The candidates for the Conservative nomination at the last debate (PA MEDIA)
Six years ago, former Prime Minister David Cameron brought the idea of “Brexit” to the European Union in his attempt to impose UK supremacy on the EU after the signing of the Lisbon Treaty. UK was looking for more freedom in matters of immigration, welfare payments, financial safeguards, and the easiest ways to block EU regulations.
However, Mr. Cameron’s expectations about breaking with the EU went out of control. He created this ideal picture of a prosperous and powerful United Kingdom, ruling with its policies, laws, governments, and courts. And this set the mind of many British, who were struggling with income and State help.
Within those days in 2016, among many politicians who supported Brexit, Boris Johnson was the co-leader of the campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the EU.
After losing the referendum, Mr. Cameron stepped aside in 2016, and Theresa May took the lead not only for the Conservatives but for the whole British nation, which was about to face a veritable break up at national and international levels.
At the beginning of the Arab Spring, the governmental structure and policies of Turkey was the ultimate model that countries like Egypt, Iraq, or Syria were trying to imitate. Turkey used to represent the successful application of democracy, independent government, and the economic strategy administrated by Kemal Dervis in the early 2000s. It was the successful model of secular society in a large Muslim population. Also, its foreign policy of not having problems with neighbors catapulted it to be a European membership candidate. However, since the moment Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped into his position in their government, this model evaporated along with all the progress made, facing a new era of social, economic, political, and foreign policy setbacks.
The country has been facing a deep economic depression since 2016.The first cause was the Turkish government’s gradual involvement in the Syria war back in 2011, which ended up with military interventions five years later. Erdogan’s goal, taking a heavy toll on the economy, was to become a crucial actor in the Syrian war map to eventually be considered part of the future peace plan.
Since then, the Turkish economy has progressively deteriorated, and consumer and investor confidence has been severely rattled. Nowadays, the country faces a rise of inflation of 4%, placing the lira at its highest rate against the dollar last November, more than 10%. After this data was made public, Erdogan presented a new economic route to save the lira. His reform will be based on “lower inflation and international investment.” An indication that his plan has nearly zero credibility for locals and investors is that citizens’ interests in gold and foreign exchange have increased and it will continue until real changes spring up. Another sign is that in Istanbul’s bazaar with gold coins and jewelry are selling at 3% above the international market.
Ebrar Turzna, using a fictional name to protect her identity, a local Turkish citizen, confess to this blog that the economy “is the worst it has ever been.” For her, things are only getting worse. “Richare getting richer; poorare getting poorer. Also, there’s big unemployment. Whatever you do, whatever is the level of education you achieve, it doesn’t matter. You either have someone you know in the company,or you do extreme things to be apart from the rest of the population to be just considered. It didn’t use to be like this”.
It has been almost two months since the elections on 9 August in which the current president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed a victory with 80% of the votes. The results were denounced right away and cataloged as a “fraud” by the opposition and the international governments. Consequently, Belarusian took the street to protest against the president, who has been in power since 1994, the first presidential elections of the country after its separation from the Soviet Union three years earlier.
With the rights of freedom and democracy at risk, the Belarusian took the streets for the eighth weekend in a row in the capital and others demanding the resignation of Lukashenko cities. This time, the police used water cannons to disperse mass in Minsk, where 100,000 people gathered as every Sunday, while the mobile internet was down.
Jess Baddams, paramedic, holds a blood sample as she poses for a photograph during an antibody testing program at the Hollymore Ambulance Hub, in Birmingham, England, on Friday, June 5, 2020. Making antibody tests widely available may help Britain lift its lockdown restrictions, because they show who has already had the COVID-19 and might have a degree of immunity from coronavirus. (Simon Dawson/Pool via AP)
Three months ago, humanity was worried about everything but not about a virus called Covid-19, or as it is known socially the Coronavirus. The events that marked the global agenda 90 days ago were overshadowed after its appearance.
In one hand, the Americanswere beholding the way the former vice-president, Joe Biden, the progressist senator, Bernie Sanders, and the senator for Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, from the same left-wing that his collague, were fighting to get the nomination and to face President Trump in the next elections late this year. In the other hand, the Europeans were dealing with the divorce between EU and Uk after more than three years of negotiations, and at the same time, they were looking for a new identity by the hand of the new president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, to address and reduce the increasing nationalist movements that were threatening get Europe broken in many pieces. At the same time, Middle East was waiting for Netanyahu’s plan to annex the West Bank, waving the anger of all the Muslim countries that surround the Jewish State. And last, but not least, Xi Jinping pursued to bring down the Hong Kong autonomy, including the idea of “one country, two systems”, (which nowadays it was achieved due to the new law that permits to extradite people from the Special Administrative Region to Bejing to stand trial by any action that is against the Government), to take full control of China and to establish the communists, and moreover, to hide and minimize what it was going on in Wuhan.
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