World roundup: January 22 2025
Stories from Turkey, Niger, Mexico, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
January 22, 1517: The Ottomans defeat the remnants of the Mamluk army at the Battle of Ridaniyah, one of the more consequential anticlimaxes in history. The Ottomans had all but ensured their conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate at the Battle of Marj Dabiq the previous August, but Ridaniyah technically marks the end of the sultanate and the point at which Egypt (along with Syria and the Hejaz) became an Ottoman possession.
January 22, 1905: The Russian Imperial Guard’s massacre of dozens of protesters (demanding better treatment for workers) in St. Petersburg, also known as “Bloody Sunday,” marks the start of the 1905 Russian Revolution. As reports of the massacre reached other cities, mass strikes began that sparked more violent reprisals from authorities, and the situation spiraled. The revolution ended in June 1907 with the institution of limited constitutional reforms and the creation of a parliament (the Duma). It also reshaped popular feelings about the Russian monarchy and served as a sort of prelude to the 1917 Russian Revolution.
January 22, 1946: The Republic of Mahabad is born.
INTERNATIONAL
A new study using AI to track glacier loss suggests that the problem is worse than previously believed:
The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the global average since 1979. Svalbard, an archipelago near the northeast coast of Greenland, is at the frontline of this climate change, warming up to seven times faster than the rest of the world.
More than half of Svalbard is covered by glaciers. If they were to completely melt tomorrow, the global sea level would rise by 1.7cm. Although this won’t happen overnight, glaciers in the Arctic are highly sensitive to even slight temperature increases.
To better understand glaciers in Svalbard and beyond, we used an AI model to analyse millions of satellite images from Svalbard over the past four decades. Our research is now published in Nature Communications, and shows these glaciers are shrinking faster than ever, in line with global warming.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
Leaders of Turkey’s People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) met with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan on Wednesday, the second time they’ve done so in the past two months. It would appear, then, that efforts to settle the Turkish government’s conflict with the PKK are making progress. According to Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman, there are growing expectations that Öcalan will soon call on PKK fighters to “lay down their arms,” perhaps on February 15 (the 26th anniversary of his arrest) or March 21 (Nowruz). In return, Turkish authorities would transfer Öcalan out of solitary confinement, free several other prominent jailed Kurdish politicians, and get the ball rolling on several legal measures that would benefit Turkey’s Kurdish population.
If this all comes off it will also have implications for the tensions surrounding the Syrian Democratic Forces (see below), which would agree to share regional authority in northeastern Syria with the Kurdish National Council. That group is closely associated with Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and its leader, Masoud Barzani, who is a Turkish client and recently (probably not coincidentally) received SDF leader Mazloum Abdi in Erbil.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Foreign Exchanges to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.