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Author: AFP

  • Taylor Swift returns to stage in London after Vienna concert plot

    Taylor Swift returns to stage in London after Vienna concert plot

    Taylor Swift will return to the stage in London on Thursday to end the European leg of her “Eras” tour, a week after her Vienna concerts were cancelled due to a suicide attack plot.

    Around 90,000 fans will again pack London’s Wembley Stadium for the first date in the five-day run, with additional ticket checks and restrictions in place.

    Last week, all three of the American mega-star’s shows in the Austrian capital were cancelled following the discovery of an Islamic State-inspired plan to launch an attack using explosives and knives.

    Three alleged Islamic State sympathisers have been arrested on charges of plotting the atrocity, which was thwarted with the help of US intelligence.

    London’s Metropolitan Police has said there was “nothing to indicate that the matters being investigated by the Austrian authorities will have an impact on upcoming events here in London”.

    The force was working “closely with venue security teams and other partners to ensure there are appropriate security and policing plans in place”, a police spokesperson said in a statement.

    Fans have been warned on Wembley’s website to expect “additional ticket checks” around the stadium.

    – ‘Tay-gating’ –

    Swift’s return to the British capital, following three sold-out shows in June, also comes two weeks after three young girls were killed in a stabbing at a dance class themed around the pop star’s music in northwest England.

    Following the knife attack, Swift said she was “completely in shock” and at a “complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families”.

    She has not yet commented on the decision to cancel the Vienna shows.

    London’s mayor Sadiq Khan told Sky News that the city was “going to carry on working closely with police, ensuring that the Taylor Swift concerts can take place in London safely”.

    “We have a huge amount of experience in policing these events, we’re never complacent, many lessons were learned after the awful Manchester Arena attack,” Khan added.

    He was referring to the 2017 bombing at an Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people, some of them children.

    Fans without tickets will also not be allowed to “tay-gate” the event — the practice of Swift fans standing outside the venue during the live show to hear the music.

    – Royal audience –

    The stadium’s website says that “no one is allowed to stand outside any entrance or… at the front of the stadium” and “non-ticket holders will be moved on”.

    While the practice was not permitted at her June concerts there, some fans still managed to gather outside Wembley.

    After two performances in Madrid at the end of July, Swift noted around 50,000 “people came out and listened to the show” from a nearby hillside on both nights, “participating in the show from afar”.

    Meanwhile, her last London appearances were attended by some high-profile names.

    They included Keir Starmer, who was then running to become Britain’s prime minister, and Prince William — celebrating his birthday — along with his children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

    The singer posted a photo posing with the royals and her boyfriend, American football player Travis Kelce, with the caption “Happy Bday M8! London shows are off to a splendid start”.

    After wrapping up the European leg of her record-breaking tour — which began in Paris in May and saw the star perform across the continent — Swift will then head back to North America.

    Its final leg there starts on October 18 in Miami.

  • Viral marketing stunts made ‘Deadpool’ a $1bn hit, says Disney exec

    Viral marketing stunts made ‘Deadpool’ a $1bn hit, says Disney exec

    From cameos in K-pop videos to cooking chimichangas with celebrity chefs, movie stars like Ryan Reynolds are trying ever-more unorthodox stunts to reach fragmented Gen-Z audiences, according to Disney’s marketing chief.

    The giant Hollywood studio is enjoying a blockbuster summer, with irreverent superhero movie “Deadpool & Wolverine” becoming its latest film set to pass $1 billion at the global box office this weekend.

    Speaking at Disney’s D23 fan convention Saturday, chief brand officer Asad Ayaz attributed a large part of that breakaway success to stars Reynolds and Hugh Jackman pushing the boundaries of traditional marketing.

    The A-listers appeared in character for the “Chk Chk Book” music video with Korean pop sensation Stray Kids, and joined a YouTube cooking competition with Gordon Ramsay and his 22-year-old daughter.

    They also took their world tour to a European Championship soccer match in Germany, a London chicken shop (for a popular online comedy sketch series), and got drenched at a water balloon festival.

    “We were very lucky and fortunate to have talent… who are willing to do things that sometimes actors don’t want to do, like do things in character,” Ayaz told AFP.

    Gen Z, who are roughly aged 12-27, have been particularly difficult for Hollywood and movie theaters to reach in recent years, setting off alarm bells in the industry.

    But unusual stunts “cut through” to young viewers who pay more attention to their phones, social media, YouTube influencers and commercials on video games than traditional TV ads or movie trailers, said Ayaz.

    Much of the focus is on generating off-the-wall content that spreads rapidly online.

    A highly suggestive popcorn bucket for the film, supposedly “designed” by Reynolds’ innuendo-loving Deadpool character, was intended to — and succeeded in — going viral globally.

    Reynolds and Jackman also filmed a pre-movie message warning theater-goers to switch off their cell phones — in character as their wise-cracking superhero characters.

    “Turn your phone to silent,” growls Jackman’s aggressive Wolverine, in an expletive-laden threat to camera, which has been watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube.

    “That was an example of us producing unique content with Ryan and Hugh… in full costume,” said Ayaz.

    – Meme-ready marketing –

    “Deadpool and Wolverine” was particularly suited to the gonzo approach because the character of Deadpool repeatedly speaks directly to audiences during the film.

    Reynolds’ potty-mouthed hero frequently pokes fun at parent company Disney, and even makes jokes about “saving” the Marvel superhero franchise, which has endured a relatively lackluster few years.

    But the outside-the-box approach is becoming more widespread.

    Last year, rival studio Warner built a real-life “Malibu DreamHouse” to promote “Barbie,” which went viral after it was listed for rent on Airbnb.

    Another recent big Disney hit, “Inside Out 2,” deals with issues such as anxiety and depression, which are themes frequently discussed by Gen Z online.

    Analysts have warned that many widely shared movie memes feature pirated footage, or clips illegally filmed by audience members in theaters.

    But Disney made custom clips and digital toolkits for “Inside Out 2” available to TikTok and YouTube creators, who rapidly spread memes about the film, said Ayaz.

    “This is an audience that is heavily on their devices. Their consumption of media is very different” to older generations, he said.

    “Making sure that we are on the platforms that Gen Z spends the most amount of time” on is key, Ayaz added.

  • Bangladesh court opens murder case against ex-premier Sheikh Hasina

    Bangladesh court opens murder case against ex-premier Sheikh Hasina

    A court in Bangladesh opened Tuesday a murder investigation into ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina and six top figures in her administration over the police killing of a man during civil unrest last month.

    A week ago, Hasina, 76, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India as protesters flooded Dhaka’s streets in a dramatic end to her iron-fisted tenure.

    “A case has been filed against Sheikh Hasina and six more,” said Mamun Mia, a lawyer who brought the case on behalf of a private citizen.

    He added that the Dhaka Metropolitan Court had ordered police to accept “the murder case against the accused persons”, the first step in a criminal investigation under Bangladeshi law.

    Mia’s filing with the court also named Asaduzzaman Khan, Hasina’s former home minister, and Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of Hasina’s Awami League party.

    In addition, it named four top police officers appointed by Hasina’s government who have since vacated their posts, including former police inspector general Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun.

    It also named detective branch chief Harun-or-Rashid and senior Dhaka Metropolitan Police officers Habibur Rahman and Biplob Kumar Sarker.

    Police take control of Dhaka streets

     Bangladeshi police resumed patrols of the capital, Dhaka, on Monday, ending a weeklong strike that had created a law and order vacuum caused by recent uprisings.

    Officers vanished from the streets of the sprawling megacity of 20 million people last week after Hasina’s resignation and flight abroad ended her 15-year rule.

    Police were loathed for spearheading a lethal crackdown on the weeks of protests that forced her departure, with 42 officers among the more than 450 people killed.

    They had vowed not to resume work until their safety on duty was guaranteed but agreed to return after late-night talks with the new interim government, helmed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

    “It’s good to be back,” Assistant Commissioner Snehasish Das told AFP while directing traffic at a busy intersection. “As we feel secure now, we are back on duty.”

    Student-led protests against Hasina’s government had been largely peaceful until police attempted to disperse them violently. Yunus told reporters that Bangladesh was experiencing a “revolution” after Hasina’s ouster after ” the whole government’s business collapsed”.

    He said he had been instructed by the protests’ student leaders to take office, adding he told them, “Because you ordered me to do this, I take your order.”

    Several top Hasina allies, including the chief justice and the central bank governor, stepped down after students issued them ultimatums to quit their offices.

    However, Yunus said their resignations had been conducted legally.

    “I’m sure they will find the legal way to justify all of this because legally… all the steps were followed,” he said at a late-night briefing on Sunday.

    Around 450 of the country’s 600 police stations were targeted in arson and vandalism attacks over the past month, according to the national police union.

    In the police’s absence, the students who led the protests that toppled Hasina volunteered to restore law and order after looting and reprisal attacks in the hours following her departure.

    They acted as traffic wardens, formed overnight neighbourhood watch patrols and guarded Hindu temples and other places of worship, quickly settling the unrest.

    Arrests in India

    India has arrested nearly a dozen Bangladeshis attempting to cross the border to escape violence and political tumult following deadly protests that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, border officials said on Monday.

    Hundreds more are waiting along the frontier pleading for permission to cross, India’s Border Security Force (BSF) said.

    BSF said 11 Bangladesh nationals had been arrested since Sunday trying to “sneak” across the frontier into West Bengal state. “Several hundred Bangladeshi nationals are still waiting in no-man’s land to cross over the border,” BSF deputy inspector general Amit Kumar Tyagi said.

  • Helicopter crashes into hotel roof in Australia

    Helicopter crashes into hotel roof in Australia

    A helicopter crashed into the roof of a Hilton hotel in northeastern Australia on Monday, police said, igniting a blaze atop the building and forcing a mass evacuation.

    Mangled pieces of the helicopter’s propeller landed in the hotel’s pool, said an emergency services official, adding that one man was treated at the scene with life-threatening injuries.

    Hundreds of patrons were evacuated from the DoubleTree by Hilton in the tropical northern city of Cairns after the helicopter crashed around 1:50 a.m. local time.

    Images showed a bright plume of fire blazing on the hotel’s roof.

    “They just flew into that building,” a female voice says in a video shared on social media that captured the aftermath as sirens blared in the background.

    “Madness, man. Shivers. People were living in that. It smashed right in.”

    Queensland Ambulance supervisor Caitlin Denning said the aircraft’s propellers had “dislodged”.

    “One landed on the Cairns Esplanade and there was a second propeller located in the hotel pool on the bottom floor and it was on fire,” she told local media.

    Queensland police said “there were no injuries sustained by people on the ground”.

    Cairns is a popular tourist hub that offers a gateway to Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef.

    A team of government investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau have been dispatched to the crash site.

  • Hometown of Imane Khelif erupts in joy after Olympic win

    Hometown of Imane Khelif erupts in joy after Olympic win

    The poor, rural hometown of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif erupted in joy on Friday as she won gold at the Paris Olympics in the face of a major gender controversy.


    Cheers of Khelif’s name and the country’s famous chant “one two three, viva l’Algerie” broke out in Biban Mesbah, a town of around 6,000 people.


    “It’s Algeria’s victory,” her father, Omar Khelif, told reporters as he watched the fight on a giant screen along with the rest of the village around 300 kilometers (185 miles) southwest of Algiers.


    Villagers fired shots into the air in honour of 25-year-old Khelif’s first Olympic medal following her victory over China’s Yang Liu in the women’s 66kg final.

    Imane after winning a Gold medal

    The jubilation also spread to the capital Algiers, where crowds invaded the city center, celebrating the victory with fireworks and a chorus of car horns.


    Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune joined the celebrations on social media site X, saying: “We are all proud of you, Olympic champion Imane, your victory today is Algeria’s victory and your gold is Algeria’s gold.”

    Ahead of Khelif’s fight, hundreds of volunteers turned out in Biban Mesbah to help prepare for the big night.


    Despite scorching temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), the men carried out a vast clean-up operation while dozens of women were busy cooking a giant couscous.


    “We agreed to give the village a new face and breathe new life into it, with the victory of Imane Khelif,” her cousin Mounir Khelif, 36, told AFP.


    “We all helped each other, some bringing couscous, others oil and vegetables, while those who couldn’t help with provisions helped with the preparation,” said Amina Saadi, 52, a mother of six.


    “We are all united behind Imane Khelif, who has honored Algeria, that’s the least we can offer her,” she said.


    The boxer has been the victim of a social media hate campaign that portrays her as a “man fighting women.”


    “I’m a strong woman with special powers. From the ring, I sent a message to those who were against me,” she said Friday after her win.

    The gender controversy ignited in the French capital when Khelif defeated Angela Carini in 46 seconds in her opening bout, the Italian reduced to tears and abandoning the fight after suffering a badly hurt nose.


    Algerians from all walks of life have showed their solidarity with Khelif, irritated that her father was forced to show her birth certificate to journalists to prove she was born a girl.

    Amar, father of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, gestures during an interview with Reuters outside his house, in Tiaret province, Algeria, on Friday. – REUTERS PIC


    Khelif’s international career took off with her participation at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she finished fifth in her weight class.


    In 2023, she made it to the semifinals of the world championships in New Delhi.


    But then she was disqualified following gender eligibility testing by the International Boxing Association, which is not recognized by the International Olympic Committee and is not running the sport in Paris.


    From a family of limited means, she spoke before the Games of the difficulty of her life in “a village of conservative people” in semi-desert surroundings.
    Imane said that her father initially found it difficult to accept her boxing.

    Imane’s family


    “I came from a conservative family. Boxing is not a widely practiced sport by women, especially in Algeria,” she told Canal Algerie a month before the Games, smiling readily and her voice soft.


    In an interview with UNICEF, she said she used to sell scrap metal and her mother sold homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to a nearby town.

  • Passenger plane crash in Brazil kills all 61 on board

    Passenger plane crash in Brazil kills all 61 on board

    An airplane carrying 57 passengers and four crew crashed Friday in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, killing everyone on board, the airline said.


    The aircraft, an ATR 72-500 operated by Voepass airline, was traveling from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport when it crashed in the city of Vinhedo.


    Voepass initially said the plane was carrying 58 passengers, but a statement on the airline’s website later revised the figure to 57.


    Images broadcast on local media showed a large plane spinning as it plummeted almost vertically, while other footage showed a large column of smoke rising from the crash site in what appeared to be a residential area.


    “There were no survivors,” the city government in Valinhos — which was involved in the rescue and recovery operation in nearby Vinhedo — said in an to AFP.


    Vinhedo, with about 76,000 residents, is located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.


    Recovery of the victims’ remains for “identification” has begun and “will continue throughout the night,” Sao Paulo State Governor Tarcisio de Freitas told reporters at the scene.


    President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning.


    Voepass said it was cooperating with authorities to “determine the causes of the accident,” while giving full assistance to families of the victims on flight 2283.


    The plane, a twin-engine turboprop, took off “without any flight restrictions, with all its systems operational,” the company said.


    Brazil’s CENIPA aviation accident agency has launched an investigation.


    ATR, a Franco-Italian aircraft maker and Airbus subsidiary, said its experts were working to help investigators.


    Truck driver Martins Barbosa, 49, was working when he learned of the plane crash, which occurred 150 meters (500 feet) from his home.


    “I thought it might have fallen on my house, with my son inside,” he told AFP, adding he felt despondent before learning his family was okay.


    Nathalie Cicari, who lives near the crash site, told CNN Brasil the impact was “terrifying.”


    “I was having lunch, I heard a very loud noise very close by,” she said, describing the sound as drone-like but “much louder.”


    “I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realized that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”


    Cicari was not hurt but had to evacuate her house, which was filled with black smoke from the crash.


    “I arrived at the scene and saw many bodies on the ground — many of them,” another witness, Ricardo Rodrigues, told local Band News.


    Firefighters, military police and state civil defense were deployed at the scene.


    Military police told local media the accident had not caused any casualties on the ground, and that the fire sparked by the crash had been brought under control.


    The plane’s black box “has already been found, apparently preserved,” Sao Paulo state security official Guilherme Derrite told reporters at the scene.


    The doomed plane recorded its first flight in April 2010, according to the website planespotters.net.


    Air safety has improved dramatically in recent decades, with deadly passenger plane crashes becoming ever-more rare worldwide, though more frequent in developing nations.


    Excluding Friday’s crash, CENIPA data shows Brazil has recorded 108 aircraft accidents so far this year, resulting in 49 deaths. Over the last ten years, 746 people have died in 1,665 accidents in the country.


    In January 2023, another ATR 72 operated by Yeti Airlines crashed after stalling in Nepal, killing all 72 on board.


    Nepalese authorities attributed the incident to pilot error.

  • US approves aid to Israeli military unit accused of killing Palestinians

    US approves aid to Israeli military unit accused of killing Palestinians

    America defends giving aid to an army unit involved in the killing of a Palestinian-American by saying Israel had already taken remedial action.

    Omar Assad, 78, a grocer who spent most of his adult life in Milwaukee, was on a return visit to the West Bank in January 2022 when he was handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded, dying after lying on the ground for more than an hour on a cold winter night.

    The incident was linked to the Israeli army’s Netzah Yehuda, a unit founded in 1999 to encourage recruits from the ultra-Orthodox community, which is largely exempt from compulsory military service.

    A State Department panel decided against imposing sanctions on the unit after being presented with information by the government of Israel, which has vocally opposed action against its military amid the ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    “After thoroughly reviewing that information, we have determined that violations by this unit have also been effectively remediated,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.

    “This unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America,” he said.

    A US official said that two soldiers involved in the incident, while not ultimately prosecuted, were removed from combat positions and have left the military.

    The military has also taken steps “to avoid a recurrence of incidents,” including enhanced screening of recruits and a two-week educational seminar specifically for the unit.

    Experts say that Netzah Yehuda has mostly drawn ultra-Orthodox youths who see the military as a way to integrate into Israeli society. Still, it has also attracted fervent nationalists from the West Bank.

    The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, is home to three million Palestinians alongside some 490,000 Israelis living in settlements considered illegal under international law.

    The army concluded that Assad’s death was the result of “a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.”

    It said Assad “refused to cooperate” when stopped by soldiers in the village of Jiljilya and that soldiers tied his hands and gagged him without checking on him later.

    It was unclear why soldiers stopped Assad. The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said he died from a stress-induced heart attack.

    Additionally, US is all set to give $3.5 billion to Israel to purchase American weapons and military equipment from a $14.1bn supplemental bill approved by Congress in April.

    “On Thursday, August 8 the Department notified Congress of our intent to obligate $3.5bn in FY 2024 Foreign Military Financing using funding provided by the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act,” said a State Department spokesperson as reported by CNN.

  • Opposites don’t attract in Russia as politics makes its mark on dating

    Opposites don’t attract in Russia as politics makes its mark on dating

    Sitting at a cafe in Moscow, Yulia swiped through a carousel of men on her phone’s dating app, trying to guess if the people in the pictures shared her views.

    “I started to include the artists that I listen to in the bio. It’s kind of a hint at my thinking,” the 21-year-old freelance photographer said, choosing her language carefully.

    Since Russia launched its full-scale military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of people have been denounced, fined or thrown in jail for expressing opposition to the conflict.

    According to opinion polls, only a minority of young people living in Russia disapprove of the offensive.

    A June poll by the independent Levada centre suggested 30 percent of 18-24 year-olds disapprove, compared with 59 percent who approve.

    For young, liberal Russians who want to avoid hooking up with hardline pro-army patriots, dating has become a minefield.

    “After 2022, I stopped giving links to any publications that I read,” Yulia said of her online dating profile.

    Gone were any articles expressing tolerance towards LGBTQ people or opposition to the Ukraine conflict — opinions that can land you in jail.

    Instead, she listed her favourite musicians as Zemfira and Monetochka, singers who have criticised Russia’s offensive in Ukraine and have been declared “foreign agents” by Moscow.

    ‘Very classy’

    The dating scene can also be tricky to navigate for those who back the offensive.

    Several groups on social media organise “patriotic meetings” for supporters of the Kremlin and military to search for potential matches offline.

    Arseny Blavatsky, a 24-year-old PR manager and self-confessed admirer of President Vladimir Putin, said he was looking for “an ideologically close partner”.

    “Since February 2022, nobody can be apolitical,” he told AFP at a speed-dating event held in a Moscow restaurant, his fourth so far.

    For Arseny, avoiding ideological conflict in a relationship is a must.

    He recalled his frustration after meeting one girl whom he called “very classy” but politically incompatible.

    “I was getting on very well with this one girl, everything was cool. On the same wavelength, the same language,” he said.

    But after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison in February, she became extremely upset — to his dismay.

    “She was in absolute hysterics. I told her that changed nothing between us. And she says, ‘Well, that’s it, we can’t go on’. I mean, that’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?” he told AFP.

    After meeting a dozen girls at the speed-dating event, Arseny chose two to follow up with.

    Arseny said he doesn’t know if it’s going to work out this time.

    ‘Unexpected joy’

    To avoid encountering such differences, other young people have found partners within political movements.

    Katya Anikievich and Matvei Klestov, both 21, met in January while campaigning for Boris Nadezhdin, an opposition politician who wanted to challenge Putin in March’s presidential election.

    “Thousands of people, often my age, spoke freely. It was an unexpected joy,” Matvei said of the campaign.

    In the end, the authorities blocked Nadezhdin from running.

    But life changed for Katya and Matvei.

    Hand in hand, they have gone on to support jailed anti-offensive activists in court and taken part in gatherings to write letters to prisoners.

    “Katya shares my opinions, it makes me want to go on living,” Matvei said.

    ‘I’ll follow him’

    Maria Smoktiy and Mikhail Galyashkin also found love through politics.

    They met at a demonstration organised by the “Other Russia” party, an offshoot of the far-left National Bolshevik movement founded by the late activist and writer Eduard Limonov.

    The party backs Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. But its politics is generally more hardline than that of the government, which has sometimes brought it into conflict with the authorities.

    Maria, 18, said she gave up her Arabic studies to deliver aid to parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia with the 24-year-old Mikhail, whom she called “an accomplished adventurer”.

    “When some turbulent historical events happen, you immediately realise who’s on your side and who’s on the other side,” she said, speaking to AFP in the kitchen of their small Moscow flat.

    The couple have travelled a lot in Russia and organised unauthorised demonstrations that have often landed Mikhail in prison for a few days.

    “Setting up barricades, having a family, I want to do everything with him,” Maria said, stroking a bust of Lenin on the table with one hand.

    “I’ll follow him all the way to Siberia,” she added.

    “Maria is a diamond like no other in the world,” Mikhail replied, unabashedly proud.

    But for some in Moscow, the adage that opposites attract still applies.

    Lev, a 28-year-old salesman at a patriotic bookshop in Moscow, and Yevgenia, а 20-year-old English teacher, say they found love even though they are ideologically opposed.

    A “stubborn conservative” by his own admission, Lev said he was about to marry a “liberal open to the West”.

    “She contradicts me and I often take her side,” he confessed, surprised.

  • Yunus says Bangladesh celebrating ‘second independence’

    Yunus says Bangladesh celebrating ‘second independence’

    Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on Thursday paid tribute to those killed in Bangladesh’s deadly protests that toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government, saying their sacrifices had brought the nation a “second independence.”

    “Today is a glorious day for us,” he told reporters at the airport in Dhaka shortly after returning to the country to lead a caretaker government. “Bangladesh has created a new victory day. Bangladesh has got a second independence.”

    Yunus returned to Bangladesh Thursday, landing at the capital’s airport ahead of his expected swearing in to lead a caretaker government, an AFP reporter said.

  • Turkish novel written through prison bars becomes bestseller

    Turkish novel written through prison bars becomes bestseller

    A jailed Kurdish leader and a Turkish writer on the other side of the bars have used their pen pal exchanges to write one of Turkey’s highest-selling books. The crime novel Duet in Purgatory, which features a retired left-wing lawyer and a bitter ageing general with a tortuous past, has been a roaring success.

    The two writers developed the story, which spans the last 40 years of Turkey’s tumultuous history and the long-standing Kurdish conflict, without ever discussing the plot. “It was a risky gamble to try and write a novel like you’d play chess, move by move, without agreeing on the plot, the characters or the style – nothing,” Selahattin Demirtas told a literary critic in an interview from prison.

    The writing of the story began when author and translator Yigit Bener sent the jailed Kurdish leader Demirtas, who is serving a 42-year sentence, a copy of Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s classic novel Journey to the End of the Night. He also put a note inside – “the expression of my solidarity”.

    Demirtas, who is 51 and a former co-president of the third largest political party in Turkey’s parliament was jailed in 2016 with the European Court of Human Rights later condemning his detention as political and calling for his release.

    “I couldn’t accept that this man for whom, like six million others, I had voted for, and whose ideas I share, found himself behind bars while I am free,” said Bener.

    ‘A lot of fun’

    Bener, who lived in exile in the 1980s, had praised Demirtas’s collection of short stories Dawn, and the two began corresponding via the politician’s lawyer. The re-election of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May 2023 killed Demirtas’s hope of an early release, so Bener pitched the idea of taking their correspondence further.

    “What if we wrote a novel, both of us?” Bener suggested, although he had not thought about a plot or characters and hadn’t intended it as a serious project.

    While the idea originally sought to keep the prisoner busy, the duo soon wrapped 13 chapters. Bener refused to say who wrote first, but said that the pair took turns to write. “We had a lot of fun but we had to finish,” said Bener. “We put it aside for two months before we had a few friends read it.”

    Demirtas’s publishing house Dipnot, which has put out his previous novels and short stories, initially printed 55,000 copies last month, with more to come in September.

    “Our personal stories, mine and Yigit’s trajectories contributed to shaping the novel. He motivated me when I needed it,” said the Kurdish political leader.

    The secret behind the novel’s success is its timely relevance, said Bener.

    “The book poses the question of reconciliation through two characters from the same generation of losers who share the same feeling of defeat,” said Bener. “The idea speaks to today’s Turkey which is more polarised than ever.”

    Bener was “extremely emotional” when he finally got permission to meet Demirtas in Edirne prison in northwest Turkey on the day of the book’s release, as the opposition leader is in isolation and only allowed weekly visits from his lawyer or family.

    Exceptionally, he was let out of the small cell where he has been locked up for eight years, which he shares with a former mayor of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli.

    Critics have praised the “funny, fast-paced and spirited narrative”, with readers rushing to see the free half of the writing duo as he tours bookshops.