Turkish police arrest the mayor of Istanbul and presidential hopeful, Ekrem İmamoğlu. Thousands of people have come out in protest. Also: President Trump says his phone call with President Zelensky was very positive.
Chapter 1: Why are there protests against the arrest of Istanbul's mayor?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Rachel Wright, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 20th of March, these are our main stories. Thousands of demonstrators in Istanbul protest against the detention of the city's popular mayor. Donald Trump says his phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky was very positive.
Ecuador's president tells the BBC he wants military help from abroad to fight criminal drugs gangs. Also in this podcast, the drones that could help Sherpas on Mount Everest and… The Olympic Games is perhaps the greatest event on the planet.
It's critically important that the next president comes in and addresses some of the major challenges that are faced.
So who will get the most powerful job in world sport? We start in Turkey… Students outside Istanbul University were pepper-sprayed by riot police as they protested against the detention of one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's biggest political rivals, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu.
In a rare display of public anger, crowds chanted anti-government slogans while the main opposition called his arrest a coup against our next president. Mr. Imamoglu was detained with about 100 politicians, journalists and businessmen. At a news conference, Turkey's Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunç defended the arrests.
I would like to underscore that the Republic of Turkey is a state governed by the rule of law. Everyone is equal before the law. No individual or group is granted special privileges.
I asked Emre Temel from BBC Turkish service what were the accusations against Mr. Imamoglu.
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Chapter 2: What are the allegations against Ekrem İmamoğlu?
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office described Ekrem Imamoglu as a suspected criminal organisation leader. He was accused of corruption in tender processes. Prosecutors also accused Mr. İmamoğlu of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, as well.
And Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said a total of 106 individuals have been detained into two investigations into terrorism and corruption. He added that investigations will remain confidential. Mr. İmamoğlu denies all the charges. His wife, Dilek İmamoğlu, dismissed the accusations as ridiculous and manufactured.
And the opposition says Mr. Imamoglu is being targeted to stop him running against President Erdogan in the next presidential elections. How much of a threat is he to Mr. Erdogan?
Ekrem Imamoglu is seen as the strongest rival to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a future election. As President Erdogan himself, Mr. Imamoglu seemed ready to use Istanbul mayorship as the launchpad for the ultimate prize, presidency. He's a very popular politician. Von der Meyrel raised twice in 2019 and was resoundingly re-elected last year.
And Mr. Imam Ali is expected to be named as main opposition Republican People's Party's presidential candidate in a primary vote on Sunday. However, yesterday, his university diploma was revoked. This move was largely seen by the opposition as an aim to eliminate him from the Turkish politics because a college degree is a constitutional requirement for a candidacy in Turkey.
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Chapter 3: How is the opposition responding to İmamoğlu's arrest?
And Mr. Imamoglu was preparing to appeal this decision. But what happened this morning left him in an uncharted territory. If he will be arrested... the government may appoint a trustee to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality to replace Imamoglu. And as it stands now, Ekrem Imamoglu will not be able to run in Turkey's next presidential elections.
Tell me, what's the latest on the protests? How big are they? And is this a real show of defiance?
The main opposition, Republican People's Party, had a big protest outside the Istanbul municipality. Thousands of people joined it. Mr. Imamoglu's wife, Dilek Imamoglu, spoke. She said 16 million Istanbulites will have been detained. And the main opposition party's leader, Özgür Özel, described this morning's detention as a coup attempt. And he urged opposition groups to unite.
One of the opposition party's good party called for the boycotting the next presidential elections. However, it seems that main opposition party doesn't agree with this.
Emre Temel from BBC Turkish. To the war in Ukraine next. Donald Trump promised he'd stop the war and he says he's still trying. On Tuesday, it was President Putin's turn to receive the American president's attention. And on Wednesday, it was President Zelensky who received a phone call from the White House. Caroline Levitt is the White House press secretary.
The leaders agreed Ukraine and America will continue working together to bring about a real end to the war and that lasting peace under President Trump's leadership can be achieved. I would just like to emphasize we have never been this close to peace and it's only because of President Trump that we are here.
I think a couple of years ago, as you all reported on the war, it was incomprehensible to have a partial ceasefire in this conflict. And today that is true because of the leadership of this president.
Marion Moshiri asked our North America editor, Sarah Smith, about the phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky.
We know that they spoke about quite a lot of substantial issues. Firstly, with Donald Trump briefing President Zelensky on the call that he had with Vladimir Putin yesterday and on the limited truce that they agreed on, where there will be no more targeting of energy sites by either side.
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Chapter 4: What was discussed in the call between Trump and Zelensky?
But they also discussed what's going on in the Russian region, of course, where Ukrainian soldiers are fighting. And President Zelensky requested more air defence missiles and more equipment to help with their defence. And President Trump said he would talk to European partners about that. So it's
There seems to have been a fairly detailed conversation, and one in which President Zelensky took great care to thank Donald Trump for his involvement, to say that Ukraine really is committed to peace, which they think can be achieved this year, and that that's thanks to Donald Trump's leadership.
That's President Zelensky going out of his way to be incredibly polite and diplomatic to Donald Trump in the way he likes, to avoid a row the like of which we saw, of course, three weeks ago in the Oval Office, where they had that absolutely explosive spat that resulted in Vladimir Zelensky being thrown out of the White House afterwards.
So, Sarah, what's your assessment of where we are now in terms of Mr Trump's involvement in this peace brokering and after these phone calls with these two men, where does the US stand and where does it move forward from here?
Well, all of the official things we've heard from the White House, whether they're in Donald Trump's social media posts or in official readouts, as they call them, a description of the phone calls, have been very measured and very diplomatic. And of course, if Donald Trump thought he had scored a big success...
we would be seeing more of his usual kind of loud boasts of how terrifically well things are going. There isn't even anything written in all capital letters in any of his social media posts. And that's because he frankly doesn't have a great deal to boast about after this week's diplomacy. He got President Putin to agree to an incredibly limited truce.
not the full ceasefire for 30 days that Ukraine had already agreed to. Vladimir Putin is still insisting that there are various demands and guarantees he's looking for before he'll go towards a full ceasefire, let alone start talking about a peace settlement. So talks are going to begin again between the various American, Ukrainian and Russian teams in the Middle East this week.
But there is an awful lot of work to do combing through the fine detail of these things. And Donald Trump will be finding that enormously frustrating. He insisted this was going to be a swift and straightforward process. At the beginning of this week, White House officials were talking about how a peace deal was within reach and that we've never been closer.
But now it looks as though it's getting bogged down. And frankly, what are the usual details of this kind of shuttle diplomacy? But details Donald Trump thought he was going to be able to skip over, but he clearly hasn't been able to.
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Chapter 5: Why are South African farmers interested in moving to the U.S.?
These are descendants of Dutch and French settlers here in South Africa. This is something that President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly denied. Nonetheless, a month later, President Trump extended his invitation to any South African farmer who felt discriminated against and also offered them citizenship. Following this, the South African Chamber of Commerce in the U.S.
says it launched a platform on its website inviting people who were interested in resettling to fill in a few basic details. We don't know the professions of these people, so we don't know if they qualify for resettlement, if they're farmers. And this is just an expression of interest. These are not people who've applied for resettlement yet, but they say they're interested in this.
And according to Sikusa, around 67,000 people filled in this form and have expressed an interest in resettling to the United States. Most of them were aged between 25 and 45, and the majority of them had dependents that would be coming to the U.S.,
Mayonne Jones. Winston Churchill, who was British Prime Minister during the Second World War, was also a writer and an enthusiastic amateur painter. Now one of his landscapes, the Bay of Ayres, is being auctioned off in a modern art sale in London. It's estimated to go for up to £800,000 or a million dollars. Nicholas Orchard is head of modern British and Irish art at Christie's London.
He told Christian Fraser about why there's so much interest in this painting.
Winston Churchill's paintings, all of them generate interest. He's just loved in many ways, and painting is just one part of it. And this view in particular is a really, really attractive scene in the south of France, and just looking at it makes you think about, wouldn't I like to be there on holiday? Did he paint it after the war?
He painted in Arthur Ward in 1958, so it was later in life, as he died in 1965, but he only took up painting when he was 40, so he was a late arrival to the passion of painting, and it was a great passion for him and his most important pastime.
Is it a good piece of painting or is it more the figure who painted it?
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of Winston Churchill's painting being auctioned?
Well, that's a really good question. And the answer to that question is it is a good painting, but he was an amateur painter. So I'm sitting on the fence in that answer, of course.
But really what I'm saying is that, of course, the man who painted it is all important in Churchill paintings because the story behind Churchill, who he was, his insignificance as an individual in the 20th century can't be underestimated. And so... There are a great number of passionate lovers of everything to do with history around Churchill, of which painting is one part.
How many others are there? Because I know he was a traveller through the war. Did he take a sketchbook? Did he paint while he was travelling, visiting the troops?
No. So he painted around 550 oils and he painted almost exclusively in oil. So a sketchbook wasn't part of what he did, but he only painted one painting throughout the whole of the Second World War, and that was in 1943, a famous painting that's called The Tower of the Kutubia Mosque, a view in Marrakesh.
And in fact, that painting he painted after the Casablanca Conference when he took Roosevelt to Marrakesh to see the sun setting on the Atlas Mountains and then gave it to him as a present.
Where has this painting been up to this point and how much is it worth?
So the painting was, well, Churchill gave it to his eldest daughter and it stayed with her and eventually was sold in 2007 to the current owner. And they are now got to a stage in life where they feel it's time to move it to the next person who might love it like they have. The estimate is five to eight hundred thousand pounds. Wow.
Five to eight hundred thousand pounds.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: Where will the 2027 Tour de France start?
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.
He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa faces an election in April but is currently struggling in his campaign to get re-elected. He promised a military crackdown on gangs. But while murders have fallen slightly, violence remains very high, largely fuelled by drug gangs fighting over cocaine-trafficking routes to Europe and the US.
Now he wants the US, European and Brazilian armies to help him stamp out the cartels. Our South America correspondent, Ione Wells, interviewed him at the presidential palace in Quito. Did he also want President Trump to designate Ecuadorian gangs as terrorists, as he's done with some Mexican and Venezuelan cartels?
Yes, because I don't consider they are criminal gangs. They started as criminal gangs, yes. But now they aren't. They're groups that have 14,000 to 15,000 armed men and women. They extort, they transport drugs, human trafficking, organ trafficking, illegal mining. These are international narco-terrorist groups that operate in several countries.
Yes, I would be glad if he considers Lobos, Los Choneros, Tiguerones as terrorist groups, because that's what they really are.
I want to talk about security now as well. This January, Ecuador saw a record number of homicides. Is your iron fist approach to tackling this, militarizing the streets and prisons, not working?
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