Published January 25,2026

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The decapitated body of a woman, whose legs were also cut off, was found in a rubbish bin in Istanbul overnight, Turkish media reported Sunday, sparking fury from women’s groups.

Her body was wrapped in a sheet and dumped in a rubbish container in the Sisli district, where it was discovered on Saturday evening by a paper collector looking for items to recycle, the DHA news agency said.

Investigators identified the victim as a 37-year-old Uzbek national.

They were not immediately able to find the victim’s head or her legs, but while reviewing security camera footage, spotted two men dumping a suitcase at a different bin. It was not immediately clear what it contained.

Hours later, police detained two suspects, also Uzbek nationals, at Istanbul Airport as they were trying to leave the country, DHA said. They later arrested a third suspect.

Women’s rights groups expressed outrage, calling for demonstrators to join two protest marches in Istanbul and Ankara.

Large crowds met at Osmanbey metro station in Sisli, carrying banners and placards reading “Stop male violence!”, “We demand justice for women who are murdered” and “Migrant women are not alone”, NGO footage showed.

“Women will no longer be silent!” chanted the crowd as they marched to the place where the woman’s body was found, their numbers estimated to be over a thousand.

– ‘Confident in their immunity’ –

In Ankara, hundreds more marched at a protest called by the Stop Femicides platform, which demanded accountability for the woman murdered in Sisli.

“The perpetrators were so confident nothing would happen to them that they could just leave the body of the woman they killed in a bin in plain view,” Isil Kurt of Stop Femicides said in a statement.

“Even though years pass and cities and names change, violence against women remains the same.”

Figures compiled by Stop Femicides show that in 2025, 294 women were killed by men and 297 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances.

Published January 20,2026

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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan received US Ambassador to Ankara and US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack in Ankara, according to diplomatic sources.

Published January 21,2026

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday spoke at the AK Party Parliamentary Group Meeting.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM PRESIDENT ERDOĞAN’S SPEECH:

“Our neighbor Syria has been intensively striving to achieve unity in the country following the December 8 Revolution. As you know, last year on March 10, an agreement was signed with an entity called the SDG, which occupies territories in northern and eastern Syria.

According to this agreement, the SDG was to lay down their arms and hand over the occupied territories to the Syrian Government, thus ensuring the country’s unity and integrity. However, the SDG did not take any positive steps within the timeline set for this integration.

The SDG continued to oppress civilians in the occupied territories and attack civilian and military targets outside these territories, disregarding the agreement of March 10. Unfortunately, negotiations between SDG leaders and the Syrian Government in December aimed at implementing the agreement concluded negatively. Speaking frankly, this was due to the uncompromising, stalling, consistently obstructive, and time-playing attitude of the so-called SDG. During this process, through our relevant institutions, we provided necessary advice to all parties. We exerted every effort to untie the knot and prevent the crisis from turning into an open conflict.

I would like to remind once again; from the beginning, Tükiye has strongly advocated for the existence of a single Syrian State with preserved territorial integrity and political unity.

We have repeatedly declared that we will not accept any separatist structure that poses a threat to our country’s security along our southern borders. We wholeheartedly support the struggle of the Syrian State and the Syrian Army, as neighbors and brothers, in building a united, single, independent Syria where all ethnicities, faiths, and sects coexist side by side.”

Published January 22,2026

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The Turkish Central Bank’s official international reserves exceeded the $200 billion threshold for first time as of January 16, according to figures released on Thursday.

The total reserves surged 4.6%, or $9.1 billion to $205.2 billion, from the previous week’s $196.1 billion, the bank said.

Foreign currency reserves — in convertible foreign currencies — rose 6.7% to $76.4 billion compared to the previous week.

The bank’s gold reserves — including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold-swapped — climbed 3.7% to $121 billion in the same period.

Meanwhile, total IMF reserve position and special drawing rights decreased by 0.2% to reach $7.7 billion.