The political crisis in Turkey has deepened as three cabinet ministers resigned from the government. The crisis came about as Prime Minister Erdogan’s cohort has been charged with corruption. The Turkish media has splashed photographs of shoeboxes filled with cash as corroboration for the charges. The Erdogan government was roiled last summer as many people protested what they viewed as a growing authoritarianism in the government. The current crisis leaves the government very fragile and likely to fall, another weakness in the overall troubled state of political stability in the Middle East.
After a suicide bombing of a police headquarters, Egypt has determined that the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a “terrorist” organization. The move signals a hard line against the group similar to the extreme measures used against the organization during the Mubarak years. The Muslim Brotherhood has denied any role in the bombing and another group, closely linked to al-Qaeda, has claimed responsibility. The political situation in Egypt seems to be drifting further away from any possibility of reconciliation and the likely imposition of authoritarian rule, an outcome that would be deplored by both the religious and the secular movements in Egypt.
This is the 99th anniversary of the famous “Christmas Truce” that occurred between Allied and German forces in World War I. It was a remarkable event, as the soldiers who had been trying to kill each other for months, observed an informal truce and exchanged presents and played soccer on the killing fields. The soldiers acted on their own, and their superiors were furious when they found out what had happened. But it was an extraordinary of human solidarity in the face of desperate conditions.
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