Reuters: Turkey's Erdogan moots plan to grant citizenship to Syrians

President Tayyip Erdogan outlined plans on Tuesday to grant citizenship to some of the near 3 million migrants who have fled war in neighboring Syria, particularly those with qualifications of use to Turkey."

Western nations open their doors to such skilled individuals and they have no choice but to go (to the West) when we do not open the gates (of citizenship) ourselves. We would like to benefit from their knowledge," Erdogan told reporters after praying at an Istanbul mosque. [...]

Some 260,000 of the Syrians in Turkey live in state-run camps, while the remainder live in accommodation in cities across the country, which has a population of 79 million.

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The Washington Post: Israel’s Netanyahu seeks to make new friends in historic first visit to Africa

In Uganda, Netanyahu held a summit with leaders of seven African nations in the region aimed at strengthening ties, with Israel providing them with its expertise in security and technology, while receiving in exchange support from new friends that will refrain from criticizing Israeli policies and also provide diplomatic backing in international forums.

The effort comes as Israel’s ties with some of its longtime allies such as the United States and European Union have come under strain recently. Netanyahu’s right-leaning government has drawn sharp criticisms in the United States and Europe over its failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians and its continued building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians seek for a future state. [...]

“Netanyahu wants to improve Israel’s standing with these countries in Africa so that at international conferences they will not join the Arab countries in their resolutions against Israel,” said Aryeh Oded, a former Israeli ambassador to Kenya and Swaziland and non-resident ambassador in Zambia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania and Uganda.

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The New York Times: The Theology of Donald Trump

This fulsome embrace of Mr. Trump is rather problematic, since he embodies a worldview that is incompatible with Christianity. If you trace that worldview to its source, Christ would not be anywhere in the vicinity.

Time and again Mr. Trump has shown contempt for those he perceives as weak and vulnerable — “losers,” in his vernacular. They include P.O.W.s, people with disabilities, those he deems physically unattractive and those he considers politically powerless. He bullies and threatens people he believes are obstacles to his ambitions. He disdains compassion and empathy, to the point where his instinctive response to the largest mass shooting in American history was to congratulate himself: “Appreciate the congrats for being right.” [...]

Whether or not he has read a word of Nietzsche (I’m guessing not), Mr. Trump embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one. It is characterized by indifference to objective truth (there are no facts, only interpretations), the repudiation of Christian concern for the poor and the weak, and disdain for the powerless. It celebrates the “Übermensch,” or Superman, who rejects Christian morality in favor of his own. For Nietzsche, strength was intrinsically good and weakness was intrinsically bad. So, too, for Donald Trump. [...]

Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it — that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game.

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The New York Times: Turkish Leader Erdogan Making New Enemies and Frustrating Old Friends

Mr. Erdogan, who long professed a foreign policy of “zero problems with neighbors,” now seems to be mired in disputes with just about everybody and just about everywhere. Kurdish and Islamic State militants have struck Turkey 14 times in the past year, killing 280 people and sowing new fears. The economy has suffered, too, as the violence frightens away tourists.

At the same time, Mr. Erdogan has become increasingly isolated, frustrating old allies like the United States by refusing for years to take firm measures against the Islamic State. He has recently gotten serious about the militant group, but that appears to have brought new problems: Turkish officials say they believe that the Islamic State was responsible for the suicide attack that killed 44 people on Tuesday in Istanbul’s main airport, a major artery of Turkey’s strained economy. [...]

“Erdogan is still the most popular political leader, but there is unease in the population,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist and professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “A lot of people are thinking this is an untenable situation.” [...]

Today, many say Mr. Erdogan has simply adopted the bad habits of former Turkish leaders he came to power to defeat. He needs allies, so he has struck an alliance with the military — the chief of staff was a witness at his daughter’s wedding — and extreme nationalists are now resurgent. That is deeply troubling to human rights advocates who have documented the missing-person case of a Kurdish politician from Sirnak, Hursit Kulter, the first such disappearance since 2001.

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AP: DIVIDED AMERICA: Town and country offer differing realities

The political divide goes even deeper than simply between the two parties. In the GOP primary, rural areas voted reliably for Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose angrier style of politics many analysts argued were too harsh and off-putting to play well with a broader electorate. Urban and suburban Republicans were more likely to support candidates widely seen as more electable like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Ohio Gov. John Katich. [...]

That concentration has brought a whole host of new urban problems — rising inequality, traffic and worries that the basics of city life are increasingly out of the reach of the middle class. Those fears inform Democrats' emphasis on income inequality, wages and pay equity in contrast to the general anxiety about economic collapse that comes from Republicans who represent an increasingly desperate rural America. [...]

A common complaint across rural America is that big cities don't understand their issues and get all the resources (though political scientists Gerald Gamm and Thad Kousser published a paper in 2013 that found that rural representatives had more success passing bills in state legislatures than did their city colleagues). [...]

All the money pouring into cities is creating new problems. A Brookings Institute study last year found the nation's largest cities have higher rates of income inequality than the nation as a whole. Predominantly city-based Democratic congressional districts have higher rates of inequality than Republican ones, according to a review of Census data. Rising rents and displacement of longtime residents is a typical urban worry from Seattle to Miami.

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