Turkey’s political crackdown escalated sharply this weekend as police detained the mayors of three major opposition-held cities, Adana, Antalya, and Adiyaman, in what authorities claim is a widening anti-corruption probe. All three belong to the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP. The arrests mark the latest blow to what remains of Turkey’s democratic opposition following the controversial imprisonment of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu earlier this year. The arrests are part of a broader investigation into alleged graft tied to the Istanbul municipality, though critics widely view them as politically motivated. In total, 15 individuals were detained Saturday, bringing this week’s tally to over 120, including opposition members and a former mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city. Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç defended the detentions, rejecting claims of political targeting and warning that criticism of the judiciary undermines its independence. Yet opposition leaders see a clear pattern. CHP leader Özgür Özel accused Erdoğan’s government of dismantling electoral legitimacy and preparing for rule without meaningful opposition: “They are imposing an authoritarian rule without a ballot box,” he said. The move follows a broader erosion of democratic safeguards in Turkey. İmamoğlu’s March arrest, after securing his party’s nomination to challenge Erdoğan in a future presidential race, sparked the largest protests in Turkey in years. That the mayors of Adana, a strategic city near a U.S. military base, and two other regions have now been detained suggests a systematic campaign to hollow out opposition at the municipal level, where the CHP has steadily gained ground since 2019. Control of city governments has provided the opposition its last institutional foothold in Erdoğan’s Turkey. Four of the five largest cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, are governed by the CHP, wins largely attributed to voter disillusionment with Erdoğan’s handling of the economy. But this control is increasingly under threat as Erdoğan appears to be using the judiciary to retake political territory lost at the ballot box. Erdogan, who won re-election in 2023 and now faces constitutional term limits, dismissed the protests as “serving coup plotters” and urged CHP leaders to await judicial decisions. However, many see this as the rehearsal of a soft coup through courts rather than tanks. With Erdoğan’s party now targeting urban strongholds through mass arrests and legal repression, the future of Turkey’s electoral system hangs in the balance. Whether these moves pave the way for a de facto one-party state may depend not only on domestic resistance, but on the international community’s willingness to hold Ankara accountable.

Russia’s relentless air campaign over Ukraine has entered a new and chilling phase, led not by high-tech missiles but by swarms of low-cost, long-range Shahed drones, a weapon born in Iran, powered by Chinese parts, and now mass-produced on Russian soil with North Korean labor. Once dismissed as primitive, these buzzing engines of attrition have become the spearhead of Vladimir Putin’s air war, delivering nightly terror across Ukraine and exposing the fragility of its exhausted air defenses. The scale of the bombardment is staggering. In June alone, Russia launched 5,438 Shaheds, roughly 180 per night, a number made possible by industrial ramp-up at the Alabuga complex in Tatarstan, where a production line modeled on Iranian designs now produces up to 6,000 units per month. By year’s end, analysts warn, that figure may reach 10,000. These drones are increasingly difficult to intercept, with 15–20% now penetrating Ukrainian defenses, inflicting casualties and infrastructural damage from Odesa to Kyiv. Cheap to make but psychologically devastating, Shaheds evoke fear not through speed but through presence. Unlike ballistic missiles that arrive unannounced, these drones sputter ominously across the sky like lawnmowers, giving civilians long moments to fear their trajectory but little clarity on the outcome. The recent June 17 strike on Kyiv, the deadliest of the war, saw over 500 drones launched in one night, killing 30 and injuring 172. Many were laced with tungsten pellets for maximum shrapnel damage. The noise alone has driven thousands back into nightly shelters. This campaign is powered by what some call the “axis of autocracies,” Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Iran sold Russia the Shahed blueprint in 2022; China now supplies critical electronics, including transceivers and engines; and North Korea is reportedly preparing to send 25,000 laborers to sustain the toxic and grueling assembly process at Alabuga. According to Ukrainian intelligence, recent Shahed variants even include Starlink spoofers and Ukrainian SIM cards, allowing real-time data transmission for mid-air course correction, an alarming leap in navigational sophistication. Volunteer defenders like Mykola Misechko, a Kyiv judge by day and air-defense gunner by night, find themselves stretched thin. Drones are getting faster, now reaching 250mph, and fly in unpredictable waves, often alongside decoys meant to confuse radar and waste ammunition. “You never know where they’re going,” he says. “One of them could be headed for your home.” With U.S. Patriot missile shipments on hold and Western attention divided, Ukraine’s sky is becoming a test case for asymmetric warfare at scale. Russia, backed by its authoritarian allies, has pioneered a new doctrine: overwhelming defenses not with precision but with volume, flooding the zone until the system breaks. The Shahed is no longer a footnote in this war; it is the face of its future.

The European Union’s reputation for technocratic integrity is under renewed strain after a top civil servant, Henrik Hololei, was accused of accepting undisclosed gifts and leaking sensitive documents while negotiating an aviation agreement with Qatar. Hololei, the former Director General of Mobility and Transport at the European Commission, allegedly accepted free flights and luxury accommodations for both himself and his spouse, benefits he failed to declare during a period of direct policy engagement with the Gulf state. The EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, has confirmed these violations, though it stopped short of asserting a quid pro quo. The scandal comes as Brussels grapples with broader credibility issues tied to transparency and corruption. Hololei is now under criminal investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and faces internal disciplinary proceedings within the Commission. Although he has been reassigned to a lower-profile role with reduced pay, critics argue the EU response has been timid, enabling a culture of impunity. With calls from MEPs to suspend the Qatar aviation deal ignored and Eurosceptic voices warning of institutional rot, the Commission’s handling of the affair risks undermining its legitimacy at a moment of geopolitical volatility. More broadly, OLAF’s 2024 report paints a troubling picture: over €870 million in misused EU funds, including a €114 million project in Poland for power generators to Ukraine, where contracts were allegedly awarded without fair bidding. Other scandals include €10 million in Slovak agricultural bribes and a €1.1 million illegal landfill operation in Greece. Across the EU institutions, including the European Parliament, Frontex, and the European Investment Bank, multiple staff remain under investigation. This crisis reinforces growing fears that the EU’s sprawling bureaucracy lacks effective mechanisms for internal accountability. While technocratic governance is often touted as the bloc’s strength, its vulnerability to elite misconduct, cushioned by opaque disciplinary structures and diplomatic discretion, may be its Achilles’ heel. With the Commission pledging reform and recovery of €91 million so far, the question remains: will Brussels act decisively, or will this become yet another warning buried in procedural delay?

Kabul is on track to become the world’s first capital city to run out of water, as decades of mismanagement, rapid urban growth, and accelerating climate change converge into a full-blown humanitarian crisis. According to a new report by Mercy Corps, the city’s groundwater levels have fallen by as much as 30 meters in the past decade, and nearly half of Kabul’s boreholes, the main source of drinking water, have dried up. Without immediate intervention, experts warn the Afghan capital could reach total water depletion by 2030. The crisis is largely structural. Kabul now consumes 44 million cubic meters more groundwater annually than nature can replenish, nearly double the sustainable rate. This unsustainable extraction is driven by a population that has tripled since 2000, as well as more than 100,000 unregulated borewells, hundreds of factories, greenhouses, and beverage companies. One such company, Alokozay, consumes over 1 million cubic meters of water a year alone. Meanwhile, around 80% of Afghans still lack access to safe drinking water, and most of Kabul’s existing groundwater is contaminated with sewage, toxins, or arsenic. The social consequences are stark. In middle-class neighborhoods like Taimani, families spend a quarter of their income on tanker-supplied water. In poorer areas, children skip school to walk kilometers for access to public pumps. The United Nations has warned that mass displacement is likely unless emergency aid and long-term investment materialize quickly. Despite more than $4 billion in donor funds allocated to Afghanistan’s water sector before the Taliban returned to power in 2021, progress has been negligible. Key infrastructure projects, the $236 million Shahtoot Dam and a $170 million pipeline from the Panjshir River, remain stalled. The Taliban-led Ministry of Energy and Water claims it is awaiting budget approval and external investment to proceed, but construction timelines are murky and political will appears weak. Local experts stress that the crisis is solvable, but only if treated as a top national priority. Climate scientist Abdul Baset Rahmani estimates Kabul’s water shortage could be reversed within 18 months if the government were to act decisively. In the short term, international agencies like UNICEF and the ICRC have made modest contributions by installing filtration systems and repairing pumps, but these efforts barely dent the scale of the problem. As Afghanistan drifts further into isolation and economic collapse, Kabul’s water crisis has emerged as both a symptom and a warning, of a capital city pushed to the edge, and of a state that has failed to protect its most basic resource. If urgent action is not taken, the world may soon witness an unprecedented urban exodus, not from war or famine, but from the simple absence of water.

Over one million children in South Africa live without birth certificates, rendering them legally invisible and excluded from essential services like healthcare, education, and social welfare. The issue, while national in scope, is especially acute in poverty-stricken communities like Cape Town’s Langa township, where families like that of 15-year-old Qamani Sentiwe endure years of bureaucratic limbo. Despite dreams of playing professional football, Qamani cannot even compete in local tournaments due to his undocumented status, a consequence of a birth unregistered by his teenage mother and a system that has failed to support his grandmother’s years-long efforts to obtain legal recognition for him. The Department of Home Affairs is facing legal action over a backlog of at least 250,000 late birth registration cases, some pending for up to seven years. According to the Children’s Institute, the agency’s rigid, suspicion-driven procedures are structured not to facilitate access but to minimize institutional accountability. These include unnecessary in-person interviews for every case, even when supporting documentation is sufficient. Many applicants are forced to travel across provinces to their birthplaces, a logistical and financial burden that disproportionately affects the poorest. The impact is profound: children cannot enroll in school, access medical care, or receive government support. Their guardians, often grandmothers or orphans themselves, live in fear of what will happen when they die. Adult South Africans who grew up undocumented, like Cape Town gardener Bongumusa Bernat, describe the experience as akin to being “handcuffed,” unable to open a bank account, find stable work, or prove their citizenship in the face of xenophobic suspicion. While South Africa’s legal framework guarantees every child the right to an identity, in practice the system is failing its most vulnerable. The problem is continent-wide, with over 540 million undocumented individuals across Africa, and more than half of all children under five lacking a birth certificate, according to the UN Economic Commission for Africa. But in South Africa, where social services depend on legal identity, this failure actively reproduces cycles of exclusion and poverty. The court case brought by the Children’s Institute could become a landmark ruling on bureaucratic cruelty and institutional neglect. Yet even if the legal challenge succeeds, families like Qamani’s remain in limbo until the state takes seriously its obligation to document, and acknowledge, all its citizens.