The Sunday Subject – May 21, 2023

Turkey’s presidential election will head to a run-off on May 28th.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the incumbent, fell just shy of 50%, while Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of an opposition alliance, got 45%. Erdogan’s Justice and Development party still retained a comfortable majority in parliament.

Pro-democracy parties in Thailand overwhelmingly beat the military and royalist coalition in parliamentary elections.

Move Forward and Pheu Thai, the parties of liberal activists and a former prime minister in exile, respectively, won the majority of seats. Forming a government will still be challenging, however, as the army has rigged the constitution to give it an advantage in appointing the prime minister. 

The governor of Montana signed a bill that bans TikTok.

It is the first statewide ban of the platform, which is owned by a Chinese company. The ban will face legal challenges before it is due to come into effect in January.