ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told ruling party members to boycott media that are critical of the government in a row that raises questions about press freedom in the EU candidate. Erdogan has over the past weeks clashed with Turkey’s largest media group Dogan Yayin over its reports of alleged corruption. The government denies any corruption links and accuses Dogan of waging a slander campaign against it. “In this country the media has lost its credibility. So I say to you, members of the party, start a campaign against the media which publishes false news and do not take these papers to your homes,” Erdogan said in televised remarks to his Justice and Development Party late on Thursday. “Are you carrying false campaigns based on lies against us? That’s OK. Now we use our most natural rights and start a campaign against you and won’t buy your papers,” he said, in an apparent reference to Dogan Yayin.

SKOPJE (AFP) – The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s (FYROM) biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats, elected Zoran Zaev as its new leader after one of its worst poll defeats earlier this year, the MIA news agency reported yesterday. Zaev, 35, replaces Radmila Sekerinska, who has struggled to overcome infighting and divisions in the Social Democratic Union (SDSM) following the June parliamentary elections. He was elected unopposed at a meeting of party chiefs late Thursday night, according the state-run news agency. Zaev, the former mayor in the southeastern town of Strumica, was arrested in July over alleged links to organized crime. His detention caused the Social Democrats to boycott parliament until he was pardoned by FYROM President Branko Crvenkovski, also an SDSM member. The Social Democrats suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE party in the June 1 polls, securing only 27 deputies in the 120-seat parliament.

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Turkish shares surged by 12.89 percent yesterday after four days of losses, boosted by US plans to keep the global financial crisis from deepening. The national index on the Istanbul stock exchange rose by 4,153.73 points to close the day at 36,370.16 points. The index had lost 13.01 percent since Monday when the bankruptcy of US investment bank Lehman Brothers sent world markets tumbling.

Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu has proposed closing Bucharest’s No 2 commercial airport and moving all its flights to the capital’s main one. Tariceanu said Thursday that the change would end noise and street traffic problems around Baneasa Airport, which is located in Bucharest, near where the bulk of the capital’s business and residential development has occurred in recent years. He told reporters that Henri Coanda Airport, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) north of the city center, could easily handle all Baneasa’s flights, including its many low-cost ones. He asked Transportation Minister Ludovic Orban to facilitate the move but did not indicate when it could happen. (AP)

The largest Salvador Dali exhibition outside Spain opens today in Istanbul with 269 works by the Catalan surrealist and photos, movies and manuscripts shedding light on his life and artistic journey. Selected by the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, the 33 paintings, 113 drawings, 111 engravings and 12 lithographs will be on display until January 20 at the Sakip Sabanci Museum, on the banks of the Bosporus. The retrospective retraces Dali’s artistic journey, from his first canvases depicting the countryside of Figueras, where he was born in 1904 and died in 1989. (AFP)