World roundup: May 14 2025

Stories from India, Libya, Russia, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

May 14, 1560: The Ottoman Empire wins a major naval battle against a Habsburg-led alliance at Djerba, just off the coast of modern Tunisia. The Ottomans caught the Christian fleet unprepared and dealt it substantial losses. The victory enabled the Ottomans to extend their Mediterranean control to include Tunisia and allowed their navy to threaten the central Mediterranean. Their defeat in the 1565 Great Siege of Malta more or less eliminated that threat.

May 14, 1796: English doctor Edward Jenner administers an experimental smallpox vaccine to the eight year old son of his gardener, inoculating the boy with pus from a woman who was infected with cowpox. This technique was already in use, but Jenner then intentionally exposed the child to smallpox and is thus credited with proving that the vaccine actually worked.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

Plans for implementing the new and still very tenuous Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) peace process may be starting to emerge. According to AFP, the Turkish government “is working on a proposal that could ease prison sentences in general”—particularly for women with children and those who are sick/elderly as well as people who are in pre-trial detention—that could affect upwards of 60,000 people. This wouldn’t apply specifically to the Kurdish community but no doubt some portion of those affected would be Kurds. Other steps, like the release of Kurdish politicians being held on essentially political charges and the reinstatement of Kurdish local officials who have been removed from office by the national government, may have to wait until the PKK has verifiably disarmed.

While most of the attention in the Middle East has been on Donald Trump over the past few days, The Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor notes that it’s been a very good week for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He’s seen the PKK announce its disarmament (and in the process possibly ensure that he’ll be able to run for president again in 2028), bolstered his international stature by hosting another round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks (more on that later), and watched as Trump announced the lifting of US sanctions on the new, Turkish-dependent Syrian government. Suddenly his imprisonment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, coincidentally (or not) his chief rival on the national stage, seems to have been tossed down the memory hole even though it happened less than three months ago.