Turkey's parliament ratified Finland's application to join NATO on Thursday. In doing so, it became the final of 30 NATO member states to support Finland's accession, clearing the last major hurdle for the country to join the military alliance.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blessed Finland's candidacy earlier this month after months of negotiations.
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If civil servants in Ankara are an accurate barometer of shifting fronts in Turkey’s national politics, then the country’s longest serving leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, really could be in trouble in May’s election.
The main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), says bureaucrats are already sending in their resumes in preparation for a new order, sensing that this could be the end of Erdoğan’s more-than-two-decade dominance over the state.
That would be a relief to many in the West, who are increasingly frustrated by the Islamist populist’s confrontational statesmanship in a strategic heavyweight of 85 million people. In the past months alone, Turkey has quietly provided Russia with clandestine trade routes to beat sanctions, imposed a veto on Sweden’s entry into NATO and engaged Greece in high-risk brinkmanship with fighter jets over the Aegean.
Read more at: https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-2023-election-erdogan-close-call-republican-peoples-party-turkey-sweden-akp-chp-kilicdaroglu-fahrettin-altun/
Chinese leader Xi Jinping was to host hosting Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Beijing this weekend, seeking to deepen ties with another diplomatic ally following his three-day visit to Russia that took place earlier this week.
The visit was postponed on Saturday as the Brazilian leader was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
Had it gone ahead, the state visit would have come at a time when China is trying to present itself as an important global power that can rival the US.
China's trade relationship with Brazil was set to take center stage, as Lula was to bring a delegation of 240 business representatives with him to Beijing. Trade flow between China and Brazil currently amounts to $150 billion (€140 billion) annually, and Brazilian exports to China reached $89 billion in 2022.
China now invests in a wide range of sectors in Brazil, and experts say Beijing wants to tap into the South American country's rich resources and market size.
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Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, according to TASS state news agency.
Putin said he reached an agreement with Belarusian president — and his closest regional ally — Alexander Lukashenko.
"We agreed with Lukashenko that we could place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime," Putin said, according to the TASS report.
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Lawmakers in Sweden voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Nordic nation joining NATO, signing off on the country's membership along with the required legislation.
The 349-seat Riksdagen, or parliament, authorised Sweden’s accession to NATO on a 269-37 vote, with 43 absent. It was the last required domestic hurdle to the country becoming part of the 30-member Western military alliance.
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A day after being accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, scene of some of the worst devastation of his year-old invasion.
State television showed extended footage of Putin being shown around the city on Saturday night, meeting rehoused residents and being briefed on reconstruction efforts by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin.
The port city of Mariupol became known around the world as a byword for death and destruction as much of it was reduced to ruins in the first months of the war, eventually falling to Russian forces in May.
Read more at: https://www.cb.cpm
Washington has summoned Russia's ambassador to the US to the State Department to express its "strong objection" after a Russian fighter jet struck an American surveillance drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, causing US forces to bring the drone down in international waters.
"We will summon the Russian ambassador to the State Department," said US diplomatic spokesman, Ned Price in a press briefing, calling the incident a "brazen violation of international law."
He added that the US ambassador in Moscow had also conveyed Washington's protests in a message to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The US military says a Russian jet Su-27 jet collided with the unmanned aerial vehicle over the Black Sea, forcing the drone down.
Read more at: https//www.euronews.com
Russian forces suffered more than 1,100 dead in less than a week of battles near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the focal point of fighting in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.
"In less than a week, starting from 6th March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia's irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut," Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
He said Russian forces had also sustained 1,500 "sanitary losses" - soldiers wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action. Dozens of pieces of enemy equipment were destroyed as were more than 10 Russian ammunition depots.
Read more at:https://www.france24.com
EU countries on Wednesday agreed to speed up supplies of artillery rounds and buy more shells to. help Ukraine but still have to work out how to turn these aims into reality.
Under a plan drawn up by foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, EU states would get financial incentives worth €1 billion ($1.06 billion) to send more of their artillery rounds to Ukraine while another €1 billion would fund joint procurement of new shells.
"There has been a general agreement on this procedure but there are questions pending. Everything has to be discussed in detail," Borrell said after a meeting of EU defense ministers in Stockholm also attended by their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov.
Borrell said he hoped the plan would be finalized at a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers on March 20.
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Turkey has been walking a tightrope between Ukraine and Russia, trying not to harm the relations it has with both countries.
So how did we get here, and is it a viable long term strategy for Ankara?
Less than two weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 10 March last year, Turkey entered the stage to play a mediator role between the countries, but the meetings held at foreign minister level in Antalya left participants empty-handed.
As ties got closer, concern amongst opposition in Turkey grew. Questions have been asked repeatedly in the Turkish press: would this friendship open a path for Russian manipulation of the Turkish elections in favour of Erdogan?
"Turkey's trade relations with Moscow were already at a peak, against the backdrop of a series of sanctions imposed on Russia from the US and the EU," says Professor Bilgic.
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Turkey doubled its trade volume when imports from Russia rose to $58.85 billion (€55.44 billion) in 2022 - that's up from from $28.96 (€27.28 billion) billion the previous year.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Premier Li Keqiang, the top economic official, set this year's growth target at “around 5%” following the end of anti-virus controls that kept millions of people at home and triggered protests. Last year's growth in the world's second-largest economy fell to 3%, the second-weakest level since at least the 1970s.
“We should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption,” Li said in a speech on government plans before the ceremonial National People’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.
Read more at: https://www.ap.com
The old idea that autocracies are better than raucous democracies at getting things done found new life during the coronavirus pandemic. Many Western commentators argued that while democracies dithered and debated, autocracies were quick to respond and mobilize their resources. Sometimes that might be true—but only if you are the right kind of autocracy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, it turned out, is not one of them.
Erdogan’s response to the country’s devastating earthquake on Feb. 6 was painfully slow and uncoordinated. But regimes in which power is centralized are supposed to be fast and organized. All Erdogan had to do was pick up the phone and order his commanders to dispatch NATO’s second-largest army to the badly hit cities, mobilize the bureaucracy to send much-needed aid, and deploy emergency response teams. He did not. Just minutes after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit 10 Turkish provinces, troops stood ready to step in and take part in search and rescue operations. Yet in the critical early hours, the order from the top never came. Nor did Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) rush to help the victims. Why?
Read more af: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/01/turkey-erdogan-earthquake-apk-strongman-authoritarianism-democracy-military-disaster-relief/
Around 3,000 delegates from across China are making their way to the Chinese capital, Beijing for the start of the annual parliamentary conference this weekend. The dual political sessions are expected to endorse a list of top officials for key government positions, pass a plan to overhaul several government agencies and institutions, while also formally confirming Chinese leader Xi Jinping's precedent-busting third term in power.
Typically called the "two sessions," the meetings in Beijing include the gathering of China's rubber-stamp parliament — the National People's Congress (NPC) — and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which is an advisory body.
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A few days before Olaf Scholz's trip to Washington this week, an astonishing transatlantic spectacle unfolded: Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a TV interview that the US president had only agreed to supply American Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine at the German chancellor's urging. The US tanks are to supplement the German Leopard tanks that Germany and other European NATO countries plan to send.
In doing so, Sullivan not only contradicted earlier statements by his boss who insisted that Germany had not made him change his mind, but also the German government, whose spokesman explicitly denied the notion of "a package" of German Leopards and American Abrams.
The German denial is meant to "avoid the impression that the Americans have been put under pressure," Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations told DW. "I think what has become clear is that Chancellor Scholz was able to make it clear to Washington: 'I need this backing, otherwise it will be very difficult for me to take this step.'"
He added that this ultimately succeeded because the chancellor and the president have a good personal connection.
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