Foreign Digest: Nicaragua, Turkey, Syria and Russia

Nicaragua

            There have been more protests and killings by the authoritarian Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Turkey

            There have continued to be purges up to the second anniversary of the attempted military coup and the constitutional amendment granting the President more powers has now gone into effect, which he is using already to crack down on all dissent as presidentialism has supplanted rule by a prime minister.  Secular, democratic Turkey, which had been a model state, has become Islamist and, especially, authoritarian. 

Syria

            Israel has continued to strike military targets in Syria because of threats to its security from the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad or its allies, Iran or the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.  Iran and Hezbollah, together with the Russian Federation, are backing the tyrannical Assad in a civil war against non-Islamist Muslim and Islamist rebels, as well as Kurdish rebels.  The United States leads an international coalition of Western and Arab states against the Islamist terrorists, al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State.”  

Russia

           A Briton was killed last week and another sickened because of contamination from the Russian Federation chemical attack in the United Kingdom last month against a Russian émigré and his daughter.  The authoritarian and oligarchical regime of Vladimir Putin murders critics or potential witnesses to its crimes abroad, just as it does at home.