ISTANBUL – Turkey opened one of the world's largest bridges Friday designed to allow traffic to cross the Bosphorus Strait between Europe and Asia and ease congestion in Istanbul. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan oversaw a ceremony inaugurating the $3 billion Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, which is touted by its Turko-Italian developers as the world's broadest suspension bridge at 58.4 meters (192 feet) wide. The toll bridge, spanning 1,408 meters (4,620 feet) over the Bosphorus, features 10 lanes, including two rail lines. At 322 meters (1,056 feet), officials say the bridge's 322-meter (1,056-foot) towers are also the tallest in the world. It becomes Istanbul's third bridge spanning the strategic strait.
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan next week for the first time since the attempted coup in Turkey in July, the White House said Monday. Mr. Obama also will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for several hours in a session to review the status of U.S.-China relations, said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. The meetings will take place on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in China. 
Both justice and the U.S.-Turkish alliance require the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, said the co-chair of the Turkish-U.S. Interparliamentary Friendship Group on Friday. Ankara has said Gulen is the mastermind behind the defeated July 15 coup that martyred 240 people and injured around 2,200 others. "This alliance requires solidarity and responsibility. Extraditing the leader of this terror cult to Turkey will prove that the American commitment to this alliance is a bedrock: this is an assurance that Turkey’s society and political class at large needs to receive," Ali Sarikaya, an Istanbul deputy for the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, said in a guest op-ed for Middle East Monitor (MEMO), a press monitoring organization
Newly released Hillary Clinton emails show that two Turkish businessmen who are top lieutenants of a Turkish cleric living in the U.S. received help from the then secretary of state's aide Huma Abedin in 2009, The Daily Caller reports. Other emails released show that the two businessmen, Gokhan Ozkok and Recep Ozkan, were on the guest list for a June 2012 Clinton Foundation dinner held at Clinton's home. The series of emails from the two praise Clinton and emphasize that Turkish Americans believe in her friendship. They provide further evidence of the ties the two have fostered with Clinton over the years, at the same time they have worked for Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania and whom the Turkish government has demanded that the U.S. extradite.
