Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan beat the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff yesterday with 52.1 percent of the vote, according to Turkey's Supreme Election Council. The Turkish president is likely to remain in power for at least a quarter of his life, as he has vexed Western allies in NATO while tightening his grip on the Turkish state. His victory deepens his conservative influence on Turkish society, as he pursues his vision of a country with increasing economic and geopolitical power. His supporters shrugged off Turkey's challenges, including a looming economic crisis, and lauded him for enhancing Turkey's status as a Muslim nation with 85 million people and critical ties across continents. Several thousands gathered outside Ankara's presidential palace, waiving red and white Turkish flags. It is not only us who won, it is Turkey, he said to raucous applause. The nation has won with all its components. Andrei Medvedev, a Russian who claimed to have deserted from Russia's Wagner mercenary force during the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, is seeking asylum in Norway while providing information on Wagner to the authorities. His unlikely journey has led to Medvedev being one of only a few known Russian combatants to seek protection in Europe after participating in the invasion. Norway is now facing a legal battle that pits the nation's humanitarian ethos against an increasingly assertive national security policy and solidarity with Ukraine.
As a foreign minister, Medvedev has attended interviews with Norwegian police officers investigating war crimes in Ukraine. He has said he had been involved in fighting and witnessed the executions of comrades accused of cowardice, but he claimed that he did not participate in or witness war crimes, including the killings of prisoners of war and civilians. Russian fighters, especially mercenaries like Medvedev, are not held accountable for the invasion, Activists in Ukraine and Western Europe say. In addition, he may have complicated his own request with bar fights and detentions in Norway and by briefly posting a video on YouTube showing his desire to return to Russia. It goes to the core of who we are in Europe, said Cecilie Hellestveit, a former member of Norway's asylum appeal board. It forces us to re-evaluate our approach to human rights in a way we have never been willing to do before. Now the mayor of Ostelsheim, a small, tight-knit village in southwestern Germany, is expected to be the first German town to elect a mayor from the nearly one million Syrian refugees who arrived in the country in 2015. What happened here? The problem of time-wasting in soccer is a widespread one. Several significant examples of painful bouts of slow play have forced soccer's governing body to search for solutions. The inside story of Germany's amazing day of joy: Great goals, penalty misses, a video review controversy, ill-advised T-shirts, the final day of Germany's title race had it all. The Women's Super League is a more competitive competition than ever, with Chelsea winning the title for a fourth time in a row, but the league's dominance has been propelling it to new heights. A rare statement of defiance against the war in Ukraine by an Olympic athlete from Belarus or Russia was made public on the first day of the French Open.