World Bulletin / News Desk

Turkish dailies on Thursday covered the sentencing of a teacher involved in child sexual abuse to over 500 years in prison.

According to the daily HURRIYET, a local court sentenced a 54-year-old teacher to 508 years and three months in prison Wednesday on charges of sexually assaulting 10 male schoolchildren.

“Judgment in one session: 508-year three months in jail” was SABAH’s headline.

According to the newspaper, the convict, Muharrem Buyukturk, was secretly brought to a court building early morning. MILLIYET declared “exemplary punishment for [the] pervert.”

The Karaman Public Prosecutor’s Office had demanded 600 years in prison for Buyukturk, who was arrested on March 13.

YENISAFAK, HABERTURK, STAR, VATAN and AKSAM ran similar front-page headlines.

In other news, the dailies covered the end of an anti-PKK operation in southeastern Hakkari province’s Yuksekova district, which began on March 14.

MILLIYET’s headline read: “Operation in Yuksekova concluded.”

The daily wrote that security forces had neutralized 196 terrorists, removed 214 barricades and defused 286 hand-made explosives in the operations.

YENISAFAK wrote “Yuksekova cleared”, VATAN ran “Cleared in 36 days”, "Yuksekova okay” was HABERTURK’s headline, while HURRIYET chose “Operation in Yuksekova ended”.

HURRIYET said the curfew in the district would continue until all explosives were defused.

The PKK – also seen as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU – resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, over 400 security personnel, including troops, police officers and village guards have been martyred and more than 3,700 PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.

In economics news, financial newspaper DUNYA reported the Turkish Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee cutting its overnight lending rate by 50 base points, which dropped to 10.00.

The one-week repo rate, which is the rate at which banks borrow from the central bank for one-week terms, was kept at 7.5 percent, in the first such move under its new Governor, Murat Cetinkaya.