New interior ministry unit set to fight PKK terrorism

The Interior Ministry has formed a new unit to coordinate anti-terrorist efforts, said Interior Minister Besir Atalay yesterday. Stating that the unit will be structured as a Security Undersecretariat to strengthen coordination in the fight against terrorism, he added, "This new unit has no operational mission, but it will do research and analysis."

An International Monetary Fund delegation will begin talks in Ankara tomorrow about a new standby deal. The IMF team, led by the Fund's new Turkey desk chief Rachel van Elkan, will hold meetings with State Minister for the Economy Mehmet Simsek and other senior economic officials. Later the team is expected to head to Istanbul to meet with businesspeople and banking representatives to discuss the real sector's financing needs. The team will stay in Turkey until the end of January, and talks with the IMF are expected to resume next month. A new loan deal between Turkey and the IMF is likely to be approved by the Fund in March. Commenting on the talks, Simsek said that the new agreement would go beyond ordinary IMF deals. The cut in public expenditures initially proposed by the IMF was more than three times the cut now on the table, he explained. Simsek also said that the size of the IMF loan under the new agreement would be big enough to dispel domestic markets' financial concerns over the global economic crisis.