RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/turkeys-voters-stun-erdogan-stoking-his-ire/90635/

Turkish voters punished their ruling party in municipal elections over the weekend. That could be a good omen for America — unless the strategically crucial country has already drifted too far from Washington.

For the first time in a quarter-century, parties opposing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored major victories in local elections. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, lost eight major cities to secularist candidates. Especially stinging for the AKP were losses in the capital, ­Ankara, and in Istanbul, the country’s economic nerve center.

The Istanbul mayoralty was where Mr. Erdogan in 1994 launched his meteoric political career, one that has brought middle-class prosperity to millions of Turks — but at the price of the country’s democratic institutions and Western alliances.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-s-may-to-seek-talks-with-labour-further-brexit-extension-11554226292

LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May made an about-face in her Brexit strategy Tuesday by saying she would pursue a different deal with the opposition Labour Party, an approach that could keep the country more closely bound to the European Union than she previously envisioned.

Following a marathon seven-hour cabinet meeting, Mrs. May outlined plans to request a short extension of Brexit negotiations, ideally no longer than to May 22, to give the government time to hammer out an agreement with Labour and avoid leaving the bloc without a deal to smooth the U.K.’s exit.

“It requires national unity to deliver the national interest,” she said during a televised speech from inside her Downing Street residence.

The plan, which will likely lead to a softening of her Brexit deal, marks a last-hour roll of the dice for Mrs. May as she tries to find a path out of the Brexit logjam that has dominated her tenure.

After months of trying to appease euroskeptics in her Conservative Party, Mrs. May is now looking to lure opposition lawmakers instead. The Labour Party has pushed for the U.K. to remain in a customs union with the EU, a significantly different vision for Brexit than Mrs. May has espoused.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-rebuke-for-turkeys-strongman-11554247334

After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan easily won re-election amid a currency and debt crisis last year, it seemed nothing could loosen his grip on Turkish politics. The results of Sunday’s local elections are welcome evidence that the strongman isn’t invincible.

Mr. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) received perhaps its biggest rebuke since coming to power in 2002. Preliminary results show AKP controlling 39 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, down from 48. More significant, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won the mayoral election in the capital city Ankara. The opposition also leads a tight race in Istanbul, where Mr. Erdoğan launched his political career as mayor in 1994.

An AKP-led alliance still won about 52% of the overall vote, while the biggest opposition coalition trailed with some 38%. But this is an embarrassment for the president who held dozens of rallies and effectively made the local elections a referendum on his rule.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13995/china-third-reich

China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, demands that the five recognized religions — official recognition is a control mechanism — “Sinicize.” The Chinese, as a part of this ruthless and relentless effort, are destroying mosques and churches, forcing devout Muslims to drink alcohol and eat pork, inserting Han officials to live in Muslim homes, and ending religious instruction for minors.

In recent years, there have been many ugly portrayals of Africans in Chinese media, and although the skit last year was not the worst, it was striking because the main state broadcaster, by airing it to about 800 million viewers, made it clear Chinese officials think of Africans as both objects of derision and subhuman.

Concentration camps, racism, eugenics, ambitions of world domination. Sound familiar?

There is a new Third Reich, and it is China.

More than a million people, for no reason other than their ethnicity or religion, are held in concentration camps in what Beijing calls the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and what traditional inhabitants of the area, the Uighurs, say is East Turkestan. In addition to Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs are also held in these facilities.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/turkey-ukraine-and-israel-an-electoral-comparison/

Israelis across the political spectrum have been talking a lot lately about “fearing” the results of the April 9 elections. This is not only preposterous when contrasted with the situation in Turkey, but also reeks of ingratitude towards Israeli democracy.

Ahead of next week’s Knesset elections, Israelis disgusted with the ugliness of the current campaign would do well to consider the results of Sunday’s ballots in Turkey and Ukraine.

Let’s began with the latter, as a bit of comic relief—in this case, literally—is always welcome. Yes, the person who garnered the majority of votes in Ukraine’s presidential election is comedic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, the star of a popular TV series about a schoolteacher who becomes president as a result of a rant against corruption that goes viral on YouTube. Apparently, his performance on “Servant of the People” was so convincing that it caused the public to want him in the role for real.