Türkiye’s Erdogan Says Black Sea Grain Deal Can Be Restored Soon

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has good relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Mustafa Kamaci / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has good relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Mustafa Kamaci / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP
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Türkiye’s Erdogan Says Black Sea Grain Deal Can Be Restored Soon

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has good relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Mustafa Kamaci / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has good relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Mustafa Kamaci / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin on Monday that it would soon be possible to revive the grain deal that the United Nations says helped to ease a food crisis by getting Ukrainian grain to market.

Russia quit the deal in July - a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye - complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced serious obstacles.

Erdogan, who previously played a significant role in convincing Putin to stick with the deal, and the United Nations are both trying to get Putin to return to the deal.

"As Türkiye, we believe that we will reach a solution that will meet the expectations in a short time," Erdogan said in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after his first face to face meeting with Putin since 2022.

Erdogan said that Russia's expectations were well-known to all and that the shortcomings should be eliminated, adding that Türkiye and the United Nations had worked on a new package of suggestions to ease Russian concerns.

Putin has said Russia could return to the grain deal if the West fulfils a separate memorandum agreed with the United Nations at the same time to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports.

Standing beside Erdogan, Putin said Russia could return to the deal but only if the West stopped restricting Russian agricultural exports from reaching global markets.

"We will be ready to consider the possibility of reviving the grain deal and I told Mr. President about this again today - we will do this as soon as all the agreements on lifting restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products are fully implemented," Putin said.

He said Western claims that Russia had stoked a food crisis by suspending participation in the grain deal were incorrect as prices did not rise on its exit from the deal.

"There is no physical shortage of food," Putin said.

Grain deal?

While Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russia exported record amounts of wheat last year, Moscow and agricultural exporters say restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have hindered shipments.

"The West continues to block the supply of grain and fertilizers from the Russian Federation to world markets," Putin said, adding that the West had "cheated" Russia over the deal because rich countries got more than 70% of the grain exported under the deal.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's key agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets.

Putin said Russia expected a grain harvest of 130 million tons this year of which 60 million tons could be exported.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday that he had sent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "a set of concrete proposals" aimed at reviving the deal.

One of Moscow's main demands is for the Russian Agricultural Bank to be reconnected to the SWIFT international payments system. The EU cut it off in June 2022 as part of sweeping sanctions imposed in response to the invasion.

Putin said that a plan to supply up to 1 million tons of Russian grain to Türkiye at reduced prices for subsequent processing at Turkish plants and shipping to countries most in need was not an alternative to the grain deal.

He also said Russia was close to a deal with six African countries over a plan to supply Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic and Eritrea with up to 50,000 tons of grain each free of charge.  



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."