ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, arrived in Turkey on Tuesday for talks that were expected to include the construction of a pipeline to Turkey aimed at reducing the exposure of Iraq’s oil exports to tensions in the Gulf region.

Al-Zaidi’s meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials will also focus on security, trade, energy, transportation and water management, Turkish officials said. The Iraqi prime minister’s office said they will discuss “joint infrastructure projects in a way that serves the interests of the two neighboring countries.”

Al-Zaidi, who emerged as a consensus candidate in Iraq after months of deadlock over the premiership following last year’s parliamentary elections, is visiting Ankara on the heel of trips to Washington and Tehran.

Following al-Zaidi’s talks with U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month, U.S. companies signed roughly $60 billion in agreements and partnerships with the Iraqi government, including deals intended to create alternative routes for shipping oil out of the Persian Gulf.

One project under consideration is a pipeline that would connect southern Iraq’s Basra to western Iraq’s Haditha and from there to the Ceyhan port in Turkey and the port of Baniyas on Syria’s coast.

Turkey tries to end conflict with Iraq-based militant group

The visit comes as Turkey is engaged in talks to end a decades-long conflict with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose fighters are largely based in northern Iraq. Last year, the PKK announced it was laying down arms and disbanding as part of the efforts.

Turkey is scheduled to enact legislation to help advance the peace effort, which is expected to include a limited amnesty that could allow some militants’ return to Turkey.

The PKK has waged an armed insurgency since 1984, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives. It’s designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Iraqi PM will visit Saudi Arabia next

Al-Zaidi is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, at a time of heightened tensions after the kingdom alleged that Iran-backed Iraqi militias launched drone attacks against it.

Al-Zaidi has pledged to disarm non-state armed groups in Iraq by the end of September, a deadline that is likely challenging to meet, particularly since some of the most powerful militias have said they will not lay down their weapons.

On Monday, al-Zaidi ordered security agencies to investigate the alleged drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi military said in a statement, adding that Iraq is committed to “preventing Iraqi territory from being used as a route or launching point for any attack targeting brotherly or friendly countries.”

The militias have denied any role in the attack. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups, in a statement called the Saudi accusations “fabrications” and an “attempt to justify their inability to respond to the painful Yemeni strikes that have targeted the heart of their infrastructure,” implying that the attacks were carried out by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The militias added that “any foolish Saudi action will be met with a harsh response that will leave them biting their fingers in regret.”

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A cycling-enthusiast governor rode into an unexpected political storm in Turkey when he found himself sacked after photos showing him in snug cycling shorts went viral. He has since also become the center of a campaign pressing for his return to office amid an outpouring of affection.

Mehmet Fatih Cicekli, the governor of Ardahan province in eastern Turkey, was removed from his post on July 17 by a presidential decree signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While no reason was given for his dismissal, it came after some Turkish politicians criticized him for wearing cycling tights during a public event promoting the sport and for posting the photos on social media.

Inan Akgun Alp, a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, accused Cicekli of allegedly prioritizing social media over official duties, adding the tight attire was inappropriate for a governor.

“He goes around in tights, spends all day cycling, with bodyguards in front of him, cycling in tights until the evening,” the T-24 news website quoted Alp as saying during a parliamentary debate last week. “A governor cannot wander around the city center like this.”

Samil Tayyar, a former legislator from Erdogan’s ruling party, which has roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement, said the attire was contrary to cultural norms, especially in a conservative, traditional province like Ardahan. He argued that other politicians wore sweatpants while cycling.

“People can wear whatever they want in their private lives, but a governor cannot visit the public in tights while on duty; it does not align with the seriousness of the state. In a traditional social setting like Ardahan, it is completely unacceptable,” Tayyar wrote on X.

Cicek, who was appointed governor in January by Erdogan, defended himself by arguing that what he wore was normal cycling attire.

“(We will) keep pedaling. I am an athlete who practices sailing, rowing and cycling. The clothes I’m wearing are sportswear,” T-24 quoted him as saying.

A petition campaign to try and get him reinstated has gathered more than 10,000 signatures, with supporters arguing that the governor was engaged in important work in Ardahan, promoting sports, youth activities and bicycle tourism, the opposition-leaning Halk TV reported.

In an emotional farewell to his supporters in Ardahan on Wednesday, Cicek said: “I believe that I have not let down those who vouched for me and stood by me throughout my journey until now. I believe that this is the greatest honor of all.”

As he left Ardahan, a province that borders both Armenia and Georgia, local cyclists accompanied his vehicle to send him off as a show of support, Halk TV reported.

Nacho Sánchez Amor, a member of the European Parliament from Spain who serves as the rapporteur on Turkey, expressed support for Cicekli and suggested Alp was promoting the ruling party’s “Islamist conservative agenda.”

Germany has deported a Uyghur man to China where there are concerns he could be detained as a member of an ethnic group that has been targeted by the Chinese government, his mother told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Arafat Adil, 21, a dual Chinese-Turkish national who has lived in Turkey with his family since they moved there from China in 2017 and who was seeking asylum in Germany, was deported from the Frankfurt Airport on Tuesday, said his mother, Guzelay Adil.

Arafat Adil landed Wednesday morning in Beijing where he was taken into custody and interrogated, Guzelay Adil said. She said she was hoping her son would be allowed to board a flight to Istanbul around midnight on Thursday. “I don’t know what would happen if my son doesn’t return to Turkey,” Guzelay Adil said from Istanbul in an interview. “I hope to see my child again.”

Authorities in Germany and China did not immediately confirm Arafat Adil’s deportation.

Word of the deportation raised concerns among Uyghur rights activists due to China’s yearslong campaign of assimilation in Xinjiang, its far western region that is home to over 11 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. In 2017, Beijing began a campaign of mass detention and alleged forced labor in the region, which was the site of sporadic episodes of unrest over the past few decades.

“It’s heartbreaking to learn of another Uyghur being deported to China,” said Abduweli Ayup, founder of the Norway-based nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp. He added that the “bad example” set by Germany as a leading member of the European Union is causing Uyghurs to lose hope “inside and outside of China.”

The Interior Ministry of the State of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, did not immediately reply to an email from the AP requesting details about the deportation.

The German Interior Ministry said that in general there’s no suspension of deportations for Uyghurs to China but added that “however, the current guiding principle of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees provides that, as a rule, protection should be granted to Uyghurs in cases involving China as the country of origin.”

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about the case.

Arafat Adil’s family moved to Turkey in 2017, where he later obtained a Turkish passport in 2024, his mother said. She expressed confusion as to Germany’s decision to deport Arafat Adil to China instead of Turkey, as she said he held passports from both countries.

It was unclear on what grounds Arafat Adil was claiming asylum in Germany, which considers Turkey a safe country of origin.

Last November, Germany deported a Uyghur woman to China instead of Turkey after what government sources described to Der Spiegel magazine as a bureaucratic mix-up. The woman, Reziwanguli Baikeli, was only in Beijing for a short time before leaving for Turkey.

China has been pressuring other countries to deport Uyghurs who fled the country amid the detention campaign. In one of the most high-profile deportations to date, Thailand in February 2025 deported at least 40 Uyghurs to China.

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AP writer Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Donald Trump will be returning to an older Air Force One plane for about a month as the new, Qatari-gifted jet undergoes “additional upgrades and enhancements.”

Trump’s use of the new red, white and navy blue aircraft has faced much scrutiny not only because it was gifted by a foreign government, but also because it appears to not be equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as the older jets.

But it came under deeper scrutiny this month when he left the NATO summit in Turkey on the older, baby blue Air Force One and made a previously unscheduled stop at a base in the United Kingdom. Trump then swapped back onto the new Qatari-gifted plane at Royal Air Force Mildenhall.

“The new Air Force One is perfectly safe for the President’s travels, but will receive additional upgrades and enhancements in the fall which will take approximately one month to complete,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “During that time, the President will fly on the old Air Force One.”

The statement from Leavitt elaborated on a comment from the president as he returned to Washington on Sunday night, when he told reporters that the new plane will be sent to be “maxed out.”

Trump claimed earlier this month that the stop in the United Kingdom was so U.S. troops at Mildenhall could look at the new plane. He denied to reporters that the jet switch was due to security concerns, although he also said that he has a threat against him “all the time” and is Iran’s “No. 1” target.

NEW YORK (AP) — Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by trading its oil for gold will not spend any more time behind bars in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said at a hearing Tuesday he plans to sentence Zarrab to time already served. Prosecutors credited Zarrab with providing “truthful, complete and reliable” assistance to American investigators, including testifying that he paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Turkey to facilitate the sanctions-busting scheme.

Zarrab pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering. Before deciding to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in New York, he had faced the possibility of decades in prison.

Zarrab’s sentencing ends an operatic legal saga that generated diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Turkey and was closely watched by the Turkish public.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly disparaged the corruption allegations as a U.S. plot to “blackmail” Turkey, and lobbied the administrations of three U.S. presidents to halt the case.

Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both Democrats, declined to intervene. President Donald Trump — who has had a warm relationship with Erdogan — allowed the case to go forward in his first term. But this year, Trump’s Justice Department dropped its longtime effort to prosecute Halkbank, a state-run institution indicted in 2019 on charges that it helped Iran move $20 billion in sanctioned oil revenue.

Zarrab, who was born in Iran but was moved to Turkey with his family as a toddler, was initially arrested in 2013 as part of a sweeping anticorruption probe overseen by Turkish law enforcement officials — but he was quickly freed. Many of the police officers involved in the investigation were then purged from their jobs after Erdogan claimed it was a foreign plot orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Three years later, Zarrab was arrested in Miami after flying to the U.S. with his wife at the time, Turkish pop singer and TV personality Ebru Gundes, and their then-4-year-old daughter for a trip to Disney World.

Before he became a cooperator for the U.S. government, Zarrab hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to seek a diplomatic solution to the case. Erdogan publicly demanded Zarrab’s release.

Then, in 2017, came a twist: Zarrab secretly pleaded guilty to the charges, then appeared as a surprise witness at the U.S. trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla.

Zarrab testified he paid millions of dollars in bribes to government and banking officials in Turkey to help Iranians and their government evade U.S. sanctions. And he said that Erdogan, while he was Turkey’s prime minister in 2012, had given approval for two Turkish banks to participate in sham gold trades to enable Iran to get access to oil and gas revenue.

Atilla, who maintained that he was innocent, was convicted and sentenced to 32 months in prison. At the time, Erdogan called the verdict “scandalous.”

Zarrab was released from jail following the trial after saying he had been accosted by a knife-wielding inmate who threatened to kill him for cooperating with U.S. authorities.

In a pre-sentence memorandum submitted on Zarrab’s behalf, his lawyers said his life had changed dramatically since the trial. He got divorced from Gundes in 2021 and married a former Turkish national swimmer last year.

His attorneys said Zarrab was “destitute and heavily in debt” after his plea and cooperation, adding that his assets and his family’s assets have been seized by the Turkish government, costing his family’s businesses “many tens of millions of dollars in lost rental income.”

After his guilty plea, they added, Zarrab forfeited a $288,000 boat and $88,000 in cash to the U.S. government. He claimed he is $50 million in debt.

“Reza at long last should be allowed to rebuild his life,” his lawyers wrote. They said the prosecution and Turkey’s labeling of him as a traitor continue to haunt him, spoiling his efforts to build a horse farm in the U.S. and to appear in public without someone recognizing him and outing him on social media.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Justice has subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, marking a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump’s campaign against the media that has drawn condemnation for eroding a fundamental freedom of American democracy.

The new jet, a present from the U.S. ally that the administration spent $400 million on to retrofit and upgrade, entered service last week. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a NATO summit in Turkey and later referenced threats against him made by Iran.

The subpoenas seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next week, the Times said, adding that federal agents delivered some subpoenas to the reporters at their homes. The subpoenas were issued after FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department officials met at the White House on Friday to talk about the matter, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, the Times reported.

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.

Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Trump’s “war on the press is looking for another victim.”

He said in a statement that the subpoenas “break from longstanding Justice Department practice to protect the public interest and press independence by requiring prosecutors to only seek information from reporters as a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted.”

The department said that “to be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”

Its statement said “we value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but DOJ also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information, which means not sharing classified information.”

While recognizing “there may always be natural tension there,” the department said “we are not going to ignore the law and stop investigating the people who work in the administration and think it’s okay to leak classified information impacting national security.”

Part of a pattern of anti-press actions

Issuing subpoenas represents further ramping up of Trump’s effort to threaten independent new organizations by leveraging the power of the federal government against them. It is also part of a systematic pattern by the Republican president to attempt to undermine press freedom in order to shield him from negative coverage.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department issued subpoenas seeking to compel testimony from reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. In both cases, the department later withdrew the subpoenas, though.

In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, who has been covering Trump’s transformation of the federal government, as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information.

During his first term, Trump suggested that the press constituted an “enemy” of the American people. Since returning to the White House last year, he has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history.

Trump’s pattern of attacks against news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him has included filing lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikes, threatening to revoke TV broadcast licenses and seeking to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.

The Justice Department over the years has developed and revised internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.

Though the department across presidential administrations has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel reporters to reveal their sources before a grand jury.

In April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.

Doing so again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

A memo Bondi issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo stated.

Trump didn’t use his new Air Force One while leaving Turkey

The president flew the new Air Force One to Turkey during this week’s visit. But he departed Wednesday on one of the older-model Air Force One jets for Mildenhall, a Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, England.

The newer plane also flew to Mildenhall. Trump then switched to that plane for the flight home to Joint Base Andrews.

The abrupt swap came as a shaky ceasefire with Iran had collapsed, with the U.S. launching airstrikes on Iran and Tehran attacking three Gulf Arab states. Iran and Turkey share a border, sparking speculation that the new jet lacked certain sophisticated security and countermeasure systems.

The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported the switch had come at the urging of the Secret Service, and that the newer plane lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities.

Trump denied any security concerns, posting on social media that the stop in Mildenhall was so that service members there could view the new jet. During the flight, Trump denied to the reporters accompanying him that security concerns involving Iran were a factor in flying two planes home.

Still, asked if he was aware of any credible threats against Air Force One by Iran, Trump responded, “I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list.”

The White House later denied any security shortcomings

“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Cheung added that, “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal — including distraction and misdirection — to address those threats.”

The White House did not answer a message Saturday seeking comment about the subpoenas having been issued against Times journalists.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, Michelle L. Price and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.