World roundup: March 13 2023

Stories from Turkey, China, Ukraine, and elsewhere

INTERNATIONAL

In today’s global news:

• Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.

• The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

Several recent polls paint a grim picture for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP/MHP parliamentary coalition heading into May’s general election. Surveys from three different pollsters conducted after Turkey’s main opposition bloc named Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as its joint presidential candidate show Kılıçdaroğlu leading Erdoğan by 10-14 points, with Kılıçdaroğlu comfortably above the 50 percent threshold needed for a first round victory in all three cases. A fourth poll taken just prior to Kılıçdaroğlu’s unveiling puts him up by about 13 points.

On the parliamentary side, the three post-Kılıçdaroğlu surveys give the joint opposition between 43 and 47 percent of the vote compared with around 37-39 percent for AKP/MHP, with the opposition HDP (which is independent of Kılıçdaroğlu’s coalition but generally could be expected to support it against the AKP/MHP bloc) sitting at 10-12 percent. Obviously the polling could be wrong, so take these results with that in mind. There’s also a lot of campaigning that can be done before May, and Erdoğan will use every lever of power at his disposal to prevent the opposition from doing very much of it.