ISTANBUL
The Anadolu Agency does not verify these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
Wednesday's dailies mainly focused on Tuesday's plane crash in southern France, which killed all passengers and crew on board.
"Disaster in the Alps" said SABAH, reporting that an Airbus A320 operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings low-cost airline crashed in southern France with 144 passengers and six crew members en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
HURRIYET ran with the headline: "It lasted eight minutes." The daily said the plane departed from Barcelona at 10.01 a.m. local time and reached its regular cruising altitude at 10:45 a.m. but one minute later it entered into a steep descent, which continued for eight minutes.
According to Germanwings’ CEO, the aircraft went through routine checks last Monday in Dusseldorf by its parent company Lufthansa. He also emphasized that the pilot had experience of at least 6,000 flight hours with Airbus models, and had been working for Germanwings and its parent company for 10 years.
He promised a full investigation to reveal the cause of the crash and said a team of experts from the airline, Lufthansa and Airbus had been sent to France.
"Apocalypse in eight minutes" was CUMHURIYET's title. The paper claimed that there were 67 Germans on the plane, including 16 high school students.
According to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, there were 45 passengers who had Spanish names.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in Ankara that, according to initial reports, Muradiye Lohmann, a woman of Turkish origin, was among the victims. He also said that another passenger named Yasmin could possibly be a Turkish citizen, but it had not yet been confirmed.
In other news, Turkish dailies also covered Prime Minister Davutoglu's remarks on a spat between Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc and Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek.
"‘They were both wrong’" was MILLIYET and HABERTURK's headline, quoting Davutoglu. According to the dailies, Davutoglu was unhappy at the public row ahead of June’s general elections.
"Any statement or argument that could tarnish party discipline and its reputation will be subject to necessary processes," he told reporters Tuesday in Turkey's central Konya province.
The prime minister promised to utilize disciplinary procedures to investigate those who "in this critical period where we are heading into elections, … make remarks or get into an argument so as to discredit our party in the eyes of the public…"
On Monday, Gokcek called upon Arinc to resign in a post on his Twitter account. He wrote: "Arinc could no more serve as the government spokesman or represent the party."
This came after a rumored "dispute" with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a government plan to create a team to monitor the "solution process," the government-led efforts to end decades-old conflict with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
In response, Arinc called the mayor's remarks "an impudent insult" personally directed at him in retaliation for objecting to Gokcek's candidacy during Turkey's March 2014 local elections.
