🌍 Turkey’s election heads to a runoff

🗺️ AROUND THE WORLD

1. 🇹🇭 Thailand: Voters rejected military rule in Thailand’s elections yesterday (Sunday), with military-backed parties winning only a fraction of seats in parliament. Lawmakers (including a Senate appointed by the military) will now convene in July to elect a new prime minister.

2. 🇱🇮 Liechtenstein: Bitcoin will soon be accepted as payment for certain government services in Liechtenstein. Under the new policy, payments will be converted immediately into Swiss francs because of Bitcoin’s continued volatility.

3. 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea (PNG): Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko announced plans to resign on Friday (12 May) after public uproar over the cost and size of PNG’s delegation to King Charles’ coronation.

4. 🇺🇾 Uruguay: The capital city of Montevideo is subsidising water bottles for its residents amid an historic three-year drought. The country received 60% less rainfall over the last year than average.

5. 🇱🇾 Libya: French prosecutors are re-opening a case against former president Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly soliciting millions of dollars from then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Prosecutors say Sarkozy used the money to fund his victorious 2007 presidential campaign.

🇹🇷 TURKEY | ELECTION

Turkey heads to an election runoff

Briefly: Turkey’s highly anticipated presidential election will likely go to a run-off on 28 May, with initial results from the first round yesterday (Sunday) showing no candidate with the 50% of votes necessary to win outright.

Some polls had hinted that incumbent strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could lose, but he ended up with 49.2% of the vote, compared with 45% for opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (pronounced kilitch-dah-rolu).

Why’s everyone so focused on Turkey’s election?

• ⚔️ It’s got NATO’s second largest military

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 It’s home to more than 88 million people

• 🌍 It straddles Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and

• 🥾 This is the closest Erdoğan has come to losing power

And why’s Erdoğan faced such a tough election?

• 📉 Erdoğan’s unorthodox policies have contributed to a currency collapse and soaring inflation, with many Turks now struggling, and

• ✊ Erdoğan’s critics say the populist leader has weakened Turkey’s institutions and steered the country away from its secular roots

So… any change in Ankara could be felt around the world. The thing is, we don’t really know how. The opposition contains nationalist, leftist and conservative parties, so its vision for Turkey’s role in the world isn’t always entirely clear.

Intrigue’s take: Erdoğan has long been a tough and wily negotiator on the international stage (just ask Sweden, whose NATO membership he’s vetoed). So, several world leaders will have hoped to see the back of him at this election.

But the opposition now has a tough slog to close that gap before 28 May. So betting markets are wagering Erdoğan’s time on the world stage isn’t over yet.

Also worth noting:

• Voter turnout came in at around 88% yesterday. That compares to 84% in the last Swedish election, and around 67% in the UK and the US.

• To go deeper on what’s at stake in this election, we highly recommend this episode of One Decision with Julia Macfarlane, featuring Sir Richard Dearlove (former MI6 chief), David Satterfield (former US Ambassador to Turkey) and Gonul Tol (Turkish academic and author).

Today’s briefing is sponsored by The Daily Upside

🇿🇦 SOUTH AFRICA | GEOPOLITICS

US ambassador accuses South Africa of arming Russia

Briefly: The US ambassador to South Africa has said he’s “confident” the country has sold weapons and ammunition to Russia, despite its pledged neutrality. The arms were allegedly loaded onto a sanctioned Russian ship in December.

Curiously, South African officials claim the ambassador has since apologised for his remarks, while the ambassador says he only corrected “misimpressions”.

And interestingly, South Africa says it never “approved”, nor has “any record of”, an arms sale to Russia. We don’t want to get all Ally McBeal on you here, but that’s not quite the same as saying the sale never happened.

Intrigue’s take: In the end, this might be one of those situations where the truth lands somewhere in the middle: e.g., perhaps an unauthorised arms sale occurred without Pretoria’s knowledge, such as via a rogue element of the military.

In the meantime, both sides agree on one thing: a sanctioned Russian ship was docked at a South African military port in December. And a retired judge is now leading South Africa’s investigation into what exactly it was doing there.

Also worth noting:

• After the allegations surfaced, South Africa’s president spoke with the presidents of both Russia and Ukraine.

• An arms sale to Russia would likely breach South Africa’s own Arms Control Act, which bans arms sales to "states engaged in… aggression".

• The South African Rand plunged to a record low against the dollar after the US ambassador made the allegations.

👀 EXTRA INTRIGUE

Your weekly roundup of the funniest news from the four corners of the internet!

• An Australian woman managed to survive five days in the bush on only some candy and a bottle of wine 

• Two French police were despatched to resolve a neighbourly quarrel about noisy frogs

• Ukraine’s first lady received her coronation invitation complete with a ‘Ukaine’ typo 

• US police responded to a call for help only to find out it was just a goat bleating 

• Sausage vending machines are booming in Germany (and next door, Switzerland has cheese vending machines that do pretty well too)

📊 CHART OF THE DAY

Congratulations Sweden!

Here at Intrigue Media we love the Eurovision song contest and we’re not alone: at its peak, 11 million people tuned into Saturday’s final, making Eurovision one of the most watched non-sporting events worldwide.

🗳️ POLL TIME!

Thursday’s poll: Which country has the best food in the world?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇨🇳 China 🥟 (4%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇫🇷 France 🥐 (15%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇮🇳 India 🍛 (11%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇮🇹 Italy 🍝 (33%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇵🇪 Peru 🐟 (3%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇯🇵 Japan 🍣 (11%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇪🇹 Ethiopia 🍲 (1%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇲🇽 Mexico 🌮 (12%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (11%)

Your two cents:

• ✍️ G.S: “The world has gotten so much smaller, so much so that “international cuisine”, high quality I might add, is available everywhere. I’ve been all over the world and have found fantastic food in every corner.”

• Honourable mentions: Thailand, Palestine, Greece, Turkey, South Korea, the US, and many more!

This was one of our biggest ever polls. Do y’all need to take more lunch breaks?