Yemen prime minister quits, replaced by foreign minister

Prime Minister Salim Saleh BinBuriek met Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad Al-Alimi. (SUPPLIED)
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Updated 16 January 2026
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Yemen prime minister quits, replaced by foreign minister

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: The prime minister of Yemen has been replaced by his foreign minister after the premier submitted the government’s resignation, the country’s Saudi-backed presidential body said.
Prime Minister Salim Saleh BinBuriek met Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad Al-Alimi and “submitted the government’s resignation to pave the way for the formation of a new government,” a statement published by official news agency Saba said late Thursday.
The presidential council posted on state media that foreign minister “Dr. Shaya Mohsen Zindani is appointed Prime Minister and tasked with forming the government.”
The statement published on Saba cited “efforts to restore state institutions, strengthen the unity of sovereign decision-making” and “defeating the coup” as reasons for the premier’s resignation.
The current government will continue to manage affairs, excluding appointments and dismissals, until the new government is formed, the presidential council added.


Turkiye’s Kurdish party says Syria deal leaves Ankara ‘no excuses’ on peace process

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Turkiye’s Kurdish party says Syria deal leaves Ankara ‘no excuses’ on peace process

ANKARA: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party said on Monday that the Turkish government had no more “excuses” to delay a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) now that a landmark integration deal was achieved in neighboring Syria.
On Sunday in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to come under the control of authorities in Damascus — a move that Ankara had long sought as integral to ‌its own peace ‌effort with the PKK. “For more than a ‌year, ⁠the ​government ‌has presented the SDF’s integration with Damascus as the biggest obstacle to the process,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-leader of the DEM Party, told Reuters, in some of the party’s first public comments on the deal in Syria.
“The government will no longer have any excuses left. Now it is the government’s turn to take concrete steps.” Bakirhan cautioned President Tayyip Erdogan’s ⁠government against concluding that the rolling back Kurdish territorial gains in Syria negated the need ‌for a peace process in Turkiye. “If the ‍government calculates that ‘we have weakened ‍the Kurds in Syria, so there is no longer a ‍need for a process in Turkiye,’ it would be making a historic mistake,” he said in the interview.
Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could
advance the more than year-long process with the ​PKK, which is based in northern Iraq. Erdogan urged
swift integration of Kurdish fighters into Syria’s armed forces. Turkiye, the strongest ⁠foreign backer of Damascus, has since 2016 repeatedly sent forces into northern Syria to curb the gains of the SDF — which after the 2011–2024 civil war had controlled more than a quarter of Syria while fighting Islamic State with strong US backing.
The United States has built close ties with Damascus over the last year and was closely involved in mediation between it and the SDF toward the deal.
Bakirhan said progress required recognition of Kurdish rights on both sides of the border.
“What needs to be done is clear: Kurdish rights must be recognized ‌in both Turkiye and Syria, democratic regimes must be established, and freedoms must be guaranteed,” he said.