Southeast Europe

The Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoglu, and several other senior members of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) were detained early this morning. The arrests come just days before the opposition party was expected to officially nominate İmamoglu as its presidential candidate. The CHP will hold primaries on Sunday, March 23, to elect its presidential nominee, and İmamoglu was widely considered the most likely choice. He had unofficially announced his candidacy earlier this month.

Protesters chanted, "Mayor Resul is not alone!", "Mayor Ekrem is not alone!" and "Detentions, arrests, and repression will not scare us!", BirGün reports.

Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkiye Director of Human Rights Watch, condemned the detention of İmamoglu and other senior CHP officials, calling it a blatant abuse of the judicial system, Reuters reported.

Words of support for Imamoglu came from the French Foreign Ministry, whose spokesman said that the arrest could have grave consequences for Turkish democracy. The Foreign Ministry in Berlin called it "a step backwards" for Turkiye. The Council of Europe condemned the arrests as a move against the will of the people. The mayors of Athens and Thessaloniki also voiced support for the Istanbul mayor in social media posts.

In the wake of the Wednesday arrests, the Turkish lira crashed by 12% to an all-time low of 42 to the dollar.

Access to several social media platforms, including X, TikTok, and Instagram, was partially restricted in Turkey this morning.

Imamoglu's arrest came a day after Istanbul University announced annulling İmamoglu’s diploma in line with a move by the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office questioning the legitimacy of his higher education credentials.

In response to the evolving geopolitical landscape and security concerns in Southeast Europe, Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo have strengthened their defence cooperation by signing a trilateral declaration in Tirana.

Edit (March 22nd, 2025): Due to the public interest the full text of declaration has been released.

The Iasi office of DNA is now led by prosecutor Cristina Chiriac. Chiriac gained notoriety following revelations from a national investigative outlet, SaFieLumina.ro, about sexual abuse committed by the bishop of Husi. Journalists showed that Chiriac, then a prosecutor, had kept incriminating video evidence of the bishop’s abuse locked away in her desk drawer for years, instead investigating the victim for blackmail.

Last week, the ruling majority adopted the Law on the Protection of the Constitutional Order of Republika Srpska. Under this legislation, the authorities get more power to collect data and investigate alleged attempts to undermine them or threaten the Serb-dominated entity’s security.

The legislation also criminalises “disrespect or non-execution of decisions of institutions or bodies of Republika Srpska”, as well as “other criminal acts that indirectly or directly threaten the constitutional order and territorial integrity of Republika Srpska”. It envisages the establishment of a new Special Prosecution and a Court of Republika Srpska

March 16 (Reuters) - Fifty-one people were killed and more than 100 injured when a fire broke out in a nightclub early on Sunday in the North Macedonian town of Kocani, Interior Minister Pance Toskovski said.

Protesters waving flags, chanting slogans and blowing whistles massed in the Serbian capital on Saturday to join the latest in a series of student-led demonstrations that have mounted an unprecedented challenge to President Aleksandar Vučić’s government.

Traffic was at a halt across the city and the main boulevards and intersections were completely blocked as masses of protesters headed for the city centre on foot.

As well as students and members of the public, farmers driving tractors and large groups of bikers also joined the protest. Many of the protesters chanted “Pump it!”, a slogan of the ongoing protests.

The leaders of the two Romanian far-right parties, Alliance for the Union of Romanians and the Youth Party, George Simion and Anamaria Gavrila, will run for the presidential elections in May. They announced the news in a video published on their official Facebook profiles after meeting with former presidential candidate Calin Georgescu Tuesday morning. If both bids are validated, one of them will withdraw, as stated in the video.

Supporters of Calin Georgescu threw stones and bottles at riot police in Bucharest after the Central Election Bureau voted to bar the right-wing, pro-Russian candidate from competing in upcoming presidential polls.

The Central Election Bureau voted 10-4 to bar Georgescu, saying his candidacy did not meet the legal requirements and that he had “violated the very obligation to defend democracy”.

Georgescu condemned the decision as a “direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide”. He now has 24 hours from Sunday’s ruling to file an official appeal with Romania’s Constitutional Court, which is expected to issue a decision on Wednesday at the latest.

The long-awaited completion of the Croatian section of Corridor Vc is set for June, nearly two decades after the first stretch of the motorway, Slavonika, was opened, Večernji list reports.

Corridor Vc is a major European transport artery, connecting Budapest to the Port of Ploče in Croatia via Osijek and Sarajevo.

BELGRADE — The EU is boosting the size of its peacekeeping mission in Bosnia after recently convicted Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik banned state-level institutions in Serb regions, sparking separatist fears.

The EU “will temporarily increase the size of its force,” the European Union Force Bosnia Herzegovina, or EUFOR, said in a statement late Friday. “This is a proactive measure aimed at assisting Bosnia and Herzegovina in the interest of all citizens,” it said.

EUFOR said the increase will occur “in the coming days” but gave no details. Local media reports say the EU will add 400 troops to its 1,100-strong force next week.

Education Minister Ogerta Manastirliu confirmed on Thursday that a 12-month ban on TikTok to safeguard children, first announced by Prime Minister Edi Rama in December, has been approved and will enter into force within days.

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Asked about how the ban will work technically, Manastirliu gave no specific reply, but said that “the National Cyber ​​Security Agency with the relevant entities” would take care of it.

Something many other countries in the region should also do.

In addition to their political aspirations, the suspects recruited supporters through online platforms, publishing videos aimed at both national and international audiences. The group's efforts were not limited to online propaganda, as they took steps to negotiate Romania's exit from NATO and discussed their plans with foreign political and military representatives.

The authorities conducted searches at eight locations in Bucharest and several counties, seizing important evidence. Four of the accused are set to face preventive detention, while the other two will remain under house arrest. These arrests come just after Romania expelled the Russian Federation's military attaché and his deputy, accusing them of engaging in activities contrary to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. It is unclear whether these expulsions are connected to the arrests.

At a moment when Hungary is isolated due to it blocking of all support for Ukraine, Macedonia sends a very clear message by seeking support from them exactly.

Police in Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina have arrested more suspects in a potential child trafficking case after **31 children were found **living in a home with one caretaker on Tuesday.

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The children are all members of the Roma ethnic minority and range in age from 12 years to infancy. Six of them have Croatian documents.

The shooting occurred Tuesday afternoon in Thessaloniki, when two Turkish nationals were in a car near the city’s intercity bus terminal. Police said another vehicle blocked their path, and an assailant inside opened fire. The driver was wounded and hospitalized, while the passenger was fatally shot.

One year in prison and a six year ban from participating in politics:

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has been sentenced to one year in prison for defying the rulings of the top international official overseeing peace in the Balkan country.

The court in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on Wednesday also banned [...] from participating in politics for six years.

Dodik and the former acting director of Republika Srpska’s Official Gazette, Miloš Lukić, face charges of defying the decisions of High Representative Christian Schmidt, the international envoy overseeing the peace accords that concluded Bosnia’s 1992-5 war.

Costs were steep. As the country’s debt load soared past 90% of its GDP in the wake of the pandemic, Montenegro announced in 2021 that it was unable to pay Chinese loans and was facing bankruptcy. European and American banks stepped in, bringing the country's debt ratio down to 60% of GDP.

The only candidate to lead the SDSM party in North Macedonia that party members can vote for on March 16 will be the current party leader, Venko Filipce, the SDSM reported to the internal election commission on Friday. According to media reports, no other party member will contest Filipce's leadership.

Filipce would begin a full term as chair of the party, which ended up as opposition after an electoral defeat in May 2024. The next major elections in North Macedonia will be held in the fall of 2025.