More than 1,000 people have been detained in Turkey during 5 days of protests about the arrest of President Erdogan's main rival, the mayor of Istanbul. Also: How do elite athletes cope with fasting during Ramadan?
Chapter 1: What are the recent developments in Turkey's political protests?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Julia and 14 Hours GMT on Monday the 24th of March. These are our main stories. More demonstrators and journalists are arrested in Turkey as the authorities say they've detained well over a thousand people in the past five days of protests.
Talks between US and Russian negotiators are underway in Saudi Arabia as Donald Trump pushes for a swift end to the war in Ukraine. Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza. Palestinian health officials say at least 60 people have been killed in the renewed assault. Also in this podcast, why this comic song has caused a stir about freedom of speech in India.
We start in Turkey, where in less than a week, the man seen as the strongest challenger to President Erdogan's decades-long dominance of Turkish politics, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of his position as mayor of Istanbul, sparking some of the biggest protests Turkey has seen in more than a decade.
Despite being charged with corruption, he has now officially been nominated as a presidential candidate by the opposition CHP party. Mr. Imamoglu says the charges against him are politically motivated. A ban on protests failed to deter Turks from taking to the streets in large numbers for a fifth night running to voice their fears for the future of their democracy.
Among them, this woman in Istanbul.
There is no such thing as justice in the Republic of Turkey. Absolutely not. I don't believe it. I'm even thinking of leaving the country. I don't want to live here anymore. I mean, I have a beautiful country. I don't want to live in it because people are ruining it.
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Chapter 2: Why are journalists being targeted in Turkey's protests?
Since the protests began on Wednesday, the Turkish government says more than 1,100 people have been arrested, including at least 10 journalists detained today in dawn raids. We got this update from Hilkim Boran of the BBC Turkish service, who's in Istanbul.
What we know about the arrest is the official statement from the Interior Minister, Ali Alikaya, and he has said that more than 1,100 people have been detained and we know that 123 police officers have been injured throughout these protests from Ali Alikaya's statements.
And as for the morning race that you mentioned, we know that especially photojournalists appear to have been targeted because they have been reporting on the protests, because Turkey's media watchdog has been warning other news organizations to not directly make news of the protests, especially with live broadcasts.
So it appears that this might be a targeted operation to prevent people from learning more about the protests. But what we know from the main opposition is that they will be going out in force again into the streets because head of the CHP, Özgür Özel, has called on people to gather in front of the city hall once again.
And it remains to be seen whether the number of people who are going out today on the sixth night of consecutive protests will match the previous nights.
And despite the arrest of Mr. Imamoglu and the fact that he's been charged with corruption, the opposition party that he heads went ahead with its vote to choose him as its presidential candidate with a huge turnout in the primary.
Yes, the primary was actually initially slated only for members of the main opposition party. But after Imamoglu's arrest on the 19th of March, the head of the main opposition announced that there will be solidarity boxes ballots being set up so that people who are not party members could also vote.
And Özal claimed in a speech yesterday in front of Istanbul City Hall that close to 15 million people have showed up and voted with just 1 million, 1.5 million approximately of them being CHP members. And he said that this number of people voting for Erdogan puts Erdogan's legitimacy in question.
And he has challenged the Turkish president to early elections because normally the elections are slated for 2028.
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Chapter 3: What is the status of the US-Russia talks on Ukraine?
While Ukraine says it's ready for a full truce, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he will seek a wide range of concessions first. The U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News before the talks that he was optimistic that the Russian leader was interested in ending the conflict.
I feel that he wants peace. The president had two very productive calls this week, or last week, I should say, 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.
But this optimism is not shared by Russia itself. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were still many outstanding issues to be resolved.
Apparently we are talking about the desire and willingness of countries to move towards a peaceful settlement. There is indeed a common understanding here. In general, of course, there are still a lot of different aspects related to the settlement to be worked out.
Our security correspondent Frank Gardner is covering the talks in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The glittering opulence of Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton Hotel is the venue today for crucial talks aimed at pausing at least aspects of the war in Ukraine. The Russian delegation is on one floor, the Ukrainians, all 25 of them, are on another. The Americans have been meeting both, trying to live up to the rather optimistic expectations of President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
The Ukrainians say their talks last night were productive. They brought with them technical experts from the energy ministry, as well as diplomats and naval officers to discuss how to safeguard Black Sea shipping lanes.
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Chapter 4: What sparked the intensified Israeli airstrikes on Gaza?
The Russians are keen to revive a Moroban deal in the Black Sea, which allowed them to export farm produce and fertilizer in exchange for refraining from attacks on Ukrainian shipping.
Frank Gardner in Riyadh. 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. That's globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And if you can, please record your question as a voice note.
To Gaza now, where there have been intensified Israeli airstrikes on targets across the territory. The Hamas-run health authority in Gaza says more than 60 people have been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the number who have died since Israel broke the ceasefire last week to more than 700.
Among those killed was a Hamas leader who died in a strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in the south. Israel does not allow foreign journalists to report independently from Gaza, so Emei Nader filed this report from Jerusalem.
Videos show the chaos in the moments after the strike, a floor of the Nasser hospital on fire and a ward destroyed. Ismail Barhum, the head of Hamas's financial department, is understood to have been one of the last two members of the group's political bureau remaining in Gaza. He was receiving treatment for injuries sustained in an earlier strike at the busy hospital's surgery department.
Palestinian health officials said a 16-year-old recovering from surgery was among those killed and many others were injured, including medical personnel. The head of the hospital accused Israel of violating all international and humanitarian laws. Israel's minister of defense said Barhum had become the new prime minister of Gaza in recent days, but Hamas hasn't confirmed this.
Israel is expanding its ground and air attacks, with initial reports of numerous deadly raids launched on Monday morning in cities including Rafah and Khan Yunis. On Sunday, health officials announced that the number of Palestinians killed since Israel began its campaign in Gaza has passed 50,000.
Amenada. Shortly before we recorded this podcast, one of France's most famous film stars, Gérard Depardieu, arrived at a court in Paris to face sexual assault charges. The 76-year-old is accused of groping two women on a film set four years ago. In the past, around 20 women have accused him of sexual assault or abuse. This is the first case to come to trial.
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Chapter 5: What are the allegations against Gérard Depardieu in France?
Gérard Depardieu denies all the allegations. Our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, spoke to us from outside the court.
Gerard Depardieu is in the court. He arrived shortly before the session opened looking OK, but looking his age, let's not forget that he's also quite ill in the sense that he has a heart condition and diabetes. And that's one reason why this court case was postponed from its original scheduled date, which was in October.
And even now there are sort of special provisions to account for his poor state of health. It's the first time Gerard Depardieu has come to trial after a number of allegations about his behaviour on film sets dating back many, many years. In this particular case, we're talking about a film which was made a few years ago, sang without trace, the film called Les Voluves.
Incidentally, about an ageing actor coming to terms with his own declining career. On the set, there were two women who said that they were abused sexually by Gerard Deposier, that he... He groped them, that he manhandled them, that he touched their breasts and their buttocks, that one of them complained and said she wanted an apology.
She got a kind of apology, but one accompanied by all sorts of lewd language and so on. The defence, that is, Gerard W and his lawyers, contest this totally, say that only one side of the story has been heard so far. I mean, this is a very big story in France.
Gerard Depordieu, we know, has been the butt of many, many accusations of sexual misbehaviour, abuse, lewd behaviour, going back some years now. But before that, he was what they call here a monstre sacré, a holy monster of cinema. In other words, the most admired and highly regarded of cinema actors of his time.
And, I mean, probably the most well-known French male actor around the world, I would say. But, of course... His star fell dramatically when these accusations started coming in in the wake of the Me Too movement a few years ago, and now his reputation is a shadow of its former self.
Newscofield in Paris. In Nigeria, more than three quarters of people use skin lightening creams, commonly known as bleaching creams. It's the country with the highest use in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. In 2023, Nigeria's food and drug regulator, NAFDAQ, declared a state of emergency over these products. But it's not just adults.
There's a worrying trend of parents using the creams on their children, even on babies. Medina Mashano has been to Kano State, one of several major hubs for skin bleaching in the country, from where she sent this report.
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Chapter 6: Why are skin lightening creams a concern in Nigeria?
We are concealing her identity for their privacy. When my daughter was mistaken for a drug addict because of the bleaching, it made me extremely sad. She says she did it because of pressure from her own mother. When I visit my mother, she shows more love to her other light-skinned grandchildren.
But when I got the bleaching cream and started using it on them, they became lighter and then she started bringing them closer to her.
Her story is part of a growing trend in Africa, says medical aesthetician and campaigner Zeynep Beshiriyaou.
So a lot of people link light skin to beauty or wealth. Women tend to shield, as they call it, shield their children from that discrimination by bleaching them from childbirth. Some of these women even go to the extent of taking injections while they are pregnant just so they can give birth to lighter skin children.
Long-term use of skin lightening products can have serious consequences.
They can have severe rashes all over their bodies. We've also had cases of first-degree burn. It can also affect their kidney, which we call the nephrotic syndrome.
Common bleaching ingredients include steroids, mercury, hydroquinone and kojic acid. Many of these are banned or tightly regulated by Nigeria's food and drug regulator, NAFDAQ, especially in children's products. Despite tight regulations, these bleaching creams are still easily accessible.
For example, in this supermarket in Kano State, when I picked up one of the creams that says baby bleaching cream, I noticed that many of the ingredients here are illegal substances. I met one mother in the market buying bleaching creams for her kids, despite her own hands being discolored by them.
Many shopkeepers here, who were not identifying for their safety, mixed their own creams from raw ingredients. It wasn't clear how precisely they were measuring the bleaching chemicals.
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Chapter 7: What actions is NAFDAQ taking against illegal skin lightening products?
With so many producers and such high demand, the challenges are vast.
What happened to me is why I want to advise other people not to follow this route. They will regret it. You need to accept how God created you.
For this message to be heard, it needs to break through deeply entrenched views on skin color. Until it does, the health of many children may yet be put at risk.
That report from Nigeria by Medina Mashainu.
Still to come... I wouldn't say that Ramadan is difficult. It's more mental because personally I'm used to doing it. It's more the lack of water.
How one Premier League footballer copes while fasting during Ramadan.
On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.
Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.
Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.
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