South Korea hosts its first summit with Pacific island leaders
SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol begins the country’s first summit with leaders of Pacific islands on Monday (May 29), as Seoul seeks to increase its influence in a region that has become the focus of intense geopolitical rivalry. Yoon launched his administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy last year, pledging toContinue Reading
How many pitch invaders can you spot?
Play was interrupted after at least 10 people ran onto the field in quick succession at a National Rugby League match in New Zealand on Saturday.
The pitch invaders were cheered on by crowds then tackled by security guards in the last 10 minutes of the game between the Warriors and the Broncos.
Wrestlers’ protest: Delhi police file rioting case after detention
Getty ImagesPolice in India’s capital Delhi have filed cases including of rioting against the country’s top wrestlers after they were detained during a protest.
Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia were among protesters detained on Sunday as they tried to march to India’s new parliament.
They were released later in the night.
Police also cleared out their protest site in Delhi, but the wrestlers said they would return there.
Two-time World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat and her sister Sangeeta were also among the wrestlers who were detained.
Vinesh Phogat and Ms Malik were released from detention in the evening while Mr Punia was let out late in the night. It’s not clear if all the protesters have been released yet.
The wrestlers began protesting on 23 April, demanding the arrest of their federation chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, for allegedly sexually harassing female athletes.
Mr Singh, an influential lawmaker and politician from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has denied the allegations and accused the wrestlers of being “politically motivated”.
On Sunday, a scuffle broke out between the wrestlers and the police while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was formally opening the country’s new parliament building.
The protesters planned to demonstrate outside the building, which is just a few kilometres away from Jantar Mantar, where they had been sitting for more than a month.
But police said that the protesters did not follow their directions and that they detained those who tried to break security barricades.
Footage showed protesters climbing over barricades and being carried away by the authorities.
“They broke the law,” Dependra Pathak, Delhi’s Special Commissioner of Police, told local media.
However, Ms Malik claimed that they had been “walking quietly” and that the police “dragged and forcibly detained” protesters without telling them where they were being taken.
“The whole world is watching how the government is treating its players,” Vinesh Phogat tweeted.
On Sunday evening, police filed cases against Ms Malik, Mr Punia, the Phogat sisters and “other organisers of the protest”. They have been accused of rioting, assembling unlawfully and of obstructing public servants from doing their duty.
Visuals of the athletes being dragged and carried off in buses went viral, sparking criticism from some top athletes and opposition politicians.
“This makes me sad. There has to be a better way to deal with this”, Olympic medallist Neeraj Chopra tweeted in reaction to a video which showed police pulling the Phogat sisters as they sat on the road.
“Why does it have to come down to our wrestlers being dragged around without any consideration? This isn’t the way to treat anyone. I really hope this whole situation is assessed the way it should be,” said Indian football team captain Sunil Chhetri.
Several opposition leaders, including Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, criticised the police’s actions.
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Man convicted of conspiring to pocket over 25,000 iPhones from repair company, costing firm US$5 million
SINGAPORE: A man was convicted on Monday (May 29) of conspiring with a logistics manager to pocket more than 25,000 iPhones from a company tasked with repairing the devices, costing the firm US$5 million (S$6.8 million).
Lim Jen Hee, a 51-year-old Malaysian, had claimed trial for two charges of conspiring with Serene Ng Shu Kian to commit criminal breach of trust by misappropriating the phones.
However, the judge found him guilty of both charges on Monday, saying she found Ng to be a forthright and credible witness.
Ng, who was sentenced to nine years’ jail in 2021 for her role in the case, had testified in the trial against Lim.
Both Ng and Lim worked for Pegatron Service Singapore, which repairs defective iPhones for Apple.
Lim was formerly an assistant operations manager at the company, and committed the offences between January 2018 and May 2019 after he quit his job.
As logistics manager, Ng was responsible for receiving defective iPhones from Apple and its service providers or retailers.
The production team would check the phones and repair them, before the logistics department sent the phones back to the Apple service providers or retailers.
Phones that could not be repaired by the production team would be retained by the production team for further checks, or sent to Apple’s warehouse vendor Schenker Singapore to be scrapped or torn down for parts, or repaired by a different service provider.
In late 2017, Ng began exploiting a loophole in Apple’s and Pegatron’s processes: She was authorised to manually write off a phone from Apple’s inventory system, but she knew that Apple and Pegatron would not verify if the written-off phone had been delivered to Schenker.
In this way, she could indicate that a phone had been delivered even though it had been not. She would then sell the phones.
Lim found an overseas buyer willing to take the defective phones. He would provide Ng with the details of the transaction and communicate with the buyer.
Ng had a subordinate pack the phones, which were sent to Malaysia.
If the phones were rejected, Ng would have them sent back to her home in Singapore and she would return the phones to Pegatron without anyone noticing.
The pair split the profits between them, with Ng earning more than S$3.1 million in profit and Lim earning between S$2.2 million and S$2.9 million.
Lim spent the money on his personal expenses and legal fees.
The crimes were uncovered when Apple launched a surprise audit in May 2019 and discovered that there were phones that were unaccounted for.
As Pegatron was contractually obliged to pay Apple compensation of between US$150 and US$250 per misappropriated phone, Pegatron paid US$5.05 million to Apple as compensation.
Lim will be sentenced at a later date.
North Korean ruling party to meet in June for economic review
SEOUL: North Korea’s ruling party will hold a high-level meeting in June to review its economic policies, state media said on Monday (May 29). The nuclear-armed country has a fragile economy and its government has long been criticised for prioritising the military and its banned nuclear weapons programmes over adequatelyContinue Reading
Probe ordered into overweight-truck bribe-paid stickers
National police chief Pol Gen Damrongsak Kittiprapas has ordered highway police to investigate an allegation that drivers of overloaded trucks displaying special bribe-paid stickers are not being arrested.
Police spokesman Pol Lt Gen Archayon Kraithong said on Monday that Pol Gen Damrongsak wanted the Highway Police Division to quickly get to the bottom of the allegation.
Any officers who were involved in such bribery would face decisive action, including expulsion from the force.
The Highway Police Division earlier reported it cooperated regularly with the Land Transport Federation of Thailand and stopped overloaded trucks, the spokesman said.
The national police chief would welcome any information from the public about the alleged racket, so the police could tackle it, Pol Lt Gen Archayon said.
Wiroj Lakkhanaadisorn, a list MP-elect of the Move Forward Party, recently posted on social media that he was compiling evidence of the police racket. He claimed overloaded trucks with special stickers were not being detained and the drivers arrested at weighbridges.
The stickers variously depicted rabbits, a smiling sun or kungfu panda, and were available at a cost of thousands of baht per month, he said.
Superpimp-turned-whistleblower won’t give up fight
The memorandum of understanding signed on May 22 by the eight parties hoping to form a governing coalition sets forth an ambitious reform agenda, including “push for reform of the bureaucracy, police, armed forces and justice system” and to “promote a culture of transparency to tackle corruption”.
They have their work cut out for them.
“The core of society is corrupt,” former politician Chuvit Kamolvisit says on the new Bangkok Post podcast, “Deeper Dive”.
“I believe every country has corruption when they start. But I never see any country that as time passes by, the corruption is more, is more, is more, like Thailand.”
If anyone knows about corruption, it’s Mr Chuvit. As the owner of a string of soapy massage parlours in the 1990s and early 2000s — the ab ob nuat (massage parlour) complexes that are actually fronts for prostitution, which is against the law — he claims to have paid the police monthly bribes to the tune of 3 million baht to stay open.
After selling the seedy side of his business empire, Mr Chuvit began a career in politics as an anti-corruption campaigner, twice serving as a member of parliament. Although his days as a politician have passed, he’s been back in the headlines since late 2022 with allegations of high-profile graft.
In February, he identified “Inspector Sua” as the former senior police officer behind a network of online gambling sites. Pol Lt Col Wasawat Mukurasakul and 18 associates have fled abroad, while 57 people have been arrested over their alleged links to the 10-billion-baht-a-year operation.
“There is 5,000 websites about the gambling in Thai,” Mr Chuvit said on “Deeper Dive”.
“They [make] them pay 50,000 per website per month. So you can calculate how much they get.
“Smaller size — 5,000 websites. Middle size — pay 100,000 per month. I divide into size S, M and L. Each size, you pay more.”
The month before, Mr Chuvit publicised the case of Charlene An, the Taiwanese actress in a group that was stopped at a Bangkok police checkpoint on Jan 4 and allegedly only released after they paid 27,000 baht.
“When Charlene comes with the Singaporean, takes the Grab past the checkpoint, the police know this is a tourist, so they stop and check and found the electric cigarette, which is illegal in Thailand. This is a gap for corruption, [because] you can buy the electric cigarette everywhere, in the market, on the street, online.”
Ignorance of the law, Mr Chuvit pointed out, is no defence — and enforcement can be lucrative.
“You’re not a local, you’re a tourist, you don’t know the rule, you need to go to jail. This is the way the Thai police do [it].
“The checkpoint is always on the main road, near the entertainment area, for example on Sukhumvit, on Ratchada, on Thong Lor, on Ekkamai. The small police officer needs to find money to send to the higher police, because they set the target every time you set up the checkpoint.
“They see you, they stop you, they know you are farang, you’re not a local. Let’s say…you’re drunk. What you gonna do? You gonna go to jail? Or you just pay me 20,000, 30,000.”
Mr Chuvit emphasised that not all officers are corrupt, saying almost all of his information comes from whistleblowers inside the Royal Thai Police. “You are surprised or not? There is still good police… They send me the video, they send me all the secret information.”
‘Buying the law’
The case that brought Mr Chuvit back into the headlines was the Oct 26, 2022 police raid on an unlicensed club in Yannawa district. He wrote on Facebook that a group of Chinese nationals found on the drug-strewn premises paid 5.5 million baht to avoid arrest, while another 11 who escaped the raid were asked for a further 4 million baht by police, Department of Special Investigations personnel and a soldier.
Mr Chuvit said the amounts were so large because police knew they had caught some big fish.
“If you file the red notice, you can check from Interpol, it’s a jackpot. Now you have to pay me! They know that Chinese always carry cash, they have a society so tight. So they can make a call and ask for more cash.”
Many of the Chinese, Mr Chuvit discovered, were on visas issued fraudulently in the Northeast.
“Why you have to go to Isan? Immigration Section 4 — northeastern Thailand area. So I can check…7,000 Chinese apply for volunteer, education [visas] in Section 4 in the year 2020, 2019 only. Different from another section. So I know: this is strange.
“Criminal of China, where they want to go? Cannot go to Singapore, cannot go to Australia. They go to Thailand. Why Thailand? Because Thailand easy…they can buy the police. They can buy the law.
“They can do anything.”
In an interview with the Bangkok Post published on 17 Feb 2023, Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, deputy national police chief, confirmed many of Mr Chuvit’s allegations, including that corrupt immigration officials appeared to be issuing education and volunteer visas to Chinese gangsters in the northeast.
“The IB [Immigration Bureau] is bound by duty to prevent those criminals from slipping through immigration controls,” he said. “But as it happens, some immigration officers are suspected of facilitating their entry into the country.”
“When I served as the IB chief, thousands of overstayers, many of whom were criminals, were arrested and deported. Right now, they are returning and trying to secure student or volunteer visas for a longer stay of up to one year with the help of corrupt immigration officers.”
In this and several other cases, it appeared that Mr Chuvit was doing the police’s work for them — begging the question whether these cases would ever have been investigated had he not brought them to light. Whether the cases eventually lead to convictions or any meaningful change, however, is doubtful given past history.
After the scandal erupted, Pol Lt Gen Pakpoompipat Sajjapan, head of the Immigration Bureau, promised “a working group to revise rules on visa extension applications that cite work for foundations, the need to receive medical treatment, and for studying in both the formal and informal educational systems”.
A common perception, however, is that the problem is not the rules: it’s that criminals are bribing officials to flout the rules.
Foreigners living legally in Thailand bring billions of baht into the economy. After corruption scandals emerge, it appears that authorities’ kneejerk response is to tighten bureaucratic red tape for these legitimate foreigners — ironically creating new corruption opportunities — while foreign criminals continue finding ways to bribe their way in.
In this way, authorities can make it look like they’re tackling the problem, such as by tightening restrictions on visa applicants, instead of dealing with the true cause — corruption and crime in their own ranks.
Culture of dishonesty
For Mr Chuvit, the underlying cause of Thailand’s corruption is a culture of dishonesty.
“The core of the society is corrupt… They always say that it’s a Buddhist country. But it’s wrong. They don’t accept the truth. There is prostitution in the middle of Bangkok, in the massage parlour, everybody knows. But the law forbids it.”
Some corruption can be addressed, Mr Chuvit suggests, by legalising and taxing grey businesses such as gambling and prostitution, using some of the proceeds to top up the salaries of underpaid junior police to make corruption less tempting.
“If everything like gambling on the table, you can take the corruption out and you can bring the money from the tax, which I call sin tax, to generate benefit for all the police, all the justice [system].”
In his next breath, however, the maverick campaigner says it will never happen, because the people in charge are the ones that benefit most from corruption.
“They’re not gonna do that. Believe me. Why? Because they don’t want to eat on the table. They want to eat under the table. You can eat more — greedy! If you eat on the table, you have to eat formally. But if you eat under the table, you can eat anything! You can eat a lot!
“You see, this is the Thai way. They don’t do it in front of you, they do it behind you. That’s why you see more corruption in Thailand …They like to lie.
“If they accept the truth, this country [would go] forward. And grow. A lot.”
The transformation of the self-described “superpimp” into a heroic whistleblower invites scepticism in many quarters.
Aside from his past involvement in grey businesses and mafia-like activities such as the overnight demolition in early 2003 of bars and shops from Sukhumvit Square — which he had recently purchased, and for which he served time in prison — Mr Chuvit has himself been accused of corruption.
Others chafe at his self-portrayal as a victim and a martyr, such as when he told me: “I sacrifice myself to let Thai society know what happened”.
Yet arguably no-one else has done more to expose corruption in Thai institutions in recent years.
And whether or not his claim that his 2003 revelations of bribery led to his abduction for two days is true, the May 11 death in police custody of a sidekick to Inspector Sua — who would have been able to identify many of those involved in the online gambling ring — is a reminder that knowing too much can be dangerous.
Most of all, perhaps, his message that the best way to fight corruption is to speak up, loud and clear, is quite persuasive — even if the consequences could be dire and the odds of victory seem oppressively long.
“You need to talk, you need to speak up. You need to [make them] aware, at least [then] they are afraid to be corrupt.
“You may say that I not win. I say that I not win. I am just sparking the light. And with one candle, maybe I not win today. Maybe I win next year. Maybe I never win. But at least I talk, at least someone try to do.”
Scan the QR code below or click here to watch Dave Kendall’s full interview with Chuvit Kamolvisit on the second episode of the new Bangkok Post podcast, ‘Deeper Dive’. Or search for ‘Deeper Dive Thailand’ wherever you get your podcasts.
Accused Jimi ‘Slice’ killer extradited from Canada
Alleged contract killer Matthew Dupre, wanted for the shooting of Indian gangster Jimi Sandhu in Phuket on Feb 4, 2022, has been quietly extradited to Thailand to face a murder charge.
Last week, 10 members of the CSD’s Hanuman special weapons and tactics unit led by Pol Col Wichak Tarom, a deputy CSD commander, and 30 members of a Royal Thai Air Force special operations unit, left Don Mueang airport on a special Airbus A340 flight for Vancouver, Canada, to bring Dupre back to Thailand.
The special flight, with Dupre on board, returned to Thailand and landed at Don Mueang airport’s Wing 6 terminal on Sunday night about 11pm.
The airport was under tight security and temporarily closed. The flight was met by about 30 other members of the Hanuman unit and RTAF ground security.
From the airport, the suspect was taken by motorcade to CSD headquarters. His detention is now under the supervision of the Central Investigation Bureau.
About 10.30pm on Feb 4, 2022, two foreign men shot Indian mobster Jimi Singh (Slice) Sandhu dead in the parking lot of his rented beachfront villa on Rawai beach in Muang district of Phuket. The killers were filmed entering the villa by a security camera.
Phuket and CSD police investigators identified Dupre as one of the suspects.
On Feb 11, 2022, the Phuket Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Dupre and his alleged accomplice on charges of premeditated murder, having guns and ammunition in possession without permission and illegally carrying and using the guns in public.
A police investigation later found the two suspects left Thailand for Canada on Feb 6.
The Royal Thai Police foreign affairs division on Feb 15 sent a letter to the Office of the Attorney General along with the arrest warrants. The OAG was asked to coordinate with Canada for the extradition of Dupre under the Extradition Act of 2008.
The OAG subsequently took action as requested.
The Alberta Provincial Court in Canada issued a warrant for Dupre’s arrest at the request of the attorney general’s office of Alberta.
Dupre was arrested on on Feb 20, 2022 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at his home in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, near Red Deer.
The Court of Alberta at Edmonton laterapproved the extradition of Dupre to Thailand under the 1999 Extradition Act of Canada.
The second wanted suspect killer in the case, Gene Lahrkamp, 36, died in a small-plane crash in Canada in May 2022.
FTX: Singapore state fund Temasek cuts pay after failed investment
Getty ImagesSingapore state-owned investment fund Temasek Holdings says it has cut the pay of staff responsible for its investment in cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which collapsed last year.
Last year, the fund wrote off all of the $275m (£222.8m) it invested in FTX.
Prosecutors have accused FTX’s former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried of orchestrating an “epic” fraud which may cost investors billions of dollars.
Mr Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“The investment team and senior management, who are ultimately responsible for the investment decisions made, took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced,” Temasek said in a statement on Monday.
The sovereign wealth fund also said it was “disappointed with the outcome of our investment, and the negative impact on our reputation.”
Temasek did not indicate how much salaries were reduced by.
It had invested $210m and then another $65m in FTX in two funding rounds between October 2021 and January 2022.
Last year, the state-owned fund said that before making those investments it had spent eight months evaluating the cryptocurrency exchange. This included the review of an audited financial statement “which showed it to be profitable.”
As of March 2022, Temasek was worth more than S$403bn ($298.1bn; £241.3bn), so the money it had put into the cryptocurrency platform accounted for a small percentage of its investments.
However, Singapore’s deputy prime minister Lawrence Wong said in December that Temasek’s losses in FTX had caused damage to the fund’s reputation.
“The fact that other leading global institutional investors like BlackRock and Sequoia Capital also invested in FTX does not mitigate this,” added Mr Wong, who is also the country’s finance minister.
Sovereign wealth funds are like a savings account for a country, and they typically invest in shares, currencies, property or other assets.
FTX, which a year ago was valued at $32bn, filed for bankruptcy protection in November. It has been estimated that $8bn of customer’s funds was missing.
Mr Bankman-Fried, who co-founded FTX in 2019, was one of the most high-profile figures in the cryptocurrency industry, known for his political ties, celebrity endorsements and bailouts of other struggling firms.
US federal prosecutors have accused Mr Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of dollars from FTX users to pay debts at his other firm, Alameda Research, and to make other investments.
In December, prosecutors announced eight criminal charges against Mr Bankman-Fried, including wire fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations. Another five charges were levied against him in March. Financial regulators have also brought claims against Mr Bankman-Fried.
FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison, the former head of Alameda, have also been charged over their alleged roles in the company’s collapse.
Mr Bankman-Fried was arrested in December in the Bahamas, where he lived and FTX was based.
In an interview with BBC News just days before his arrest, he said: “I didn’t knowingly commit fraud. I don’t think I committed fraud. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I was certainly not nearly as competent as I thought I was.”
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How Erdogan held on to power
Recep Tayyip Erdogan will remain president of Turkey for another five years after winning Sunday’s run-off election over his longtime rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. If he serves the full five-year term, he will have held power for 26 years – almost the entire history of Turkey in the 21st century.
What is astonishing is how the majority of Turkish people elected Erdogan despite a worsening economy and now chronic hyperinflation that would likely bring down any government in a democratic country.
So how did Erdogan win the election and, more significant, what is likely to happen in the country in the foreseeable future?
Free but far from fair
The election was free in that political parties could put forth nominees on their own and carry out campaigns. Parties also had the right to have representatives in every polling station to ensure the votes were counted correctly. And voters were free to vote.
However, the election was far from fair.
First, a potential leading rival in the race, Ekrem Imamoglu, was sentenced in December to more than two years in prison on a charge of “insulting public figures.”
Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, dealt Erdogan’s party a rare defeat in the 2019 Istanbul elections. Polls had shown he could win against Erdogan in the presidential election by a comfortable margin.
Some argue the court ruling was politically motivated. With Imamoglu out of the picture, the opposition had to coalesce behind Kilicdaroglu, the weakest of all possible high-profile candidates.
Erdogan also has an almost ubiquitous grip over the Turkish media, engineered through Fahrettin Altun, the head of media and communication at the presidential palace.
Turkish media are either directly owned by Erdogan’s relatives, such as the popular Sabah newspaper managed by Sedat Albayrak, or controlled through managing editors appointed and monitored by Altun. Some independent Internet news sites such as T24 practice self-censorship in order to remain operational.
With this massive media control, Erdogan and his men ensured he had the most television airtime. Erdogan was depicted in the media as a world leader advancing Turkey by building airports, roads and bridges. He was put in front of dozens of journalists on TV, but all the questions were prepared in advance and Erdogan read his answers through a prompter.
Altun also orchestrated a massive smear campaign against Kilicdaroglu. The opposition leader received minimal airtime, and when he was in the media, he was depicted as an inept leader unfit to rule the country.
Altun not only controlled the conventional TV channels and print media, but also social media. On Twitter, a very influential platform in Turkey, Altun used bots and an army of paid trolls and influencers to seek to control the dialogue.
And it worked. Sufficient numbers of voters were swayed through confusion and fear that the country would be far worse if Kilicdaroglu was elected.
Last, there was the potential for fraud due to the non-transparent way the election results are processed. Once each ballot box is counted, the ballot and result sheet are transported by police in cities and the military in regional areas to the Electoral Commission. Both the police and military are under Erdogan’s tight control.
The results are then reported only through the state-owned Anadolu Agency, while in the past they were reported by multiple independent agencies.
Even if no evidence of fraud emerges in this election, the specter of it could put in doubt the integrity of the entire electoral process.
Staunch support from religious voters
There are two other factors that were decisive in the elections.
The first is the support Erdogan received from Sinan Ogan, who was third in the first round of the presidential election two weeks ago, with 5.2% of the votes. Erdogan persuaded Ogan to throw his support to him.
The second and most important factor was the way Erdogan was viewed in an almost mythical fashion by conservative and religious voters. For them, he is a religious hero and savior.
The religious population in Turkey has long suffered persecution in the name of secularism.
For them, Kilicdaroglu and his Republican People’s Party symbolized that persecution. Although Kilicdaroglu abandoned the party’s previous strict secular policies, these voters never forgave it for preventing Muslim women from wearing the headscarf in educational and state institutions and keeping religion out of public life and politics for decades.
The conservative and religious right in Turkey sees Erdogan as a world leader and a hero who struggled against ill-intentioned forces, both internally and externally, to make Turkey great again.
What is likely post-election?
Turkey desperately needed a change of government and a breath of fresh air. Now the social, political and economic suffocation is likely to get worse.
Erdogan had promised a Turkish revival by 2023, which is the 100th anniversary of the republic’s founding. Turkey was supposed to enter the top 10 economies in the world by then. However, Turkey barely sits in the top 20, at 19th.
The economy has experienced a significant downturn in the past three years. The Turkish lira has plummeted in value, leading to a dollar-based economy.
But dollars are hard to come by. The Turkish Central Bank kept the economy afloat by emptying its reserves in the last few months for the elections. The Central Bank has been running a current-account deficit of US$8 billion to $10 billion every month, and its reserves last week fell into the negative for the first time since 2002.
Now Erdogan has to find money. He will resort to high-interest foreign loans and embark on a diplomatic spree of the oil-rich Muslim countries to draw some of their funds to Turkey. The uncertainty around how successful these endeavors will be and their likely short-term gain may throw the Turkish economy into recession.
For the people of Turkey, this could mean massive unemployment and a higher cost of living. The inflation rate had reached a 24-year high of 85.5% last year, and may go even higher, as the cash-strapped government continues to print digital money to pay for its large bureaucratic workforce.
On foreign policy, Erdogan will continue to try to become a regional power independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaion, the European Union and the US. He will likely continue to strengthen Turkey’s ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has been a worry for Turkey’s Western allies.
What does the future hold?
This will be Erdogan’s absolute last term in office, according to the Turkish constitution, and it could possibly be cut short.
The 69-year-old president has many health problems. He is becoming increasingly physically frail, finding it hard to walk, and his speech often slurs. In coming years, his health may get worse and he may have to hand over his presidency to a trusted deputy.
The other possibility is that potential leaders in his Justice and Development Party (AKP) could decide to carry out a party coup to topple Erdogan before his term is up, so they can garner public support ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
While there may be some political stability in post-election Turkey for now, the country will be in economic, social and political turmoil for the foreseeable future.
Mehmet Ozalp is associate professor in Islamic Studies, director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilization, and executive member of Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.