Turkey: Opposition leader ousted

Today’s headlines: in India, the BJP has taken down the social media accounts of a satirical campaign critical of the government; Vietnam is interested in buying Indian missiles as a countermeasure against China; Uproar in South Korea over a Starbucks employee who downplays the atrocities of the dictatorship era; Zelensky claims responsibility for an attack on Russian military headquarters in Kherson, leaving 100 dead or injured.

TURKEY

Yesterday, a court effectively removed the main opposition leader, Ozgur Ozel, who had taken office in 2023, and ruled that the role of leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) must be assumed by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a figure considered controversial. Over the past two years, the CHP, which in the polls is almost neck and neck with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP, has faced unprecedented repression: for over a year, Erdogan’s main rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, has been in prison.

INDIA

Last week in India, the Cockroach Janta Party (People’s Cockroach Party), or CJP, entered the political arena. It is actually a parody of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to which Prime Minister Narendra Modi also belongs, created following some controversial statements by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who had compared unemployed young people turning to journalism and activism to cockroaches and parasites. The online movement, clearly satirical, attracted millions of followers in just a few days. The Indian government has blocked its Twitter profile.

VIETNAM – INDIA

Hanoi, concerned about growing Chinese threats in the South China Sea, appears set to purchase the BrahMos missile system, jointly developed by India and Russia. The BrahMos is the world’s fastest cruise missile and takes its name from two rivers: the Brahmaputra in India and the Moskva in Russia. In 2022, the missiles were sold to the Philippines, and in March Indonesia also finalised a supply agreement.

CAMBODIA – THAILAND

With dancing, singing and painted faces, the inhabitants of the village of Phum Boeung, located on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, held a ceremony yesterday to pray for rain, good fortune and peace with neighbouring Thailand, whilst troops from both countries remain deployed along the border. Hundreds of people took part in a procession to the Pring Ka-Ek shrine.

SOUTH KOREA

The coffee chain Starbucks has found itself at the centre of a storm in South Korea for having, according to the Minister of the Interior, “downplayed” the country’s democratic history with a marketing campaign that evoked the brutal military crackdown of 1980 against pro-democracy demonstrators. Minister Yun Ho-jung added yesterday that his ministry will no longer offer the company’s products, such as vouchers and gift cards. Hundreds of people are estimated to have died during the Gwangju protests, but many details remain unknown, including who gave the order to fire on the crowd.

UKRAINE-RUSSIA

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that Ukrainian special forces struck a Russian military headquarters in the occupied Kherson region, causing around 100 Russian soldiers to be killed or wounded. A Pantsir-S1 air defence system worth up to million was also reportedly destroyed in the operation. Zelensky did not specify the date of the attack, but reiterated that Russia must end the war and that Ukraine will continue to exert pressure through medium- and long-range operations. Kherson remains a strategic area in the conflict that began in 2022.

GEORGIA

According to data from the Georgian National Statistics Institute Sakstat, the volume of Georgia’s foreign trade increased by 1.7% year-on-year in the period January–April 2026, reaching .13 billion. Georgia’s traditional exports include copper ore, wine, mineral water, nitrogen fertilisers, gold and dried fruit, as well as motor vehicles, mainly to Turkey, Russia and China.