The Levant Files

We are not surprised that officials in both Turkey and “the new Syria” have rushed to deny the Reuters report, citing six sources, that meetings took place in Turkey between representatives of the Syrian state and Hezbollah. Ironically, the party that ought to be rushing to deny the report is Hezbollah, rather than the Turkish and Syrian allies. These two allies urgently need such a meeting: Israeli military incursions into southern Syria are intensifying, while most Arab countries and other states have turned their backs on the authorities in Damascus and halted financial assistance, contributing to the current economic collapse and rising living costs. By Abdel Bari Atwan Hezbollah’s Silence and Damascus’s Deepening Crisis What is striking is that Hezbollah, the stronger party in this equation and perhaps the one with the most to lose, has remained silent. It has made no comment whatsoever on reports of a meeting in Turkey with the new Syrian government, which is ...

A tourism project that has stood still for almost twenty years has drawn the internationally unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus into scrutiny surrounding Turkey's investment-fund crisis. In three reports for Havadis Kıbrıs, journalist Nazar Erişkin follows the corporate trail to Akanthou/Tatlısu, where promised investment, public land and unanswered questions now sit alongside reports of residents losing savings. By The Levant Files 3 October 2026 How the Crisis Reached Cyprus Turkey's Capital Markets Board, known as SPK, has put numbers to the crisis. Its 23 September announcement confirmed liquidation decisions covering 131 funds belonging to seven portfolio-management companies. They held investments from 455,758 individuals. The warning signs came earlier. In its 18 September explanation of its regulatory preparations , SPK said it had observed fund-driven price movements during late 2025 in shares with limited public float that cou...

Turkey's refereeing chief has been taken into custody, serving match officials have joined the investigation, and reports of UEFA intervention are feeding uncertainty around the country's football. Meanwhile, investors caught in September's fund crisis are still waiting for their money. The two investigations concern different allegations. Together, they have put the institutions responsible for fair play and financial oversight under uncomfortable scrutiny. By The Levant Files Editorial Team 2 October 2026 | News Analysis Financial developments updated for 30 September–2 October 2026 The Investigation Reaches the Refereeing Hierarchy On 29 September,  A Haber  reported that police detained Ferhat Gündoğdu, chairman of the Turkish Football Federation's Central Referee Committee, alongside six other figures in the refereeing establishment. The allegations concern interference with referee rankings, assessments, appointments and rules examinations, as well as ...

Syria and Turkey have denied reports of a secret meeting between Syrian officials and Hezbollah in Turkey. TLF is updating its earlier coverage: the reported talks and Ankara’s alleged mediation role remain disputed and should not be presented as established facts. By the Editorial Team of TLF Damascus Rejects The Report According to Al-Monitor , the Syrian Foreign Media Department, affiliated with the Ministry of Information, rejected the account in a statement on X: “These claims are false. No such meeting took place.” The denial directly challenges the central claim behind the story. It is not merely a disagreement over what was discussed or who attended. Ankara Also Denies Hosting Talks Turkey issued a separate rebuttal. As reported by Türkiye Today , the presidency’s communications authorities rejected claims that the National Intelligence Organisation, MIT, had hosted Syrian and Hezbollah officials. They described the alleged meeting details as fabricated and sp...

On 30 September, readers in Turkey lost access to T24's website after a court ordered restrictions on the independent news outlet over allegations of "LGBT propaganda". The decision followed weeks of raids and online censorship affecting rights groups and journalists. Now, a newsroom that has spent 17 years reporting on the country faces a barrier between its work and the people it serves. By The Levant Files Editorial Team Reporting and Commentary | 1 October 2026 . What the Court Ordered The Freedom of Expression Association, known as İFÖD, identifies the order as decision 2026/8894, issued on 29 September by Istanbul's First Criminal Judgeship of Peace. It covers t24.com.tr and the outlet's X account. The website block took effect the following day. İFÖD's record of the decision establishes the chronology. The Justice Ministry said authorities had identified 118 items published over the prece...

In Turkey, there is a saying: "Maksat üzüm yemek değil, bağcıyı dövmek" ("The aim is not to eat the grapes but to beat the vineyard keeper"). Cyprus has found a fresh use for it. A joint meeting in New York failed to materialise. Now the argument is over who stopped a UN document from being delivered. The document has become another way to accuse the other side, although the public has yet to see it. By The Levant Files Editorial Desk | 1 October 2026 "The document war has become another way to accuse the other side." What Are the Convergences? They are the points on which Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot negotiators drew close, or reached a common understanding, during earlier settlement talks. The word sounds vague. The subjects were anything but. Between 2015 and 2017, the teams worked on the powers of a federal government, how its institutions would make decisions, citizenship, the economy, EU matters, property, territory, and ...

By the Editorial Team of TLF Turkish football's refereeing crisis reached the top of its administration on Tuesday, as police detained Central Refereeing Committee chairman Ferhat Gündoğdu in an investigation into alleged document forgery and mistreatment of match officials, Turkish media reported. The September 29 operation stretched across Istanbul, Ankara, Elazığ and Manisa. A statement reproduced by Nefes put the number detained at seven, including Gündoğdu, although some early reports gave a total of eight. Referees and observers were among those implicated. The allegations remain unproven. Reports describe police custody, with no confirmed court order remanding Gündoğdu in prison in the coverage reviewed for this article. Investigators examined financial intelligence from MASAK, telephone traffic records, witness accounts and expert findings. Turkish outlets described the case as the "Referees dossier", involving allegations of falsified official docu...

Turkey’s widening fund scandal has entered a more dangerous phase. Investigators are moving higher into the financial groups at the centre of the affair, while a growing trail of political connections is raising an increasingly uncomfortable question in Ankara: who knew what was happening before ordinary investors did? By the Editorial Team of TLF The Turkish fund scandal is no longer confined to obscure portfolios, spectacular share-price movements and the traders accused of engineering them. It is moving up the chain. By Sunday, 27 September, investigators had reached the senior leadership of Tera, the political fallout had cost former minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya her position in the governing AKP, and new questions were being asked about the people surrounding Özata Denizcilik — one of the companies that has emerged at the heart of the affair. At the same time, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government appears to be confronting another problem: how to retur...

An investigation that began in the obscure corners of Turkey’s investment-fund market has now crossed into the governing party. Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, a former minister and senior AKP figure, has asked President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to release her from all party duties after allegations linked her family to extraordinarily profitable share transactions before the crisis erupted. By the Editorial Team of TLF For weeks, Turkey’s widening fund scandal was largely a story about money: investment funds, obscure share transactions, regulatory failures and the fortunes made—or lost—before the authorities finally intervened. Late on Saturday, 26 September, it became unmistakably political. Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, a former family minister and one of the governing Justice and Development Party’s senior figures, asked President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to release her from all her positions within the AKP . The decision came after allegations concerning share transactions attributed to Kaya and m...

Turkey’s economic crisis is no longer visible only in inflation tables, supermarket prices or the value of the lira. It is increasingly appearing somewhere much more disturbing: in the lives of people who once believed that a permanent salary, a state job and decades of public service offered at least some protection from economic insecurity. The latest warning comes from inside the police force. A police union says seven members of the organisation have died by suicide in just five days. Days earlier, retired police officer Ali Şekeroğlu died after shooting himself during a pension protest outside Turkey’s Constitutional Court. On Monday, police union members are now preparing for a nationwide work stoppage. These events cannot responsibly be reduced to a single explanation. Suicide is complex, intensely personal and rarely attributable to one cause. But taken together with the figures on wages, pensions, inflation and the cost of basic necessities, they raise a larger and increasin...

A third wave of detentions is moving the investigation backwards — to the people who were inside some of the funds before ordinary investors could buy them. A former central bank deputy governor has been arrested, hundreds of thousands of investors are caught up in fund liquidations, and investigators are now following the money. The questions are becoming harder: who got in early, who got out with the gains, why did regulators act so late — and how much of the money can still be recovered? By the Editorial Team of TLF Turkey’s fund crisis has entered a more uncomfortable phase. Until now, much of the public attention has been fixed on collapsing funds, spectacular market losses, detained executives and the increasingly urgent question of what will happen to investors’ money. Now investigators are looking further back — to the period before some of those funds were opened to a much wider group of investors. That change matters. On Friday, a court ordered the arrest...