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Turkey was shocked by the murder of a musician at a nightclub in Ankara on Sunday in which some employees from a state ministry and a public agency were allegedly involved, according to Turkish media reports.

Musician Onur Şener, 45, was seriously injured, allegedly by a group of customers, at a nightclub in Ankara’s Çankaya district following a row that erupted over a song request. He later succumbed to his injuries at a hospital.

The dispute reportedly erupted when Şener told the customers that he didn’t know the song they requested him to sing.

Haluk Levent, a Turkish rock star and human rights activist, on Monday revealed in a series of tweets that the people who killed Şener, a father of two, were bureaucrats from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security whom he identified as ALİ G. and İLKER K. in addition to Semih S., an engineer at Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).

“I’m even more shocked [now that I found out] they smashed Onur’s face with [broken] glass,” Levent added. Five people were detained in connection to the musician’s murder. Three of the suspects, two bureaucrats and an engineer at TAI, were arrested, while two other suspects were released under judicial supervision on Monday.

The development sparked outrage among celebrities and social media users in Turkey, who criticized the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for its policy of impunity for public servants.

“The killers beat and killed Onur Şener because he didn’t know the song they requested! At the end of the night, they waited for him to come out of the bar and ambushed him. It doesn’t matter what we write or say. We should be ashamed at where this country has come to,” Turkish actor Mert Fırat said.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Turkey on Sunday to condemn Iran’s crackdown on women-led demonstrations sparked by a young woman’s death after her arrest by the country’s notorious morality police, Agence France-Presse reported.

In İstanbul, many Iranians were among the hundreds of people who chanted slogans against the Tehran regime and in support of Iranian women.

Women held red roses, Iranian flags and signs bearing the words “women, life, freedom”, the battle cry of the protest movement that has rocked Iran and was triggered last month by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd.

In Diyarbakır, a southeastern city with a majority Kurdish population, around 200 people gathered brandishing photographs of Iranian women killed in the crackdown and a large banner with the slogan “women, life, freedom” in Kurdish, an AFP correspondent reported.

A demonstration in solidarity with Iranian women attended by hundreds of people was also held in the western city of İzmir on Saturday evening, according to images published on social media and verified by AFP.

At least 92 people have been killed in Iran since the start of the protests two weeks ago, Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said on Sunday.

Female filmmakers in Turkey have released a video in which they express solidarity with Iranian women rising up to demand freedom as they protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” local media reported on Thursday.

Arrested by the morality police, who enforce strict rules in the Islamic Republic requiring women to cover their hair and wear loose-fitting clothes in public, for allegedly wearing the hijab improperly, Amini suffered a heart attack, fell into a coma and died on Sept. 16 while in custody, state-affiliated media claimed.

Her family insists she had no previous health problems, and activists claim she may have been beaten by police.

The death of Amini, a Kurdish woman from western Iran, has sparked outrage over the government’s increasingly strict enforcement of an ultraconservative dress code for women, compulsory since Iran’s 1979 revolution, with Iranian women demanding an end to gender-based injustice and state-sanctioned violence by cutting their hair and removing and even burning their hijabs in public.

In response, the Iranian government has shut down the internet and used excessive force. Iranian authorities have beaten people with batons, fired live ammunition at protesters from close range and wrongfully employed tear gas and water cannons, killing at least 76 protestors and arresting hundreds more, according to Amnesty International.

A number of female filmmakers in Turkey who created Instagram and Twitter accounts named “Stand with Women of Iran – Turkey,” on Thursday posted a video in which they voiced their support for protesters in Iran, saying, “For freedom, for our sisters, at all costs, revolt! We are together in this resistance for freedom, we are with you.”

Biz Türkiyeli kadın sinemacılar olarak İranlı kadınlarla ve İran halklarıyla dayanışma içinde olduğumuzu ilan ediyor, özgürlük ve eşitlik için hep bir ağızdan haykırıyoruz.#kadınyaşamözgürlük pic.twitter.com/IOgitrX9ES

— Stand with Women of Iran – Turkey (@IDayanisma) September 28, 2022

The group also invited all women in Turkey, regardless of profession, to shoot and post similar videos to express solidarity with Iranian women so they can tell “our friends who are resisting on the streets of Iran” that they are not alone and contribute to the voices being heard all over the world.

The Turkish women’s video came after Iranian filmmakers Bahman Ghobadi and Asghar Farhadi called for the support and participation of the creative community, including artists, filmmakers, writers and civil rights activists from all over the world, in the protests of Iranian women by making videos, in writing or some other way.

Turkish filmmakers also signed a petition written in Turkish, Kurdish and English and titled “Open call from filmmakers” in which they said, “We bow respectfully before the honorable stance of the [Iranian] people who risk death while resisting for their rights. … We are with you.”

Turkey’s pop music diva, Sezen Aksu, also released a written message on her website to voice her support for the protestors, according to Turkish media reports.

“How many deaths does freedom require? How many women, how many children, how many fights, how many wars, how many tortures, how many hells? … Your pain is my pain, your struggle is my struggle,” she said.

Since the death of Amini, Iranian women in Turkey have staged numerous protests outside Tehran’s İstanbul consulate. Another such demonstration was held on Thursday, with Iranian women holding photos of Amini and shouting “Death to the dictator” and “Damn the Iranian government.” They also burned black hijabs during the protest.

Members from Turkey’s women’s rights organization the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu) also marched from the İstanbul Governor’s Office to the consulate in support of the Iranian protestors and made a statement to the press.

“Don’t think that Iran is too far from us. We will [also] fight, we will stop this course of events. …We will resist until the end,” they said.

Turkey’s Justice Ministry is seeking the extradition of an investigative journalist living in exile in Germany from where he reports extensively on the Turkish government’s corruption and murky relations with mafia and crime groups, according to a Friday report in the pro-government Sabah daily.

Journalist Cevheri Güven, who makes scandalous revelations about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his close circle as well as some journalists and opposition figures in his YouTube videos, recently came to public attention after the Sabah daily on its Sept. 22 front page published secretly taken photos of him while walking on the street and revealed his address in a German city.

Sabah reported on Friday that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the Security Directorate General jointly found out Güven’s location in Germany and that the Justice Ministry sent a request in August to the German authorities seeking the journalist’s extradition based on arrest warrant issued by the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court.

Sabah’s Friday story contradicted its earlier report, which said the daily’s news coordinator Abdurrahman Şimşek secretly followed Güven for several months in Germany until he found out his address and took the photos of him and his house.

Güven told Turkish Minute at the time he believed MİT was behind the search for him and that it was due to one of his videos in early September in which he questioned MİT’s role in a failed coup in Turkey in July 2016 following which Erdoğan’s government launched a massive crackdown on outspoken journalists and non-loyalist citizens under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.

German media outlets also earlier reported that there were thousands of MİT agents operating in the country spying on Turkish dissidents who fled Turkey and took refuge in Germany in the aftermath of the coup attempt.

According to Sabah, Turkey is seeking Güven’s extradition on charges of membership in a terrorist organization, namely the Gülen movement.

The Gülen movement, inspired by the views of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, a resident of the US, is accused by the Turkish government and President Erdoğan of masterminding the failed coup on July 15, 2016 and is labeled a “terrorist organization,” although the movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

Güven is also accused of having downloaded the ByLock and Tango smart phone applications, which are considered by Turkish authorities to be secret tools of communication among Gülen followers, in addition to depositing money in Islamic lender Bank Asya, which was closed down by the government following the coup attempt due to its affiliation with the Gülen movement, according to Sabah.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in July 2021 in the case of a former police officer that use of the ByLock application is not an offense in itself and does not constitute sufficient evidence for an arrest.

Turkish authorities also consider acts such as subscribing to a Gülen-linked newspaper, having sent children to a Gülen-affiliated school or having worked at an organization associated with Gülen to be evidence of terrorist organization membership.

Güven has recently been facing growing pressure and threats from pro-government circles in Turkey as his videos continue to reach a large audience, even attracting more viewers than some mainstream news outlets in Turkey.

He fled Turkey following the coup attempt like thousands of other people to avoid the government’s post-coup crackdown as a part of which thousands of people have been sent to jail on bogus terrorism or coup charges.

Journalists who fled Turkey following the coup attempt such as Güven have established their own news outlets and have become the major source of news for some Turks in a country where 90 percent of the national media is owned by pro-government businessmen who toe the official line, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Güven, a former editor of the now-defunct Nokta magazine, along with the magazine’s managing editor, Murat Çapan, was handed down a prison sentence of 22 years, six months in 2017 on charges of “inciting people to armed revolt against the Turkish government.”

The journalists were sentenced to prison due to two cover stories in Nokta that criticized Erdoğan for “capitalizing” on the death of soldiers in Turkey’s fight against terrorism.

Meanwhile, Turkey is also seeking the extradition of journalists and political dissidents who are living in exile in Sweden and Finland. Turkey is threatening to torpedo Sweden and Finland’s attempts to join Western defense alliance NATO unless these countries extradite dozens of people Ankara accuses of “terrorism.”

Kani Enön, a former police officer who was fired by an emergency decree as part of Turkey’s post-coup purge of state institutions, died last week while working at a quarry in Turkey’s northeastern province of Gümüşhane, the Kronos news website reported on Wednesday.

Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.

More than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 29,444 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.

According to Turkish media reports, Enön, 32, died on Sept. 20 when part of construction equipment he was repairing fell on him at a quarry belonging to Karatoprak Mining in Gümüşhane.

Enön’s lawyer, Mesut Can Tarım, on Wednesday commented on the incident in a series of tweets, saying that Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Turkey’s Security Directorate General, which is affiliated with the ministry, failed to reinstate Enön to his police job although an administrative court ordered them to do so.

A woman cut her hair on Wednesday as dozens of others cheered at a protest held outside Tehran’s İstanbul consulate in solidarity with Mahsa Amini, whose death in Iranian custody sparked mass unrest, Agence France-Presse reported.

Turkish and Iranian women outside the consulate brandished portraits of 22-year-old Amini, who died last week after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly wearing a headscarf in an “improper” way.

“We are all Mahsa Amini,” read one banner.

“Iranian women’s fight for freedom is our own fight. Long live our international solidarity!” another said.

Nasibe Samsaei, the Iranian woman who cut her hair outside the consulate, was following the example of other women who have joined protests across Iran, in which at least eight have died, according to official figures and human rights groups.

Several other Turkish women rights’ activists cut their hair in messages posted on Twitter.

“The women who resist in Iran will never walk alone,” one of the Twitter posts said.

A large police force was deployed outside the consulate, but the protest ended peacefully, according to an AFP photographer. Iran has a large diaspora in Turkey, which was estimated at 120,000 people in 2021.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong met with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on Tuesday local time, where she reaffirmed Australia’s support for the country, which was invaded by Russia in February.

Senator Wong said the war in Europe had “cast a shadow” over the annual meeting of the institution set up to ensure world peace in the wake of World War II.

“We all have an interest in the UN Charter being observed,” she said.

“That’s not an issue of wealthier countries or less wealthy countries, not an issue of developed or developing countries.

“All countries have an interest in territorial integrity being respected and the UN Charter being respected.”

On Twitter, Mr Kuleba confirmed Ukraine has requested more Bushmasters from Australia.

“There is always more we could do, and the government will continue to look at ways we can support the people of Ukraine,” Senator Wong said, stopping short of pledging further military aid.

The comments made on the sidelines of the gathering ahead of Australia’s national statement — which Senator Wong will deliver later in the week — demonstrate the delicate diplomacy at play.

The ABC has already confirmed officials are currently negotiating a separate meeting between Senator Wong and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as Australia and China try to normalise a strained relationship.

It will be the second meeting between the two ministers in the last 12 weeks.”I have made clear that we are open to engagement,” Senator Wong said.”I understand those arrangements are being finalised.”And if they are finalised, then I’m sure that we will have a productive engagement.”

One federal government source told the ABC on Wednesday morning that the meeting was another “positive sign” that China remained keen to pursue high level engagement with Australia, but stressed that there were still “big obstacles” to a full reset in the bilateral relationship.

The Defence Minister Richard Marles said the government had opted for a new “tone” with China but that Australia wouldn’t abandon its core national interests while holding the talks.

“What we are trying to do is stabilise the relationship with China. We’ve been trying to do that since the moment we came to power,” he told RN Breakfast.

“If a meeting does take place we can see it in the context of seeking to have that stabilisation take place.”