace. The President had two very productive calls last week, one with President Zelensky, one

with President Putin. I sat and listened to both of them. In both conversations, it was all about a lasting peace. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country was engaging constructively with the talks. Today is the second meeting of the Ukrainian and American teams in Saudi Arabia. This time it was more technical. Our military, our diplomats, our representatives of the Ministry of Energy. I've just spoken

with Defence Minister Rustam Umarov and he informed me about the meeting and the course of negotiations. US officials will meet their Russian counterparts on Monday. The two nations of Ukraine and Russia will not meet face to face. I asked the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner, who's in the Saudi capital Riyadh, how much we know about the talk so far. Quite a bit because what they've been talking about here in Riyadh is the technical aspects of a partial ceasefire, which I know sounds pretty limited. And I think what we're witnessing is the sort of gradual scaling back of ambition.

You know, we've gone from President-elect Donald Trump saying he could solve this war within first 24 hours to a big 100 days to now a ceasefire and then a partial ceasefire. And what they're talking about is coming up with some kind of mechanism that stops the attacks on both sides on their energy facilities and critical infrastructure. That's why Rustam Omerov, the Ukrainian defense minister who's leading the Ukrainian delegation, has brought with him a number of technical experts from Ukraine's Ministry of Energy,

as well as diplomats and military experts. So what we've had in the last few hours here in Riyadh is the Ukraine-US technical talks. That will probably continue into tomorrow, but at the same time, there are going to be Russia-U.S. talks. By tomorrow I mean Monday. So those are going to take place in the Ritz-Carlton, which is where the Saudis like to host all

their big, sort of grandest conferences. And that's where it's going to be. Now, the U.S. special envoy, Steve Wittkopf, has said he's confident that real progress will be made at the talks this week. Is he overplaying that? Yes, almost certainly. There is a wide disparity between the US view and the Russian view, the US being we are really close, we've never been closer. I mean, there may be progress, but we're still, I think, quite a long way off

getting the two sides, Russia and Ukraine, to agree on this. Ukraine, still stung by that catastrophic meeting in the Oval Office on February the 28th, has been at pains to show that they are not the obstacles to peace. And so the last time there were talks a few days ago here in Saudi Arabia, in another part of the country, in Jeddah, the Americans came up with a fuller proposal, which the Ukrainians very quickly agreed to. Russia has not agreed to it. They've added all sorts of what they call nuances, i.e. preconditions.

And the Kremlin as well, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, has really I think dampened expectations saying we are right at the beginning of a long path. Frank Gardner in Saudi Arabia. And before we move on, we have another Q&A with our BBC colleagues from Ukrainecast coming up soon and we'd like your questions to put to the team. Our email address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk and if possible please record your question as a voice note. Thank you. Romania should have had a new president by now and if the polls were right he would have been a right-wing radical at the heart of the EU, a man who admires Vladimir Putin and wasn't

entirely convinced about being part of NATO. Instead the elections were cancelled by the Romanian courts when it emerged that Carlin Gheorghescu benefited from massive promotion online thought to be linked to Russia. The election will be rerun in May without Mr Gheorghescu, who finds himself and many close allies under criminal investigation. But the crisis has left many Romanians worrying about what direction their country is taking. Our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford reports from the Romanian capital Bucharest. arrest. These have been a tense few months in Romanian politics. A presidential election, then a nold and then protests as the far-right candidate Calin Gheorghescu was barred from taking part in a new vote. Romanian intelligence believes he was backed by Russia.

But Gheorghescu's fans are still angry. They cancelled our election. He won the election. It was the desire of the people. It's still the desire of the people. The court said he's a threat to national security. The court is corrupt. Ion Ionice is my name. I'm a journalist and political commentator. The decision to cancel the candidacy of Gheorghescu, do you think it was justified? Kaleem Georgevsku came from the fringe. He's a man who admires Vladimir Putin, doesn't much like NATO and has voiced sympathy for fascist leaders from Romania's past. So his win in the first round was a real shock. Then the authorities said they had detected a giant

influence campaign online backed by Russia. That's now under investigation. But what is clear is that Gheorghescu's message resonated with many Romanians. So we've just arrived in Poen, which is an hour drive outside of Bucharest. And life here is completely different, of course. This is a small town with just one main road running through it. There's a man making kebabs and lots of stray

dogs sleeping in the sunshine. In the local grocery shop between customers, Ionella tells me her whole family voted for Gheorgheczcu. She thinks he promised to lower taxes, but most of all she wanted life to get easier. Her daughter got an education but couldn't get work, so like many Romanians she had to go abroad. That's not normal, Ionella thinks. Romania's election has become the topic of talk far beyond the streets of Poen. The US Vice President, JD Vance, thinks canceling the vote was anti-democratic.

Elon Musk called it crazy. For Romanians, in NATO and right next to Ukraine, that is unsettling. Now it's a space dedicated to the gay memory. For Florin, this isn't only political, it's personal. These are among the first couple we witnessed. He's a prominent LGBT activist in Bucharest and his flat is full of memories of Romanian struggle for gay rights.

Homosexuality was only decriminalized here in 2001. Don't show up. Don't speak up. Don't. Yeah, in the last two months. Florence says this election campaign has brought a surge in homophobia, in hatred and threat. Yes, there is an increase of potential violence. Giorgis Gou is out of the picture now, but a nationalist, George Simeon, is the new front-runner and he has very similar views. So Florin thinks the next weeks are critical.

It's obvious that our rights are fragile. We have to continue this battle and it's a battle not just for our community, it's a battle for the soul of Romanian democracy. The protesters have left the streets for now, but the struggle for Romania's future isn't over. That report by Sarah Rainsford in Romania. Still to come... The sounds and music compositions used in the world of video games are being celebrated at a festival in London. 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. Since Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas last week, the Israeli military has been intensifying its attacks in Gaza, mounting a ground offensive in the south of the Strip. A spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian agency, Olga Cherovko, who's in Gaza, told the BBC that conditions there were desperate. All you need to do is look around Gaza and see the impact on the civilians that this conflict has had. When you see how people have now returned to these areas that have been completely levelled and are trying to build some sort of a life again and then new assaults coming in and these people being told to move yet again. Civilians who've been sheltering in Raffa have been ordered to flee and relocate to

Al Mawazi, an area on the southern coastline. The evacuation order came as Gaza's Health Ministry reported that the number of Palestinians killed in the strip since the start of the war has surpassed 50,000. Meanwhile in Israel, thousands of people have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to protest against the government on a mix of issues, including moves being taken against officials deemed hostile to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I heard more about Israeli politics from our correspondent Dan Johnson, who was in a busy street in Jerusalem. You've got Benjamin Netanyahu coming under pressure from various groups for different

reasons. He's faced sustained protests from hostage families about the failure to get all the hostages back from Gaza and to eradicate Hamas, the two primary stated aims of the war in Gaza. But you've also got this protest movement, this criticism of the way that the Prime Minister handles government and the way that he won't seem to allow any of the normal checks and balances of Israeli politics to apply to some of the decisions he makes. And this in its latest form is playing out in the row between Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, and the head of Shin Bet,

the internal intelligence service here in Israel. Now, that man in that job, Roman Bet, had come under criticism because of the intelligence failures around October the 7th, which were laid bare in the agency's own intelligence report into its own failings Which was released just a few weeks ago And that has seen the Prime Minister trying to remove the head of Shin Bet from his job This has been held up by challenges by the Supreme Court and the suggestion is that Benjamin Netanyahu is only pursuing that because of an

investigation which is going on headed by Shin Bet and other agencies, into alleged links between the Qatari government and figures in Israeli politics at the top of government. The allegation is essentially of corruption, that money was being funneled to some key figures in Benjamin Netanyahu's government from the Qataris to improve the image of Qatar in Israel. Now, Benjamin Netanyahu says that's not the case, that he's not trying to disrupt that investigation or blockade it, but the timing is certainly a coincidence.

And it has led to moves today for the Israeli government to unseat the Attorney General, who had also supported that investigation. Again, this is being seen as Benjamin Netanyahu running roughshod over the normal checks and balances of Israeli political governance. And Dan, just briefly, what's the latest with the military activity in Gaza? That has intensified over the week since Israeli bombing and airstrikes started again last Tuesday. It means that now more than 700 people have died since the end of the ceasefire that had been in place for the last

couple of months. It means that we've now passed that totemic figure of 50,000 Palestinians having died since the start of this conflict and it really underlines the loss of life there, the devastation, just as people thought that the ceasefire may be about to hold, may give them some hope of a lasting peace that may enable them to rebuild more loss of life, more funerals, more devastation in Gaza and it looks like that will continue. Dan Johnson in Jerusalem. Now do you recognize any of these? The sounds of video games, asteroids, Tapper and Daytona USA from the 1970s, 80s and 90s. But gaming has come a long way since then and is now a multi-billion dollar industry.

The latest versions can be heard at the London Soundtrack Festival which is currently taking place. One of those attending is Stephen Barton, a Grammy Award-winning composer who's made scores for the likes of Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. He told the BBC writing for video games was different from composing film scores. For a video game it's a little bit more a moving target. We have a lot more music. We have sometimes six, seven, eight hours of music in a game. So it's often quantity. But it's also the fact that it's non-linear. With a film, obviously, we know, generally speaking, you know what the next scene is going to be. And unless something goes very wrong in the making of a film,

you have a pretty good knowledge of what's going to happen. But when you're writing music for a video game, sometimes you really don't know what the timing is or what the player's going to do. So we have to write for all these possibilities of how different players may play the game. And you can have different people play games in very different ways.

We're really trying to be the emotional underscore and be part of the storytelling. And that's what's wonderful about video games these days. Because I think lots of people think of games still as this thing that's a relatively light content medium but you have to look at things coming out now like The Last of Us which has now obviously spawned a TV show. We can tell big fully fleshed out stories with really amazing characters and so for music that's just an incredible canvas to play with.

Stephen Barton. Here in London the British Film Institute holds Europe's best-known annual festival of gay cinema called Flair. The opening film this year is The Wedding Banquet, set in the gay community of Seattle. It's based on the film of the same name, which more than 30 years ago established Hon Lee as a major director. But this version changes the storyline, giving female characters a new central role. Vincent Dowd spoke to Andrew Arne, director of the new Wedding Banquet. The bride is calm. The groom is cool. When the original Wedding Banquet came out, its comedy about gay life in New York and a marriage of convenience seemed fresh, even brave.

Everyone wants to kiss the bride, except the groom. A twenty-something Taiwanese man takes a Chinese bride to hide from his parents that he's gay. But new director Andrew Ahn says the new wedding banquet is not quite a remake. There are certain elements that are the same. Of course, we have a wedding. But this time it's Korean because I'm Korean. But I think we've modernized it for the things

that queer people are wrestling with today. Marriage and having kids about growing our families. Why did you move it to Seattle? Much of the film is inspired by my boyfriend and my boyfriend was born in Seattle. One, two, three, catastrophe. The first film became a hit when films about gay men seldom ended happily, and there was nothing like the BFI Flair Festival. This time there's also a female gay couple in the story who desperately want a child. I'm on my way to the airport because mid-grandmother flew in from Korea to meet her future granddaughter-in-law.

What are we supposed to do exactly? We're going to dequeer the house. God, you have so much lesbian literature. Lee and Angela conspire with their friends Chris and Min to create what might appear a straight relationship. Joan Chen plays Angela's mother. I think they're very much in love, very compatible. But Angela, because having Mei-Chen, myself, as a terrible mother, feared to become her mother, which would be the worst fear.

Angela, that's my daughter, loves Li. But my character's personality really loves to be the center of attention, to be a diva. she is a diva. You marry me and I'll pay for Liz to grow a baby. What? Me? It's for the cause, we're helping a gay couple stay together.

I don't even want to be an American. Her trains are so slow and I never know how much to tip. My original thought about doing a re-imagining of this movie was to think about what if the bride in the original film also was queer and had a lesbian partner. And so that just felt really accurate to my life. You're not just gay male friends. And I also really loved this topic of motherhood that I really wanted to explore. What the two films do have in common is plenty of comedy. Does Joan Chen believe that comedy is specifically Asian?

The mother-daughter relationship between May and Angela, the humour does come from a little bit of the Asian, the Chinese side, which is that we sometimes directly criticize our children. Never good enough. The neighbors, oh, you know, so and so is doing this and so and so is doing that. And so that part of the humor is, I think, Chinese American. Yeah, Chinese. When The Wedding Banquet premiered, it was so subversive. And I think there are more examples of queer representation today, you

know. At the same time, as much progress as we made, gay marriage, there's a kind of growing conservativism against progress that we've made over the past decades. And so it's still so important to tell these stories and to champion these stories and to celebrate our stories. We're a part of this culture, we're a part of society. That report by Vincent Dyrd. Police in the United States have recovered the last four diamond earrings stolen from a luxury Tiffany & Co. jewellery store in Florida after they were swallowed by a man two weeks ago.

The earrings are worth nearly $770,000. Sophie Smith takes up the story. On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 26th, we responded to Mollott Millenia, Tiffany's and Co. in reference to a commercial robbery where an individual posing as an assistant for an NBA player The Orlando Police Department in Florida are making the most of their latest triumph with a dramatic video posted on the social media site, Instagram. In some ways, this case is a typical heist. A man walks into a high-end jewelry store, pretends to be the assistant of someone wealthy, asks to see some of the most expensive diamonds and then when he's in the VIP room, he grabs them and he runs out the door. But what

Jason Gilder did next was a bit more radical. His car was stopped by police on a highway and well, Detective Goss takes up the story. They noticed items in his mouth he was attempting to swallow. FHP attempted to prohibit that, however, they were not successful. And he swallowed whatever was in his mouth at that time, which a body scan at the Washington County Jail later found to be foreign objects suspected to be the Tiffany's earrings. When he was booked at the jail, the man asked the staff, Am I going to be charged with what is in my stomach?

Detectives monitored the 32-year-old Texan for over two weeks at a hospital before he finally delivered the last of the diamond goods. Now, two weeks later, the police say they have recovered all of the earrings. After the diamonds were expelled from his system, we were able to bring the diamonds to Tiffany's where they were cleaned and where their master jeweler looked at the inscription or serial numbers on the diamonds and confirmed they were the very diamonds that were stolen on the 26th.

Jaython Gilder is now being held in jail where he faces charges of robbery with a mask and first degree grand theft. The police say watching Jaython for two weeks was quite a task as they waited for the jewels to pass through his system. This case quickly turned into a marathon not a sprint and everyone... We don't know if Tiffany's will be reselling these diamonds but they could still be one lucky girl's best friend. That report by Sophie Smith

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.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producer was Liam McShephry, 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.