Nine months after she fled Russian rockets in her pajamas, carrying only her passport, Iryna Shevchuk finally arrived somewhere vaguely resembling home.

Then, exhausted and overwhelmed, she collapsed. Her first memory on British soil was the sight of paramedics, buzzing below an airport ceiling. “I just cried and said: ‘I’m from Ukraine,’” she recalled. “They said: ‘You are safe now.’”

Shevchuk, 33, is one of 122,000 displaced people housed in the UK under a government program to help some of the millions who fled the Russian invasion of her home country.

And this week, five months after Shevchuk arrived, her adopted city of Liverpool is playing host to Ukraine’s biggest celebration since the Russian invasion. Had circumstances been different, the Eurovision Song Contest might be taking place this weekend Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, or Shevchuk’s home city, Donetsk, which she left for Kyiv after fighting broke out with pro-Russian separatists in 2014.

But Ukraine – which won the 2022 contest on a wave of European solidarity – is in the grips of war. The UK, the second-placed nation, stepped in, and Liverpool triumphed over bids from other British cities to stage the contest.

The dockside hub where the competition is being held feels like a little Ukraine. Liverpudlians, who typically bleed either red or blue, depending on their allegiance to the city’s two footballing giants, have instead draped their home in Ukraine’s national colors, and welcomed scores of displaced people after the British government earmarked 3,000 tickets for Ukrainian refugees.

“It’s strange – it feels like it’s in Ukraine,” Shevchuk said. “You forget where you are.”

“I was naive,” said Menacere, who was inspired to host someone after herself fleeing civil war in Algeria in 1993, aged 7. “I thought she would love Liverpool as much as I do – I’m more aware now that none of the Ukrainains have chosen to be here. It’s been forced on them.”

But as Shevchuk reflected on the past year of her life, she admitted she’s warming to Liverpool. And Liverpool is starting to resemble home.

A Scouse-Ukrainian mash-up

If Liverpool feels like a miniature Kyiv on the Mersey, it’s no accident.

“I knew if we wanted to do this, it wasn’t just to tick boxes for Ukraine. We wouldn’t just put up some posters,” said Claire McColgan, Liverpool’s director of culture, who did more than anyone else to bring the kitsch and occasionally eyebrow-raising contest to the city. “What you see in the city is a real Scouse-Ukrainian mash-up, which is what we wanted.”

Brits have historically had an awkward relationship with the contest, which showcases some of Europe’s most eccentric creatives and rewards flamboyance, imagination and unabashed weirdness over the UK’s stereotypically quiet resolve.

But this year, in this city, it’s different. Schoolchildren around Liverpool have learned Ukrainian folk tales. A new Ukraine community center was opened last week in its eastern suburbs. Even a statue of the Beatles was proudly adorned with the country’s national dress.

“The fact that we are hosting it for a different country suits Liverpool’s personality,” McColgan said from her office, watching as trucks below her heave Eurovision’s distinctive signage into place. “Liverpool is properly crackers … but it’s also got a really big heart .”

It’s a wholesale transformation for a city that, before February 2022, had “no real (Ukrainian) community.”

“Liverpool was treated by Ukrainians as a place of transition,” said Taras Khomych, 74, the softly-spoken head of the city’s Ukrainian Church. “Some went further west, to North America, others settled in Manchester.” In Liverpool, there were “just a few families,” he said.

Then everything changed. Days after Russia’s invasion, Khomych spoke to a packed church. Every day, he receives messages from new Ukrainians arriving in the city. “Liverpool being Liverpool, everyone wanted to help immediately,” he said.

The city is fiercely proud, and its maverick streak runs purposefully counter to London and the rest of England’s south. Scousers don’t care for the King, or the ruling Conservative party – but the city was built on the back of its shipping routes to other countries, and its inhabitants will tell anyone who’ll listen that their doors are always open to outsiders.

“Liverpool is where it’s at,” Menacere said simply. And after a trip back to Kyiv last week – her first visit since she left on February 25, 2022 – Shevchuk is starting to agree.

“I wanted to see what’s changed,” Shevchuk said, explaining her trip back to Ukraine. “Is there a future? Is it safe?” But even with the fighting mostly focused on Ukraine’s east, life in the capital is still scarred by war. A barrage of Russian attacks hit the city last week, while Shevchuk was there.

She spent some days sleeping on the floor outside her apartment, to keep two walls between her and a potential missile. “When I was very scared, I went to shelter in a school or hospital.”

Their song, “Heart of Steel,” is inspired by the soldiers who defended Azovstal Steel Plant in the early weeks of the war. “They had fire in their eyes,” Andrii Hutsuliak said.

Hutsuliak summarized their message for watching Ukrainians: “We know that everyday is hard. We’re here physically, and our souls are back at home.” As for Russia, he added: “To terrorists, we have no messages and no words. What can you say to terrorists?”

“I left Ukraine under the air raid alarms, again,” Shevchuk said, describing her departure last week. “I adore Kyiv. I adore Ukraine, it’s my heart. But now, for me, I feel everything has ended. Right now, I have nothing at all.”

Instead, something changed in her psyche when she came back to Liverpool. “Now I have some more (determination) inside myself to do something with my life here.” She chats with 600 compatriots in a Liverpool-specific WhatsApp group about Eurovision, making plans to meet and take in the city-wide events. Even the food tastes better now, she said. “I saw Liverpool in another light. It’s green, it’s finally warm, and Eurovision makes me happy.”

‘Russia erased our history’

For many Ukrainians who made Liverpool their home, the pull of Eurovision was difficult to resist.

“Everyone understands we need to help our country – it doesn’t matter how,” said Veronika Yasynska, another displaced person on the Homes for Ukraine scheme, who lives with a young Liverpudlian couple. Her first mission was to introduce a shelf for Ukrainian books in Liverpool’s largest library. Now, she has been helping the council’s preparations for Eurovision, and has staged Ukrainian artistic displays in the city’s massive Eurovision Village site.

Like Shevchuk, Yasynska escaped Kyiv crammed into a train, alongside children and pets, in total darkness and with GPS devices turned off to avoid detection from Russian rockets. “It was not an evacuation, it was a zombie apocalypse,” Shevchuk said, with locals rushing the train carriages as it passed rural towns.

Both women say they have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Both have relatives in Ukraine who they accept they may not see again. But both are slowly finding purpose in their adopted city.

“Russia erased our history, they rewrote our historical books,” Yasynska said. “I’m under pressure to give (Ukrainians) a proper place to present themselves, to present Ukraine … and to finally establish the correct history about Ukraine, that we’re independent.”

The reception she has had has left an impression. “I’ve never met such kind and generous people as here in Liverpool.”

At least 3,000 displaced Ukrainians have arrived in the city, tickets in hand, for one of the live shows throughout the week before the final takes place on Saturday. Others have visited just to join the festivities.

Shared trauma

Liverpool is twinned with Odesa, a major port city on the banks of the Black Sea which has been bombarded by Russian attacks.

And while its Ukrainian community is in its infancy, the two places share the experience of overcoming trauma.

Liverpool was massively damaged in a Nazi Blitz campaign between 1940 and 1942. Then, nearly half a century later, a disaster at Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium killed 97 people, almost all of them traveling Liverpool fans.

The ensuing, decades-long effort for justice unified the city; today, shirts bearing the number of those killed adorn pubs and the windows of people’s homes, an ever-present reminder of the tragedy that fortified Liverpool’s self-reliance, and cemented its suspicion of authorities down south.

Maria Romanenko has shown hundreds of the visitors around. Having resettled in nearby Manchester last year, Romanenko has offered free Ukrainian-language tours to those in Liverpool all week – and put on a final excursion on Friday for Jamala, Ukraine’s 2016 Eurovision winner, who heard about the program and got in touch.

“People coming together and showing that community is much stronger than criminals – those stories always do well with Ukrainians,” Romanenko said. “They can relate to the experience of how the city used something negative to fight for justice – they used it to achieve something good.”

One of Yasynska’s first outings in Liverpool was to its local history museum, just along the waterfront from the arena hosting Eurovision.

“When I saw the (World War II) devastation, and what the city looked like after the bombing, I heard the sirens – they were absolutely similar as those I’ve heard before.”

“Nothing has changed, only the time frames,” she said. “It was important for me to understand what the next steps that we, as Ukrainians, need to do to protect our culture and protect our cities. How to rebuild.”

“It was an inspiration to understand that it is possible to rebuild it, it is possible to start a new life from zero.”

By Sunday, the massive circus that accompanies Eurovision will leave Liverpool culturally and financially richer – local authorities estimate a £25 million ($31 million) windfall from the contest.

But for the Ukrainians who now call the city home, it will hold a different legacy.

“Liverpool is not home,” Shevchuk said. But her outlook on her new life has shifted in recent days. “It’s a place that gives me a chance for the future.”

Bedi Değirmenci has taken his first breaths of fresh air since a monster earthquake struck southeast Turkey three months ago.

For three days, the 36-year-old lay trapped under the rubble of his home in Hatay. Then he was hospitalized for traumas to the head and spine, and discharged only on Wednesday, just days before the country’s historic May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Deep gashes frame the right side of Bedi’s face and he now walks with a permanent limp. When he reunites with the few relatives who survived the quake, the air fills with a crescendo of sobs — the grief of bereavement infused with relief over Bedi’s recovery. 

The earthquake killed Bedi’s wife, his parents-in-law, his two daughters and their cousin. The children were 4, 5 and 6 years old. Two other children from the wider family also lost their lives.

For his tragedy, Bedi blames the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is battling for a third term, buffeted by economic headwinds and criticism that the impact of the February 6 earthquake was made worse by lax building controls and a shambolic rescue effort.  

The earthquake claimed more than 50,000 lives in Turkey and neighboring Syria, and displaced more than 6 million people. The state’s emergency workers were all but absent in many parts of the disaster area during the first few days that followed.  

For three days, Bedi’s relative – Caner Değirmenci – sledgehammered a path to the destroyed family home in Hatay. Just over 72 hours later, he and the Italian rescue team, Vigili del Fuoco, rescued Bedi and recovered the lifeless bodies of his wife and two daughters.   

“For the first 48 hours under the rubble, my daughter Talya was alive. We were talking together constantly,” says Bedi. “Then suddenly, she stopped speaking.    

“What happened was not a disaster. It was murder.”  

The day after the earthquake, Erdogan berated critics of the government’s botched earthquake response. Days later, the government admitted that the rescue effort had fallen short and issued a public apology.

Criticism of the government soon became dominated by the issue of building standards, which have been relaxed since Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power. In the weeks after the quake, the government rounded up dozens of contractors, construction inspectors and project managers for violating construction rules.

Critics dismissed the arrests as scapegoating. Relaxed building regulations were at the heart of the construction boom that turbocharged Erdogan’s 20-year rule, they argued, and the aftermath of the earthquake serves as an indictment of the country’s strongman leader.

Yet in the Erdogan strongholds that pepper the earthquake zone of southeast Turkey, those criticisms may have largely fallen on deaf ears.

Polls give the opposition coalition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu a slight national lead over Erdogan (earthquake zone polling data is hard to come by). Kılıçdaroğlu may be boosted further by the late withdrawal from the race of a minor candidate, Muharrem Ince. But at least one pollster, Can Selcuki from Istanbul Economics Research, says that the government’s earthquake response has done little to sway voters.

“This is the most tense moment I have seen in Turkish society,” said Asli Aydıntaşbaş, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. ”(The elections) are going to be about the future direction of the country and two radically different visions of where Turkey will go. And the opposition is galvanized.”  

For Aydıntaşbaş, the earthquake may have entrenched those deep divisions. Opposition-leaning communities are angrier than ever at Erdogan, while his support base has embraced the ruling party’s main talking point: mistakes were made at the beginning and now only Erdogan can rebuild what was destroyed. 

“More than anything else, the earthquake consolidates the two sides,” said Aydıntaşbaş.  

A veneer of normalcy in Erdogan strongholds  

Outside her government-provided tent in Kahramanmaras, a headscarf-wearing middle-aged woman smiles furtively at passersby while she reads the Quran. Nuray Canpolat’s neighbors at the tent park appear to be in a jovial mood, singing pro-Erdogan chants and brandishing the ruling party’s flags.

Kahramanmaras is the epicenter of the earthquake and a conservative Erdogan powerbase. 

Nuray says she tried to hold out in her damaged apartment for weeks before she resigned herself to leaving.  “All I wish for is a home. But I know that since I’m only a tenant in my apartment, I’ll be one of the last to recover what I lost,” she says.

At first glance, Kahramanmaras seems to have rumbled back to life. Cars fill the streets, and people have flocked back to the main bazaars. Many here see this as proof that the government will deliver on promises to rebuild quickly. Erdogan campaign posters line the streets with the slogan: Right man, for the right time.  

Most of the buildings here are either destroyed or too dangerous to live in. Tent parks pepper the hillside city, which boasts picturesque mountain views.  

“I will of course vote for President Erdogan,” Nuray says, her hand covering her blackened teeth as she smiles. “People make mistakes and you’ve got to love people despite their mistakes.  

“First, God saves us. Then our President Erdogan saves us.” 

That appeal to faith in the Turkish leader echoes throughout the city. For many here, the slow earthquake response and recent financial crisis – which caused prices to soar and the currency to plummet – pale in comparison to Erdogan’s achievements in the first half of his two-decade rule.  

The early years of Erdogan’s leadership saw millions lifted out of poverty. He scrapped secularist policies that repressed expressions of faith, such as the banning of the hijab in universities. Erdogan’s combative foreign policy has endowed Turkey with a muscular posture, his supporters argue, even if his international adventurism was perceived as reckless at times.

Many here say that they must repay a debt to him with loyalty that not even a massive earthquake could shake.

“Is there any leader in any other country so loved as President Erdogan?” says one shopkeeper at the Kahramanmaras Bazaar. 

Another merchant chimes in: “There is no way he will lose this election. Tayyip, Tayyip, Tayyip all the way. He will get 60% of the vote.”  

Hanifi Güler, 53, says he lost 25 members of his extended family when a large apartment block collapsed in the quake. “The president thankfully said he would pay and I believe him,” he says. “The government has done the best it can do.”  

Yet there are a few dissenting voices. Hasan Bilir, a bearded elderly man who has always voted for Erdogan, says his trust in the president has hit its limits.  

“They see Erdogan as a saint. It’s too much. I survive on earthquake aid. I will vote for neither him nor the other candidate,” he says, referring to Kılıçdaroğlu.  

“This earthquake isn’t going to make anyone vote differently,” says 48-year-old Salih Yenikomşu, a jeweler and opposition supporter. “People believe in him and believe he is beyond reproach.”  

Beneath the veneer of normalcy here, the cracks are beginning to show. As night falls, the bustling marketplaces give way to food banks. Many merchants return not to their homes, but to tents or, if they’re lucky, a zinc container.  

One middle-aged man spits in the direction of an Erdogan poster. “I lost my wife, my son and my two grandsons,” he says. “I was a staunch supporter of the AK Party but now I spit on him. A lot of us do. 

“We trusted them just because they were Muslims.”  

One first-time voter, Ziya Kahveci, says he prefers to stay away from politics. He even raises the specter of “riots on election night.”  

“I have close friends who said that they’re going to take to the streets and riot if the governing party loses,” he says. 

Fears of violence have peaked in recent days after pro-government youth pelted an opposition rally with stones last weekend.  

“I cannot convince my friends to not take to the streets. They yell at me. I can’t even speak to them about the election. The polarization in this country is so deep,” he says. 

“On election night, I’m going to chain the door of both my apartment and the building.”  

Back in Hatay, where the vote is typically split between loyalists and secular opposition groups, the government’s presence is barely visible. The city is a ghost town with no building left unscathed. Ottoman-era arches protruding from heaps of rubble are the only remaining testaments to its rich history.  

New cemeteries outside the city stretch for hundreds of meters, mostly with unmarked graves. DNA samples are collected here to help family members identify thousands of people still unaccounted for.  

Sometimes, those burying the dead will leave clues. In Narlıca cemetery, the wooden plank on grave number 236 is draped with a white dress worn by a child who was not more than two years old. 

“We feel like the living dead. I feel like a balloon blowing in the wind,” says Meltem Canımoğlu, the sister-in-law of Bedi Değirmenci, who was stuck under the rubble in Hatay.

She still sends text messages to her dead parents. She lost her six-year-old son, too, as well as her sister, Bedi’s wife.  

Meltem’s husband, Ayhan, sits with a quiet dignity next to his weeping wife. He says he’s determined to take his grief to the ballot box and cast his vote for Kılıçdaroğlu. 

“The ballot box is the only way to hold officials to account,” he says. 

“We hope to slam the doors of hell shut.”  

What’s eating Yevgeny Prigozhin?

In recent days, the boss of the Russian private military company Wagner seems to have gone into social-media meltdown, flooding his Telegram channel and other accounts with ever-more outrageous and provocative statements.

Among other things, Prigozhin revealed an apparently humiliating battlefield setback for Russia, fulminating this week that a Russian brigade had “fled” around eastern city of Bakhmut, threatening his troops with encirclement by the Ukrainian forces.

“The situation on the western flanks is developing according to the worst of the predicted scenarios,” Prigozhin complained in an audio message released Thursday. “Those territories that were liberated with the blood and lives of our comrades … are abandoned today almost without any fight by those who are supposed to hold our flanks.”

Earlier in the week, Prigozhin marred Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations with public and profanity-laced criticisms of the country’s top military brass.

“Today they [Ukrainians] are tearing up the flanks in the Artemovsk [Bakhmut] direction, regrouping at Zaporizhzhia. And a counteroffensive is about to begin,” he said Tuesday. “Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers. We haven’t earned that victory one millimeter.”

And then there was a more cryptic comment that raised eyebrows on social media. Continuing a longstanding public complaint that Russia’s uniformed military was starving his troops of shells, Prigozhin suggested that the higher-ups were dithering while Wagner fighters died.

“The shells are lying in warehouses, they are resting there,” he said. “Why are the shells lying in the warehouses? There are people who fight, and there are people who have learned once in their lives that there must be a reserve, and they save, save, save those reserves. … No one knows what for. Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy, they kill our soldiers. And happy grandfather thinks this is okay.”

That begged the question: Whom, exactly, is Prigozhin referring to? After all, “grandfather in the bunker” is one of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s favorite monikers for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who inhabits an almost cartoonishly extreme security bubble.

Political star

So what, exactly, was Prigozhin driving at? Is he flirting with defenestration? Or is he simply at the end of his tether, after spending months on the front lines?

Prigozhin quickly backpedalled on his “grandfather” comment, recording a subsequent voice memo clarifying that he might be referring to the former Defense Minister Deputy Mikhail Mizintsev or Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov (or, more bizarrely, pro-war blogger Nataliya Khim).

“I spoke about a ‘grandpa’ in the context of the fact that we are not given shells which are kept in warehouses, and who can be a grandpa?” Prigozhin said in a Telegram voice memo. “Option number one, Mizintsev, who was fired for giving us shells and therefore now he cannot give shells. The second is the General Chief of Staff, Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, who is supposed to provide shells, but we do not receive enough shells, and we receive only 10%.”

A bit of context is in order here. For months, the boss of the Wagner private military company has seen his political star rise in Russia as his fighters seemed to be the only ones capable of delivering tangible battlefield progress in the grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine. And he has used his social-media clout to lobby for what he wants, including those sought-after ammunition supplies.

But amid those successes — particularly in the meatgrinder of Bakhmut — Prigozhin has revived and amplified a feud with Russia’s military leadership. A canny political entrepreneur, Prigozhin has cast himself as a competent, ruthless patriot — in contrast with Russia’s inept military establishment.

He has even trolled Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close confidant of Putin. In a letter he shared on social media Friday, the Wagner chief continued to place blame on the military for losing ground around Bakhmut – and dared Shoigu to visit the battleground himself.

“Currently, the units of the PMC Wagner control more than 95% of the settlement of Bakhmut and continue their offensive for its complete liberation,” Prigozhin wrote in a letter he shared on his social media accounts on Friday. “On the flanks of PMC Wagner, where the RF Armed Forces units are located, the enemy has launched a number of successful counterattacks.”

“I ask you to come to the territory of Bakhmut, which is controlled by the RF paramilitary units, and assess the situation on your own,” he added.

Politically expendable?

It may seem surprising in a country where criticizing the military can potentially cost a person a spell in prison that Prigozhin gets away with strident criticism of Putin’s generals. But Putin presides over what is often described as a court system, where infighting and competition among elites is in fact encouraged to produce results, as long as the “vertical of power” remains loyal to and answers to the head of state.

But Prigozhin’s online tantrums to be crossing the line to open disloyalty, some observers say.

In a recent Twitter thread, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said, “If the Kremlin does not respond to Prigozhin’s escalating attacks on Putin it may further erode the norm in Putin’s system in which individual actors can jockey for position and influence (and drop in and out of Putin’s favor) but cannot directly criticize Putin.”

Speculation then centers on whether Prigozhin is politically expendable, whether his outbursts are a sort of clever deception operation — or, more troublingly for Putin, whether the system of loyalty that keeps the Kremlin running smoothly is starting to break down.

“This isn’t meant to happen in Putin’s system,” said Cold War historian and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Sergey Radchenko in a recent Twitter thread. “Putin’s system allows for minions to attack each other but never undermine the vertical. Prigozhin is crossing this line. Either Putin responds and Prigozhin is toast or — if this doesn’t happen — a signal will be sent right through. A signal that the boss has been fatally weakened. And this is a system that does not respect weakness.”

That theory will be tested in the coming days, as the battles continue to rage around Bakhmut.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition candidate in Turkey’s presidential election, is decidedly calm and mild-mannered in his bid to end the two-decade rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Much of his campaign messaging has been delivered from his quintessentially Turkish middle-class home and posted on Twitter, in videos that some observers have called his “kitchen diaries.”

Seated, often with tea in an “ince belli”, a Turkish teacup, he lays out his key campaign promises, announces members of his potential coalition, and sometimes just speaks candidly to the people, virtually welcoming the public into his home.

Such gestures are in stark contrast to the elitist image he and his party once had. Analysts say the desire to appeal to today’s voters has seen the presidential candidate undergo an image makeover over the years. His messages now target Turkey’s middle class and the downtrodden, the very constituency that Erdogan has always championed.

But Erdogan is now seen by his critics as being responsible for the economic turmoil the country is facing, largely due to his inability to control runaway inflation, an issue that polls have said is high on the agenda of voters who go to the ballot box on Sunday. Inflation in the country was at 43% in April, down from its peak of 85% last October.

For Erdogan’s opponents, that’s fodder for campaigns against him.

Promising to fix Turkey’s faltering economy has been a cornerstone of Kilicdaroglu’s campaign. In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, he stood in the kitchen and held up staples like bread, eggs, and yogurt, reminding viewers how much their price had soared in a year. In a separate four-second clip, he says: “Today, if you are poorer than yesterday, the only reason is Erdogan.”

Gulfem Saydan Sanver, a political communication expert who works with several politicians in Kilicdaroglu’s center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), said the kitchen has become a “symbol” of the candidate, “that he is living in a humble (life), and he is dealing with daily life problems of the ordinary Turkish citizens.”

“(He) wanted to show that Erdogan is the one who has forgotten about the problems of the lower income families,” she said.

His use of Twitter to reach the electorate may not have been out of choice, however. The majority of mainstream media outlets in the country are controlled by government loyalists, prompting the opposition to lean heavily into social media messaging.

Image problem

When he took control of the CHP in 2010, Kilicdaroglu had an image problem, experts say. His party was staunchly secular and fiercely nationalistic. Today, however, it has unified disparate political players, is trying to court the Kurdish vote and has even welcomed defectors from Erdogan’s Islamist-leaning Ak Party.

According to some of those who’ve known him, the career bureaucrat turned politician was seen as elitist and disconnected from the working class as he took control of the party, much as the CHP itself was perceived. Erdogan’s government capitalized on that.

The home videos would have been hard to imagine in the early days of his political career since his natural inclination is to keep his private life to himself, said Mehmet Karli, CHP member and longtime adviser to Kilicdaroglu.

But the soft-spoken demeanor portrayed from his home could have downsides.

Sanver said the kitchen videos had the potential to come off as too soft for some of the tougher foreign policy issues in Turkey – including ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the United States.

Erdogan has been able to leverage personal relationships and has shown effective leadership in one of the world’s most intractable issues. Alongside the United Nations, he managed to broker a deal on grain exports between Ukraine and Russia, helping prevent a global food crisis.

Delivering some addresses from his office may have helped establish a more serious persona while showing he’s still a different leader than Erdogan, she said.

In a country where ethnic and religious identity often plays a part in the public discourse and is exploited by some politicians, Kilicdaroglu has moved swiftly to deprive his opponents of ammunition.

In a video posted on Twitter from his office last month, he declared to the electorate that he belongs to the Alevi sect, a minority faith group from the east of Turkey that has for years complained about persecution in the majority Sunni Muslim country. The video was watched 36 million times.

“We will no longer talk about identities; we will talk about achievements,” he said. “We will no longer talk about divisions and differences; we will speak of our commonality and our common dreams. Will you join this campaign for this change?”

A massive new US embassy complex in Lebanon is causing controversy for its sheer size and opulence in a country where nearly 80% of the population is under the poverty line.

Located some 13 kilometers (about 8 miles) from the center of Beirut and built on the site of the current embassy, the US’ new compound in Lebanon looks like a city of its own.

Sprawling over a 43-acre site, the complex in the Beirut suburb of Awkar is almost two-and-a-half times the size of the land the White House sits on and more than 21 soccer fields.

Many Lebanese on Twitter questioned why the US needs such a large embassy in their capital. Lebanon is smaller than Connecticut and has a population of just six million. Few American tourists go to the country as the State Department has placed it on the third highest travel advisory level, but it does have a sizeable population of Lebanese American residents.

“Did the US move to Lebanon??” tweeted Sandy, a social media activist.

“Maybe you’ll have enough room to work on all those pending visa applications,” tweeted Abed A. Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, responding to the grandiosity of the new complex.

Computer-generated images published by the embassy show an ultra-modern compound, hosting multi-story buildings with high glass windows, recreational areas, and a swimming pool surrounded by greenery and views of the Lebanese capital. The compound includes a chancery, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities, according to the project’s website.

From the pandemic to the 2020 Beirut blast, Lebanon has been assailed by a number of crises that have left its economy in ruins. Many Lebanese are unable to afford basic commodities, including food, medicine and electricity.

“Let them eat concrete,” another user tweeted.

Plans for the embassy complex were announced in 2015 and it is reported to have cost $1 billion.

Its construction is overseen by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), which supervised the building of a number of other US embassies around the world.

The US has had a turbulent history with Lebanon. It is the home of Iran-backed Hezbollah, the most powerful group in the country, but has nonetheless enjoyed friendly relations with the US.

Last month marked 40 years since the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, including 52 Lebanese and embassy employees. In October that year, a bomb struck barracks in Beirut housing American and French peacekeepers, killing 299 people.

Israel and Islamic Jihad agreed to a ceasefire Saturday, after days of violence that have claimed the lives of at least 35 people – almost all of them Palestinians.

More than an hour after the time the ceasefire was due to take effect, sirens continued to sound in Israel, warning of incoming rocket fire, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched more airstrikes on targets in Gaza, minutes before the ceasefire was due to come into effect.

The head of Israel’s National Security Council Tzachi Hanegbi thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Saturday night, and expressed Israel’s appreciation for Egypt’s vigorous efforts to bring about a ceasefire, a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. Hanegbi was acting on the guidance of Netanyahu, the statement said.

Hanegbi said Israel’s response to the Egyptian initiative means “quiet will be answered quietly, and if Israel is attacked or threatened, it will continue to do everything it needs to do in order to defend itself.”

Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement that runs the Gaza Strip, issued a statement praising Palestinian resistance factions after the ceasefire appeared to take hold.

Hamas “hails the Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions for defending the Palestinian people against the most recent Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qasem said.

He added that “the unity of the Palestinian resistance is evidence of the Israeli occupation’s failure to provoke strife within the resistance.”

In a statement, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland welcomed the ceasefire and urged “all sides” to observe it.

“I look forward to the immediate restoration of humanitarian access and all social and economic measures to support Palestinian livelihoods in Gaza,” he added.

The violence this week left at least 33 Palestinians dead in Gaza and at least two people in Israel – an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man from Gaza working in Israel.

Word of the agreement came near the end of a day of intense fighting. A rocket launched from Gaza killed a Palestinian man working in Israel and seriously wounded another, Israel medical authorities said Saturday, as cross-border fire showed little signs of easing.

The two men were working in the Negev desert in southern Israel and were hit by shrapnel. IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht tweeted Saturday that the two men were brothers.

The Palestinian man who died is the second death in Israel due to rocket fire from Gaza since hostilities broke out on Tuesday morning.

The incident came as Israel’s military pounded targets in Gaza Saturday while Palestinian militants fired more rockets.

The IDF said it launched a series of attacks on sites which it said belong to Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.

Israel accuses the group of planning attacks and since the flare-up began on Tuesday has killed six of its commanders.

In a televised speech following the ceasefire, Islamic Jihad’s secretary general Ziyad al-Nakhala acknowledged those losses and said the group was prepared to take up arms in the future.

“We are emerging from this battle with our weapons in our hands, and our fighters are still in the field, ready at all times to fight any aggression,” he said.

Islamic Jihad is the second largest armed group in Gaza after Hamas.

More than 1,200 rockets have been launched so far at Israel, said the IDF, which has struck more than 370 targets in Gaza as part of its “Shield and Arrow” campaign, in its fifth day as the ceasefire was declared.

Videos from Gaza showed that the airstrikes appeared to have also hit at least two civilian homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, but no injuries were reported.

In its statement, the military said IDF fighter jets and aircraft struck launching sites for mortar shells and rockets “used by Islamic Jihad to fire projectiles toward Israel over the last few days.”

Two Palestinian men killed in West Bank

On Friday, at the beginning of an operation the al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad called “Revenge of the Free,” Palestinian militants launched rockets towards Jerusalem for the first time, as well as Tel Aviv and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.Clashes also took place on Saturday morning in the occupied West Bank and at least two Palestinian men were killed, Palestinian officials said.

Sa’ed Jihad Shaker Mashah, 32, and Adnan Waseem Yousef Al-Araj, 19, were shot in the head with live bullets, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. At least three other people were injured, the ministry said.

The clash took place in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank.

The IDF and Shin Bet security agency said IDF and Israel Border Police forces were raiding “a hideout belonging to terror operatives” in the camp.

Life in Gaza quickly appeared to be returning to normal Sunday, the morning after a ceasefire ended five days of intense rocket fire and airstrikes between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Israel Defense Forces left 35 people dead – all but one of them Palestinians.

Israeli military authorities opened two border crossings into Gaza, allowing much-needed fuel trucks and other supplies to enter the tiny coastal enclave, and Palestinian fishermen were able to resume work.

The scenes marked a sharp contrast from the previous five days, which saw a relentless series of strikes and responses between the IDF and militants.

On Sunday the IDF said Islamic Jihad had launched nearly 1,500 rockets towards Israel between Wednesday and Saturday. The IDF itself, meanwhile, said it struck 422 Islamic Jihad targets since Tuesday,when it launched what it called Operation “Shield and Arrow.”

Islamic Jihad named its response “Revenge of the Free.”

An Egypt-brokered ceasefire was supposed to begin at 10 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) Saturday, but it took more than an hour after that for rockets and airstrikes to stop completely.

Sunday evening sirens sounded in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip and the IDF said that a rocket fired from Gaza Strip toward Israel “fell in an open area.”

Israel has thanked Egypt for its efforts, with the head of Israel’s National Security Council Tzachi Hanegbi saying as part of the country’s response “quiet will be answered quietly, and if Israel is attacked or threatened, it will continue to do everything it needs to do in order to defend itself.”

Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement that runs the Gaza Strip, issued a statement praising Palestinian resistance factions after the ceasefire began.

Hamas “hails the Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions for defending the Palestinian people against the most recent Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qasem said.

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland welcomed the ceasefire and urged “all sides” to observe it.

“I look forward to the immediate restoration of humanitarian access and all social and economic measures to support Palestinian livelihoods in Gaza,” he said in a statement.

Word of the agreement came near the end of a day of intense fighting. A rocket launched from Gaza killed a Palestinian man working in Israel and seriously wounded another, Israel medical authorities said.

The two brothers were working in the Negev desert in southern Israel and were hit by shrapnel.

The Palestinian man from Gaza who was killed in Israel was one of two fatalities in Israel as a result of rockets from Gaza. The other was an elderly woman killed on Thursday.

In a separate incident, clashes also took place on Saturday morning in the occupied West Bank and at least two Palestinian men were killed, Palestinian officials said.

The latest flare-up began on Tuesday, with the IDF launching strikes on Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group it accuses of planning attacks against Israel.

It is the third conflict in as many years between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, including Hamas, the largest armed group in the enclave, and Islamic Jihad, the second largest.

In perhaps the most eagerly anticipated club game of the season, Manchester City and Real Madrid go head-to-head for a place in the Champions League final on Wednesday.

Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti has already promised “a thrilling game” at the Etihad Stadium after the teams drew 1-1 last week, with the winner of the tie going on to face Inter Milan in the final on June 10.

While Man City is the form team in Europe at the moment, Madrid has serious pedigree when it comes to the Champions League with five titles in the past nine years – and a record 14 overall.

“Courage is a fundamental element in this type of match,” Ancelotti told reporters on Tuesday.

“On an individual level, the two teams are evenly matched, but courage makes the difference in a game like this, where you have to know how to hold on and fight.”

Man City may have the home advantage but Los Blancos will feel confident following their performance at the Santiago Bernabéu last week, successfully nullifying the threat of star forward Erling Haaland.

The Norwegian, who has 52 goals in 48 games this season, had a quiet night against Antonio Rüdiger in the Madrid defense and Ancelotti will be hoping for more of the same on Wednesday night.

“In the first leg, we were outstanding in the way we played the ball out from the back and it was difficult for them to win it back,” he said.

“That will also be an important factor tomorrow. Having more of the ball means less risk defensively.”

Man City, meanwhile, is potentially four games away from winning the treble – the Champions League, the Premier League and the FA Cup – after Manchester United became the first and only English team to achieve such a feat in 1999.

The Champions League is the one trophy that has so far eluded Pep Guardiola’s side, which fell short against Madrid in the semifinals last year and against Chelsea in the final the year before that.

“Our legacy is exceptional already,” Guardiola told reporters on Tuesday. “We have been here many times.

“We are not stupid to [not] know how important tomorrow’s game is, maybe one of the most important games since we have been here, we cannot deny that. For the competition, for the rivals, for many things.”

Vinícius Jr and Kevin De Bruyne both scored stunning long-range goals in the first leg and you would imagine it will take another moment of brilliance from either side to decide the tie.

Having not lost a home game since November, Man City enters the contest as the slight favorite, though a glance at the recent history of the Champions League shows that Madrid should never be written off when it comes to European knockout games.

How to watch

The match kicks off at 3 p.m. ET and is available to watch on CBS in the United States. A full list of broadcasters is available on the UEFA website.

Nikola Jokić made even more history and recorded yet another triple-double to inspire the Denver Nuggets to a 132-126 victory against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals Tuesday.

The two-time MVP finished with 34 points, 21 rebounds and 14 assists – his fourth career playoff 30-point, 15-rebound and 10-assist triple double, the most in NBA history according to ESPN Stats and Info – to give his team the early advantage in the best-of-seven series.

It was the third straight triple-double that Jokić had recorded this postseason – and the first time an NBA player had ever racked up a 30-point triple double on 70% shooting in consecutive playoff games – and yet another reminder of how dominant he can be.

“He makes it really simple and makes it look miraculous at the same time. It’s ridiculous,” Nuggets star Aaron Gordon told reporters, speaking of Jokić.

The Nuggets were 18 points clear at halftime and stretched their advantage to a 21-point lead in the third quarter in front of their home fans at Ball Arena.

It wasn’t just Jokić having a good game, though, with his teammate Jamal Murray scoring 31 points himself.

However, despite taking a commanding lead, the Nuggets ended up having to hold off a strong Lakers comeback which was inspired by Anthony Davis and LeBron James.

Davis finished the game with 40 points and 10 rebounds and James recorded 26 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists, while their teammate Austin Reaves also chipped in with 23 points.

In what was perhaps the best encapsulation of the night though, Jokić sank a 29-foot three-pointer at the buzzer marking the end of the third quarter, stretching the lead back to 14 and showing the Lakers that their task in putting the clamps on the Serbian will prove difficult.

“Sometimes, luck is on our side. It’s a crazy shot, of course. It’s not something that I work on. I’m glad it went in,” Jokić told reporters.

Nuggets head coach Michael Malone also praised Jokić for another brilliant performance which was characterized by aggression from the outset.

“We always talk about an aggressive Nikola Jokić is a very effective Nikola Jokić. A hell of a job by him,” Malone told reporters after the game.

While the comeback response will give the Lakers confidence for the next go, it ultimately wasn’t enough on the night.

Superstar James said Los Angeles would learn from its mistakes and try to put it right in Game 2 on Thursday.

“It took us a half to get into the game. That’s pretty much the ball game right there,” James told reporters. “We got to understand that we got to start from the tip-off. They punched us in the mouth at the start.

“We have to come back with desperation, going into Game 2. We have to play better.”

Davis, who himself produced a brilliant performance, found himself up against Jokić for much of the game and witnessed firsthand just how unstoppable he can be at times.

“I mean, he’s a two-time MVP, very skilled, obviously as his numbers show. Made many tough shots,” Davies told reporters.

“We just have to make it tough for him, switching up match-ups and schemes on him.

“But he’s been playing well through the entire season and especially in these playoffs. You tip your hat to him.”

New York Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán was ejected from his team’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday night after officials deemed him to have an “extremely sticky” substance on his right hand.

At the bottom of the fourth inning of the Yankees’ eventual 6-3 victory, Germán was approached by first-base umpire DJ Reyburn to inspect his hand.

“His hand was clearly shiny on the palm and his fingertips, and it was extremely sticky,” crew chief James Hoye told reporters after the game. “So [Reyburn] called me over and said: ‘Hey, take a look at this.’ And the instant I looked at his hand, it was extremely shiny and extremely sticky. It’s the stickiest hand I’ve ever felt, and same with DJ.

“And so at that point, we brought over John Libka, the second-base umpire, and [third-base umpire] Clint Vondrak, to verify all four of us had the same opinion. We all had the same opinion: shiny, extremely sticky and it’s the worst hand we’ve ever felt during a game.”

Germán denied the accusations, insisting that he had only used rosin from the bag near the mound.

“It was definitely just the rosin bag,” Germán said through an interpreter. “It was sweat and the rosin bag. I don’t need any extra help to grab the baseball.”

Rosin is the only sticky substance allowed in the MLB. It is made from the sap of fir trees and pitchers use its powder form in a white bag to help maintain grip on the ball and limit the amount of sweat on their hand.

According to the MLB website, TV coverage appeared to show a dark substance on Germán’s pants near his right hip, although Germán claimed it was chewing tobacco.

Germán now faces an automatic 10-game suspension.

“I’ve got to apologize to my teammates and my team,” Germán said. “I’m putting them in a tough position right now. Understanding how much the bullpen has been used, and what my plan was for tonight to pitch, and putting them in a tough situation where I’m not pitching out there anymore.”

It’s the second time this season Germán has run into issues with this ruling, after being told by Hoye in a game against the Minnesota Twins on April 15 to wash off any excess rosin after he was deemed to have too much on his pitching hand.

“I don’t want this to happen again,” Germán said. “I [followed] the instructions; I’m not using it enough. Now, I use it too much, and there was a problem because it was too much on my hand. So, summer is coming; we’re going to be sweating a lot out there. You need the grip, right? But you also want clear direction from [the umpires] to see what’s appropriate and what’s too much.”

MLB implemented new guidelines in recent years cracking down on the implantation of foreign substances to baseballs.

It gave umpires more power to perform regular checks on the hands of pitchers, including having the discretion to inspect any part of a player’s uniform.

Germán isn’t the only person to have been penalized under these new guidelines.

Last month, New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected against the Los Angeles Dodgers before the bottom of the fourth inning after umpires inspected his hands and gloves for use of an illegal substance, ruling that the ace’s hand was too sticky.

Scherzer, however, was insistent after April’s game that he had also just used rosin.

“I swear on my kids’ lives, I’m not using anything else,” the veteran explained. “This is sweat and rosin. Sweat and rosin. … I’d have to be an absolute idiot to use anything else. I literally go out there with sweat and rosin, I get ejected.”