ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey is not backing away from the West as it seeks deeper ties with the East, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday as he headed back from a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

The conference in Kyrgyzstan saw Erdogan hold a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at which they discussed further nuclear cooperation.

In comments made to journalists aboard the presidential plane, Erdogan reiterated Turkey’s goal of becoming a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, whose ten current members include Russia, China, India and Iran.

“I would also like to particularly emphasize that Turkey’s membership perspective in the organization does not mean a break from a bloc or turning our backs on the West,” the president said.

Turning to the war in Ukraine, during which Ankara has maintained friendly relations with both Moscow and Kyiv, Erdogan said it was his and Putin’s “expectation … that the war between Russia and Ukraine ends peacefully as soon as possible.”

He also underlined the importance of maritime security in the Black Sea, where civilian shipping has come under increasing attack.

“There is a need for a mechanism that will permanently ensure the safety of commercial maritime transport in the Black Sea,” Erdogan said, adding that it would be “beneficial” to prevent a “resurgence of the grain crisis.”

Turkey brokered a grain deal in 2022 that opened Ukrainian ports and allowed the movement of Russian food and fertilizer. The agreement, which Putin pulled out of a year later, was vital for global food supplies, especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The SCO, founded in 2001, also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Belarus. The growing bloc has been billed as a counterweight to U.S. global influence, although its goals and programs remain vague.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey launched a search operation Wednesday off the coast of Istanbul after two ships collided and contact was lost with one vessel and its crew of 10, officials said.

The collision took place at 3 a.m. in the Marmara Sea a little more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Silivri, a western suburb of Turkey’s largest city, the Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement.

Contact was lost with the crew of the Tugberk Imamoglu, flagged to Turkey, after the collision with the Turkish-flagged Alsu, which appeared undamaged, the governor’s office said.

“Numerous naval units from the coast guard’s Marmara and Bosphorus Command and a coast guard helicopter were dispatched to the scene,” the office added.

The Tugberk Imamoglu, a 90-meter (295-foot) cargo ship, was traveling from Turkey’s Mediterranean post of Iskenderun to Eregli in the Black Sea. The 91-meter (298-foot) Alsu is an oil or chemical tanker sailing from Kocaeli, east of Istanbul, to Aliaga on the Aegean coast, according to the Marine Traffic website.

The Turkish Straits, comprised of the Bosphorus Strait and Dardanelles Strait at either end of the Marmara Sea, are among the busiest shipping lanes in the world, with hundreds of thousands of vessels transiting between the Mediterranean and Black Seas yearly.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey is planning to expand its nuclear cooperation with Russia to build more power plants, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.

The signal of deepening ties with Russia is likely to raise concerns among Western allies, who have been worried by Ankara’s closeness to Moscow as the war in Ukraine rages.

Rosatom, a Russian state corporation, is close to completing the Akkuyu nuclear power station on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Its four reactors are expected to generate around 10% of Turkey’s electricity when it comes online.

“The Akkuyu nuclear power plant is of great importance in Russia-Turkey relations. We are now in the final stages,” Erdogan said as he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin following a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan.

He added that, with Russia, Turkey “will take steps together to open some new power plants, along with the opening of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant.” His remarks were reported by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

Erdogan also described relations between the two countries as being “at a much more advanced level today than in any previous period.”

Putin, meanwhile, referred to Turkey as “one of our privileged partners.”

Turkey is dependent on energy imports, with around 70% of its energy needs being met by foreign sources.

Turkey’s Russian imports were valued at $42.37 billion last year, according to United Nations international trade figures. Energy accounted for $29.8 billion.

Three U.S. Secret Service officials were placed on administrative leave Tuesday, pending the outcome of an investigation by the agency’s professional standards office.

The three were operating in non-law-enforcement capacities and were being investigated for potential misconduct, the agency’s public information office reported. However, the cause for the action remained unclear as the Office of Professional Responsibility was beginning its review.

The Secret Service has been under scrutiny as President Donald Trump has been the subject of at least three assassination plots in the past two years. In April, police said an armed man breached security at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which Trump was attending.

The Secret Service has also found itself in the spotlight after other recent incidents.

The Justice Department last month subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One. The subpoenas, which were later withdrawn, came after The Times reported that Trump was urged to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

Then, Trump earlier this month acknowledged that he had actually slipped away from Air Force One as he departed Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to concerns that he was being targeted for assassination by Iran.

Trump only confirmed he slipped away after The Washington Post reported that he had taken part in the elaborate ruse in which some of his staff, Secret Service and journalists flew on the old model Air Force One while he was snuck onto an alternate military aircraft to get out of Turkey.

Last month, the Secret Service also confirmed that one of its agents serving on Vice President JD Vance’s security detail was being investigated over allegations tied to a suspected news leak. The Secret Service said the investigation was tied to a July MS NOW report detailing some of its agents’ frustration over last-minute travel requests from Vance and his family.

ISTANBUL (AP) — A Turkish court on Monday convicted five mayors of municipalities run by the country’s main opposition party on corruption charges in a trial that critics have denounced as politically motivated.

The case before an Istanbul court included allegations of bribery, bid-rigging and fraud in relation to municipal contracts. Critics of the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan say the trial targeted the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and that the prosecution relied on secret witnesses and defendants implicating other defendants in return for lighter punishment.

The Turkish government insists the country’s judiciary is independent and free from political influence.

The case focused on allegations that companies controlled by businessman Aziz Ihsan Aktas secured municipal tenders through bribery, bid-rigging and fraud. The opposition, meanwhile, has said that municipalities under Erdogan’s party control that did business with Aktas were not as thoroughly investigated.

Of the five convicted, the mayor of Istanbul’s Besiktas district, Riza Akpolat, received the heftiest sentence of 23 years and three months for accepting bribes, money laundering and bid-rigging.

The sentences of the four other mayors — who like Akpolat were removed from their posts following their arrests — ranged between five and eight years.

The seven-month trial in a courthouse next to Silivri Prison, west of Istanbul, included 200 defendants. Some of them were also sentenced while others were acquitted, though details of their cases were not immediately clear.

Aktas was arrested in Istanbul in January last year, after which authorities launched investigations into other Istanbul districts controlled by the Republican People’s Party, or CHP. The southern Turkish municipalities of Adana and Adiyaman, both run by CHP, were also investigated.

Aktas initially denied the charges but later testified against co-defendants under Turkey’s “effective repentance” law, alleging he had provided mayors and other officials with cash, cars and other bribes to get municipal contracts.

Aktas was separately tried and sentenced to two years and eight months for bid-rigging but was acquitted of bribery charges.

Most of the defendants denied knowing Aktas and accused him of giving false evidence. They also said that tenders had been allocated under long-standing processes and previous audits had uncovered no irregularities.

Another controversial aspect of the trial was the use of secret witnesses by the prosecution, many of whom admitted their evidence was based on hearsay.

Akpolat, the mayor of Besiktas, told the court that investigators offered to drop the charges if he gave evidence in a separate investigation into the CHP’s 2023 congress.

That investigation led to a court ordering the removal of the CHP’s top echelon in May on the grounds of voting irregularities during leadership elections. Many CHP members followed deposed leader Ozgur Ozel to the New Party, which is now the largest opposition group in parliament.

The CHP won several major cities in the 2019 local elections, including Istanbul and Ankara, the country’s capital. Further wins followed in the 2024 municipal polls but since then, an array of court cases have been brought against the opposition.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the metropolitan mayor of Istanbul and the opposition’s favored challenger to Erdogan in the next presidential election, has been behind bars since March last year.

He faces several legal cases, with the main one alleging corruption within the Istanbul municipality — claims that echo those in the Aktas case. If convicted, he could be sentenced to more than 2,300 years in total.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that new U.S. sanctions aim to block all potential sources of revenue for Iran and told nations to cut economic ties to Tehran or face retaliation.

Bessent said it’s “no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces” of the conflict.

He did not name what countries could face potential secondary sanctions from the United States, but China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are Iran’s largest trade partners.

“Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States,” Bessent told a news conference. “An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”

Washington has said the new sanctions aim to put more pressure on an economy already battered by previous sanctions and a U.S. naval blockade.

Iranian currency falls to a record low

Bessent made the announcement as Iran’s currency hit a record low.

The rial dropped to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened on currency markets. Iran’s official Central Bank rate stood at around 1.5 million rial to the dollar, but the market rate is what most Iranians pay.

The currency had already been under pressure before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, as Iran faced double-digit inflation and negative growth. The rial has repeatedly hit new lows as nearly six months of war have taken an even greater toll.

Iranians find daily staples increasingly unaffordable. Since the war began, rice is up some 60% and beef prices are more than 150% higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that gross domestic product will contract more than 5%.

Still, economic pressure has not yet translated into political pressure. Iran retains a key strategic advantage: Its attacks and threats on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have brought traffic in the vital waterway to a near halt, damaging the world economy and heaping pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of congressional elections.

The war, as a result, has devolved into a fight over who controls the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil transited before the conflict. Iran is now refusing to fully reopen it unless it can charge ships.

Iran and Oman, which is on the opposite side of the strait, are reportedly in the final stages of agreeing on a plan for joint management of the waterway. Oman’s foreign minister is set to visit Iran on Tuesday.

Administration seeks leverage with stronger sanctions

In an attempt to break the impasse, the administration promised even stronger sanctions, including secondary sanctions on countries that continue to do business with Iran.

Ahead of the announcement, Trump posted on social media that “IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING!!!”

“President Trump decimated Iran’s economy to a point where the rial has never been weaker and inflation has rarely been higher,” Bessent wrote Sunday in an opinion piece in the Financial Times. “The regime’s final refuge now lies in the self-deception of fearful nations that still believe accommodating aggression can secure a durable peace.”

Already last week, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was suspending all trade with Iran. The UAE has long been one of Iran’s largest trading partners and its biggest source of imports.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran on Monday that “any escalation of this situation will undoubtedly bring about consequences.”

“Our hands are not tied,” he added.

Pakistani delegation visits Iran

Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering a 60-day ceasefire in June, sent a high-level delegation to Iran on Monday to encourage the U.S. and Iran to return to negotiations, two senior officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

The military confirmed only Field Marshal Asim Munir’s visit, saying it was aimed at deescalating tensions in the region.

Trump spoke with Munir ahead of the army chief’s visit to Iran, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm a private conversation. Reuters, citing Pakistani sources, first reported the call.

Munir met Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni in Tehran, according to the two senior officials. Munir was accompanied by Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials. Munir was expected to remain in Iran overnight and meet the Iranian president and other senior officials before returning to Pakistan.

His previous visit to Tehran in May helped pave the way for a memorandum of understanding signed by the U.S. and Iran in June.

In downtown Tehran, 73-year-old Sadegh Mahmoudi did not hold out hope for a resolution. He joined a line of about a dozen people to purchase U.S. dollars with his remaining savings to hedge against further declines.

“There is no hope for a deal and peace,” he said.

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Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; David Rising in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Seung Min Kim in Washington; and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed.