LONDON: Former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman faced widespread ridicule after claiming in a radio interview that she visited a land border between Italy and Turkiye — two countries separated by hundreds of kilometers.

Speaking on LBC Radio on Thursday morning, Braverman, known for her hardline anti-immigration stance, described visiting what she said was a wall built by Italy to stem migration.

“Italy have reinforced their borders. They built a wall. I went to see that wall,” she said.

“They built a wall on the land border between Italy and Turkey. They’ve got drones. They’ve got armored vehicles. They’ve got soldiers. The numbers crossing that border have plummeted.”

The statement quickly went viral, with social media users and public figures mocking the former Home Secretary for referencing a non-existent border.

Italy and Turkiye, located in southern Europe and western Asia respectively, share no land border.

Former Conservative MP Sir Michael Take responded sarcastically, suggesting that people were overreacting and quipping that Braverman should have claimed that “Italy had built (a wall) on its border with Syria.”

How easy of you all to leap on poor Suella Braverman for a simple slip of the tongue.
She didn’t mean to say the wall Italy built on its border with Turkey.
She was talking about the wall Italy had built on its border with Syria.
Show Suella some respectpic.twitter.com/ToLZImF7cH

— Sir Michael Take CBE (@MichaelTakeMP) January 2, 2025

Food critic Jay Rayner also shared the clip, jokingly asking: “And is this wall ‘on the land border between Italy and Turkey’ with you in the room right now?”

Others criticized the apparent ignorance displayed by a senior politician who once held responsibility for national security and immigration.

Portuguese journalist and political commentator Bruno Macaes commented on X: “How did we get to a point where British politics is a global laughing stock?”

British politician, former cabinet minister says she went to see the Italy-Turkey border. How did we get to a point where British politics is a global laughing stock? pic.twitter.com/MHvNvSqOAz

— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) January 2, 2025

Following the backlash, Braverman attempted to clarify her remarks, admitting on X that she had misspoken.

“And, obviously I meant Greece’s land border with Turkey which I was honoured to visit,” she wrote.

BUDAPEST: Five-time Olympic champion Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest living Olympic gold medallist and a survivor of the persecution of Jews in World War Two, died at the age of 103 on Thursday, the Hungarian Olympic Committee said.
Born as Agnes Klein in Budapest on Jan. 9, 1921, Keleti joined the National Gymnastics Association in 1938 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940, only to be banned from all sports activities that year because of her Jewish origin.
“Agnes Keleti is the greatest gymnast produced by Hungary, but one whose life and career were intertwined with the politics of her country and her religion,” the International Olympic Committee said in a profile on its website.
The HOC said Keleti escaped deportation to Nazi death camps, where hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed, by hiding in a village south of Budapest with false papers. Her father and several relatives died in the Auschwitz death camp.
She won her first gold at the Helsinki games in 1952 aged 31, when most gymnasts had long been retired, the HOC said.
Keleti reached the peak of her career in Melbourne in 1956, where she won four gold medals and became the oldest female gymnast to win gold, the HOC said. A year later Keleti settled in Israel, where she married and had two children.
Her 10 Olympic medals, including five golds, rank Keleti as the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time, the HOC said. She has also received multiple Hungarian state awards.