ANKARA (AFP) - President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said on Saturday that any backing down from Turkey’s strictly secular system is “unthinkable” in a message on the eve of the 83th anniversary of the proclamation of the republic. “The principle of secularism is the cornerstone of the transformation process” launched by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on October 29, 1923, when he proclaimed the Turkish Republic on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, Sezer said. “Making concessions about the gains and principles of the Turkish Republic is unthinkable,” he added. In a controversial practice, the president has refused to invite veiled women to a traditional October 29 reception in his palace, the top event on Ankara’s social calendar, since Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002.

ANKARA (AFP) - Three more people, among them a child, were killed in floods in Turkey’s impoverished mainly Kurdish southeast, raising the death toll to five, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. In the worst-hit province of Sanliurfa, a 19-year-old man drowned overnight as floods, caused by torrential rains since Friday, burst into the basement-floor flat of a residential building in the town of Ceylanpinar on the Syrian border. A second victim, whose details were not immediately known, perished in the nearby village of Yukari Karatas as the waters submerged a car carrying five other people. In Van province to the east, a 5-year-old girl was killed when the roof of a mud house collapsed under the heavy rain.

An Albanian Muslim student who refused to shave his beard was banned from attending courses at the university in the northwestern Albanian town of Durres, a television station reported Friday. Julian Mebelli, 20, told Top Channel that university officials had told him to shave off his beard or be expelled from his science courses. “Even Karl Marx, the father of the world economy, also had a beard and no one asked him to shave it off,” Mebelli said. (AFP)

Romania’s Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu has submitted a new nomination for the country’s representative on the European Commission, the government said in a statement. Tariceanu did not name the person, but local media citing lawmakers with the main ruling Liberal Party said it would be Deputy European Affairs Minister Leonard Orban, an independent who was chief negotiator for Romania in its dealings with the EU. The new proposal comes after Tariceanu’s initial nominee, Liberal Senator Varujan Vosganian, withdrew his candidacy on Saturday following media allegations that he had been an informant of the communist-era secret police, the Securitate. (AP)