Below we publish the statement issued by the Communist Party of Turkey on February 8.OUR country and neighbouring Syria have faced a massively destructive earthquake. We are in deep grief and very sorry to inform you that the destruction and damage caused by the earthquake seems quite massive.For brief information: The main earthquake of 7.7 magnitude occurred in the east of our country at 4:17.  Severe aftershocks continue. Some of them are even difficult to be called as aftershocks.

We are on the third day of the great disaster. Turkey has enough medical doctors, equipment, tents, fuel and planes, yet it can be clearly seen that there are immense delays or difficulties in the delivery of necessary humanitarian and material aid to the region, their arrival to the hands of the correct contact persons and establishing control in general.The observations of TKP member healthcare workers are proving this. There are no search and rescue operations in the south of Hatay Dörtyol.

IN January 2023, three important leaders from the United Nations (UN) visited Afghanistan. Amina Mohammed, deputy secretary-general, Sima Bahous, director of UN Women, and Khaled Khairi, assistant secretary-general for the UN’s peacekeeping operations, spent four days in the country, meeting Taliban leaders in Kabul and Kandahar. The UN officials ‘conveyed the alarm over the recent decree banning women for national and international non-governmental organisations, a move that undermines the work of numerous organisations helping millions of vulnerable Afghans’.

ON January 8, 2023, the Israeli government revoked the travel permit of Riyad al-Maliki. This act is not unusual, since Israel controls the movements of all Palestinians and routinely denies Palestinians the right to mobility, especially between the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the territories designated as Israel. The apartheid wall that snakes around the West Bank has a few gates where Palestinians stand in long, interminable queues where they experience terrible humiliation trying to go to work in Israel or trying to meet family members separated by the Israeli occupation.

IN late November, Boko Haram insurgents attacked a post at the Chad-Nigerian border, killing ten soldiers of Chad’s military. This attack is part of a broader jihadi push in the Lake Chad Basin, which comprises Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. Founded in 2002, Boko Haram (‘Western civilisation is forbidden’) fought the Nigerian military for control over the country’s north so that its preachers could establish a dar al-Islam in the region.