Lawmakers from Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s bloc have resigned en masse from parliament. While the move is ostensibly meant to end eight months of political paralysis, it has put Iraq on the verge of perhaps the greatest political uncertainty it has faced since the first post-Saddam multiparty elections in 2005.

Nine years after the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, Osman Kavala was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. His conviction is just the latest evidence of Turkey’s long slide under Recep Tayyip Erdogan toward becoming a populist-authoritarian regime in which Erdogan has assumed complete control over all state institutions.