Foreign Digest Updates: Turkey, Ukraine, Syria and Germany

Turkey

            The authoritarian Islamist Turkish Government has continued its crackdown since the attempted military coup in July of 2016.  There were another thousand arrests a week ago and more than a hundred more late last week. Tens of thousands have been sacked or arrested across a wide swath of Turkish society, from the military, the police, civil officers and judges to academics, all accused of ties to the Turkish cleric in exile in Pennsylvania whom the Government blames for the coup, as an excuse to purge all critics of the regime.  Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is fighting Kurdish rebels in eastern Turkey and Syria.

Ukraine

            Last week was the fourth anniversary of the civil war in Ukraine caused by the 2014 Russian invasion and a rebellion by ethnic Russian separatists who are backed by the Russian Federation.  The war has left 10,000 dead, including 3,000 civilians, while 1.7 million people have been displaced.  Russia had agreed to recognize Ukrainian sovereignty and independence and respect its borders, in exchange for the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Ukraine and the continued presence of a Russian naval base on the Crimean Peninsula, but when Ukrainians wanted to turn towards Europe to improve trade relations, the increasingly authoritarian, corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian declined, which led to a popular rebellion and the overthrow of the Russian puppet government.  Russia invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, annexing the former.  The United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Syria

            Syria’s chemical weapon program has been assisted by North Korea, according to a United Nations report issued last week.  The Communist North Korean support of Syria, which is also backed by Islamist Iran and the Russian Federation, is an example of cooperation among the Axis of Rogues, despite their ideological and religious diversity.  Syria has been using chemical weapons against civilian targets in its civil war.

Germany

           The center-left party members today approved the grand coalition with the conservative bloc of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the Bavarian conservatives.  The conservative parties, who are currently ruling in a coalition together and whose memberships had already approved the agreement, had won the most seats in the parliamentary elections in September, but fell short of a majority, necessitating a grand center-left/center-right coalition to keep the far left and far right from power.  Germany is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is the wealthiest member of the European Union.  It is an ally of the United States against terrorism.  The far-left and far-right parties would disrupt these alliances and relationships.