The 8th Seattle Turkish Film Festival will be screened online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The week-long event aims to give American movie lovers the chance to watch the best Turkish movies of 2019. Presenting four feature films to the American moviegoers this year, the STFF Shorts Committee also selected 10 short films to screen within the festival, including 3 Grand Jury favourites. The committee has been accepting short film submissions annually since 2014 and received 200+ submissions in 2020.

Turkey has turned to the U.S. courts to seek evidence against American charter schools it says are funding the activities of a dissident living in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government has asked federal judges in Ohio and Illinois to make the schools turn over a trove of documents on their expenditures and employees for a criminal investigation in Turkey. It alleges that the charters are using funds obtained through illicit schemes to help Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric it blames for an attempted military coup, run subversive operations back home.

Six people were charged in an elaborate “birth tourism” scheme that helped Turkish women secure U.S. citizenship for their children and cost American taxpayers upward of $2 million, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The alleged ringleaders, Sarah Kaplan and Ibrahim Aksakal, both residents of Long Island, New York, brazenly advertised their services on Turkish-language Facebook pages and websites with titles like “My baby should be born in America,” prosecutors said.

A manufacturer of automotive fluid circulation systems will establish its North American headquarters and a new manufacturing facility in Northwest Georgia, state officials announced. Teklas expects to invest $6.5 million in a vacant textile factory in Calhoun, Georgia, and create 120 new jobs. The Turkish company supplies components for heating and cooling systems — including metal, plastic, and rubber hoses and pipes — to automakers worldwide. The debut U.S. facility will join existing operations in Europe, China, and Mexico.