Flag carriers of Turkey and Armenia have applied to operate flights between İstanbul and Yerevan, Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu has said.

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank has reduced the policy rate from 15 percent to 14 percent. Following the policy rate cut, Turkish Lira has crashed to a new low and the USD exchange rate has hit 15.61 TRY.

Ahead of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting of the Central Bank today, December 16, the depreciation of the Turkish Lira has continued amid expectations that the policy rate will be cut further.

According to a Presidential decision published in the Official Gazette, Vice Ministers of Treasury and Finance Şakir Ercan Gül and Mehmet Hamdi Yıldırım have been dismissed; Mahmut Gürcan and Yunus Elitaş have been appointed in their place.

Minister of Health Koca has also announced the number of COVID-19 cases per 100 thousand people by provinces in the week of November 27 - December 3, 2021.

Nationalist Movement Party Chair Devlet Bahçeli has slammed Prof. İzzet Özgenç, who argued that “a State of Emergency might be declared in Turkey due to the economic crisis.” He has dismissed the allegation as “unwariness and ignorance.”

Taking the floor during the 2022 budget talks at the General Assembly of the Parliament, main opposition CHP Vice Chair Biçer-Karaca has said that the proposed budget “is not the nation’s budget, as alleged by the AKP, but is a budget of plot.”

The HDP, DBP and Peace Mothers have made a statement for the press in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority Diyarbakır province and raised concerns about the increasing violations of rights in the country’s prisons and the situation of ill prisoners.

Opposition İYİ Party Antep MP Filiz has talked about the universities’ budgets in Turkey. According to Filiz, the budget of the University of Oxford was 3.3 billion dollars in 2021 while that of Boğaziçi University was 45 million dollars.

The Ministry of Health has announced that over 357 thousand tests were conducted, 19,872 people were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and 193 people died of the disease in Turkey in the last 24 hours.

"Afrin has become a center of looting, robbery, rape and ethnic cleansing," MP Uca has said.

The movie "More the Merrier" was "based on a fiction in which homosexuality, incest relationships and swinging are intensely experienced" and was against "general morality," according to RTÜK.

A law professor close to the president suggested that "we should be prepared for a state of emergency due to the economic crisis." Economics Mustafa Sönmez has commented about the issue.

Halil Güneş was in treatment for lung and bone cancer. While a public hospital issued a report noting that “he was not in a state to stay in prison”, the Forensic Medicine Institution’s report indicated that “he could stay in prison”. Güneş has died in prison.

According to lawyer Jiyan Tosun, a confidentiality order has been imposed on both the file of the investigation into her complaint about “maltreatment” and the file of the investigation into her death. The lawyers will appeal against both orders.

HDP İstanbul MP Ersoy has submitted a Parliamentary question to Vice President Fuat Oktay and asked him about the sexual abuse of seven children at a boarding Quran course in Turkey’s eastern province of Erzurum.

Ahead of the leaders’ summit, the General Affairs Council, which coordinates preparations for European Council meetings, has approved the Council conclusions on enlargement, stabilization and association process.

"We use too much water in agriculture with wild irrigation methods. We focus on sectors with high water consumption such as thermal power plants," says Prof. Tolunay.

The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) called a one-day strike in protest against the withdrawal of the legislative proposal foreseeing improvements in the employee personal rights of health workers. Several unions have supported today's strike.

Hrant Dink Foundation will hold an online talk on how discrimination spreads on social media through algorithms. Susan Benesch, founding director of Dangerous Speech Project, will discuss the issue; the talk will be moderated by Yasemin Giritli İnceoğlu.