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A police officer blocks the street after an explosion on busy pedestrian Istiklal street in Istanbul, Turkey.
Hard Numbers: Istanbul’s explosion, FTX’s downfall, Ukraine’s win in Kherson, Terminal 2F’s farewell
6: At least 6 people were killed and dozens were wounded on Sunday when an explosion rocked a busy district in central Istanbul, Turkey. The cause remains unknown, but the same location was the target of a 2016 suicide attack carried out by an Islamic State affiliate.
900 million: FTX, the major crypto exchange that filed for bankruptcy and is being investigated for potential financial crimes, held just $900 million in saleable assets against a whopping $9 billion of liabilities. Headed by crypto megastar Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX has been accused of unethical business practices. Meanwhile, its downfall has sent crypto and stock markets into a tailspin.
8: For eight months, residents of Kherson – the only provincial capital held by the Russians – were living under the Kremlin’s control, but the province is now firmly in Ukrainian hands after an embarrassing Russian retreat wrapped up over the weekend. Still, Ukrainian authorities have much work to do to restore electricity, water access, and medical supplies in the province.
18: Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who made Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport his home for 18 years, died at the airport’s Terminal 2F on Saturday. Nasseri, whose story inspired the film "The Terminal" starring Tom Hanks, was granted refugee status in France and lived at a hostel for a period but recently returned to the airport where he died.
What We're Watching: Poland ditches ban on foreign media, Somalia's power struggle, Erdogan vs Istanbul
Poland backs down on contentious media law. Poland’s populist President Andrzej Duda has vetoed a law that would have barred companies outside of the European Economic Area from owning a stake in Polish media corporations. Critics say the now-nixed law was aimed at silencing US-owned news channel TVN24, which has covered Warsaw’s increasing authoritarian tendencies in recent years. Indeed, Washington was blindsided on December 17 when Poland’s parliament adopted the new law, saying it violates a trade and economic agreement between the two countries. Duda’s ruling Law and Justice Party, meanwhile, which heads one of Europe’s most “illiberal” governments, says the legislation was not aimed at ally Washington, but rather at freezing out hostile actors – like Russia – from its media ecosystem. Duda has been in a tight spot: the nationalist leader previously said he supported the proposed legislation, but he has clearly decided that a deepening row with Washington amid rising inflation and a COVID spike at home is not worth the headache.
Somali president and PM clash. The president of Somalia on Monday moved to depose the country’s prime minister as part of an escalating struggle for power that could plunge the fragile East African country into chaos. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed accuses PM Mohammed Hussein Roble of stealing land from the armed forces. The PM, meanwhile, says this is a bogus charge intended to halt ongoing parliamentary elections. Earlier this year, President Mohamed’s attempt to extend his term by two years provoked a violent backlash. He walked that back as part of a tenuous power-sharing agreement with PM Roble, which included a plan to hold fresh elections by the end of 2021. But so far, those elections — run under a complex system in which traditional elders select parliamentary delegates to elect the president — have been only partially completed. The clash between the country’s two most powerful men, who hail from rival clans, threatens to split the country’s armed forces and other security services. The powerful jihadist militants of al-Shabaab, meanwhile, who have waged war on the Somali government since 2007, are happy to have a distraction than can help them carry out deadly attacks. The big loser in this drama are the six million Somalis (roughly a third of the population) who the UN warns “urgently need humanitarian support.”
Turkey launches terror probe of Istanbul city employees. The Turkish government is investigating whether more than 400 employees of the Istanbul municipal government have ties to terrorist or militant groups. Tensions between Istanbul and the national government have run particularly high since 2019, when popular opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu defeated the candidate of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party in mayoral elections. And since a failed 2016 coup, Erdogan's government has jailed or removed tens of thousands of officials across the country for alleged ties to militant or religious groups that are at odds with Ankara. Critics of Erdogan’s government say the Istanbul terrorism probe is meant to weaken Mayor Imamoglu, who is seen as a potential rival to the increasingly unpopular Erdogan in 2023 presidential elections. And here, in case you missed it, is Signal's imaginary look at President Erdogan’s seemingly crazy economic policies… from his own perspective.
Turkey without friends
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made a lot of foreign governments really mad. Let's call the roll.
Europe. The EU is angry that Turkey is drilling for oil in the eastern Mediterranean, and NATO is furious that member Turkey has defied its protests to purchase S-400 missiles from Russia. Erdogan has repeatedly rejected pushback from EU leaders by calling them fascists and Islamophobes.
Just this week, Erdogan refused to express sympathy with France following the beheading of a French schoolteacher by an Islamist extremist, attacked Macron's own response to the murder, suggested the French president needed "some sort of mental treatment," and countered Macron's vow to crack down on Islamist radicals with calls for a boycott of French products.
US. Last weekend, Erdogan confirmed that Turkey has tested those Russian S-400 missiles, and dared the US to impose sanctions. The Turkish leader has few remaining friends in Washington, and if Joe Biden is elected president and Democrats win a Senate majority, US sanctions become much more likely. "You do not know who you are playing with," said Erdogan last Sunday.
Russia. Vladimir Putin likes to engage Turkey, if only to upset NATO leaders, but he doesn't like that Turkey actively opposes Russian proxies and allies in Syria, Libya, and the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia expressed its displeasure earlier this week by bombing a Syrian rebel camp in Idlib, the last stronghold of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition on Turkey's border.
Saudi Arabia. Longtime rival Saudi Arabia is taking aim at Turkey too. Broad disagreements over the proper role of Islam in politics and specific issues like disputes over the murder in Istanbul of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have created plenty of bad blood between Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
Aware that Turkey's economy is in bad shape, the Saudi government has made clear to its business community that it wants a total boycott of Turkish goods into the kingdom. The boycott remains unofficial, and latest economic statistics don't yet show a big impact on Saudi imports, but the push will likely continue, and Turkish companies will feel the heat.
China. Perhaps aware that Turkey will need at least one deep-pocketed friend, Erdogan has been uncharacteristically restrained in his criticism of China for forcing one million Turkic Muslim Uighurs into internment camps in China's Xinjiang region. But even here, Erdogan's government can't completely overlook such a large-scale crime against Muslims, and Turkey's foreign ministry expressed its "concerns" earlier this month.
Turkey's economy is hurting. Erdogan's economic policies are creating turmoil too, and Turkey's people are now suffering real economic pain. Inflation and unemployment are rising. The coronavirus has taken a toll. The currency has hit historic lows against the dollar.
Maybe Erdogan believes that picking fights with foreigners will appeal to national pride and divert public attention from these hardships. It fits the neo-Ottoman image he has worked to build of Turkey as a strong and independent actor on the world stage.
But a strong Turkey needs a strong economy, and the health of that economy depends on both trade and foreign funding. In a moment of economic crisis, new sanctions and boycotts aren't going to help.
The big questions: How much economic pain will Erdogan accept before he becomes less combative with those who have the power to hurt him? And how long before he pays a heavier political price at home?
Coronavirus Politics Daily: Unrest in Paris' suburbs, Turkey's coverup, and immigration to the US on hold
Riots in Paris' suburbs: Low-income suburbs on the outskirts of Paris have long been flashpoints of unrest over racial and economic inequality. This week, youths living in districts north of France's capital lit cars on fire and aimed fireworks at police in protest against stay-at-home measures, now in their sixth week, aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Police said that a traffic accident involving a policeman and a motorcyclist, who was critically injured in the crash, was likely the impetus for the uptick in violence. The riots in Paris' suburbs, known as banlieues, are perhaps a grim sign of what's to come in many countries where low-income families are now jammed together in crowded apartments with little reprieve, and where stay-at-home orders have disrupted jobs in the informal economy that many of these residents rely on to put food on the table.
Turkey's COVID-19 cover-up? After Turkey's government claimed for weeks that it had the coronavirus pandemic under control, the country has now surpassed China with the most coronavirus cases outside the US and Europe. Turkish authorities announced the first death from COVID-19 in Istanbul on March 17, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has avoided enforcing a national lockdown in order to keep parts of the economy open – has said that his government's swift actions to close some businesses and schools in mid-March curbed the disease's spread. But an investigation by The New York Times suggests that the death rate in Istanbul, home to some 16 million people, was 50 percent higher than the city's weekly average in early April. And a breakdown of data in large cities including Istanbul and Izmir suggests that a government cover-up and lack of testing contributed to the small number of reported COVID-19 cases in Turkey. The country's economy was already cratering before the pandemic hit, suffering record levels of unemployment, and Erdogan knows that further economic turmoil – and failure to limit the number of coronavirus-related deaths – would be ruinous for his presidency.
Trump halts immigration: President Trump announced via tweet on Monday that he would temporarily halt immigration into the United States to "protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens" in response to COVID-19. The president's critics will charge that he's scapegoating foreigners for something that isn't their fault, and trying to change the subject from his own perceived failures and falling poll numbers. The president's supporters will ask why some want to shut down the country's economy but not its borders, and why Trump should be attacked for something that many other world leaders are doing to contain the virus. Beyond partisan politics is the debate about what this order will and will not actually change. On the one hand, COVID-19 has already halted nearly every form of legal immigration. Refugee programs are on hold. Anyone caught crossing the border illegally would already be expelled.