Vox Sentences: Turkey votes on Sunday. Here are the stakes.

Erdogan-mentum

Erdogan supporters (Gokhan Tan/Getty Images)

• Turkey's holding parliamentary elections on Sunday.

  [BBC / Selin Girit]

• It's widely viewed as a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has, along with his party AKP, been consolidating power in recent years.

  [NYT / Shreeya Sinha]

• AKP will almost certainly win, but the key question is if it'll get a supermajority of seats in parliament.

  [NYT / Ceylan Yeginsu]

• A supermajority would let the party pass constitutional changes, which would then be subject to approval by referendum. Erdogan wants to transition to a presidential system, which critics argue is a powergrab.

  [FT / Daniel Dombey]

• One big question is if HDP, a mostly Kurdish party that's become a magnet for "progressives, feminists, ethnic minorities, and LGBT groups," crosses the 10 percent threshold and enters parliament. If it does, it's doubtful Erdogan will get his supermajority.

  [Time / Piotr Zalewski]

The OPM hack, day two

(Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

• Cybersecurity experts believe that the Chinese hackers who got records of over 4 million federal workers also stole personal data from the health insurers Anthem and Premera.

  [NYT / Nicole Perlroth, David Sanger, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis]

• The Anthem hack was much bigger than the federal hack, with as many as 78.8 million people, including many non-members, affected.

  [ABC News / Alyssa Newcomb]

• Particularly at risk were members of other Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurers who got care in states where Anthem operates.

  [Reuters / Caroline Humer]

• China has disputed that the hack came from there.

  [CNN / Kevin Liptak, Theodore Schleifer, and Jim Sciutto]

• The Washington Post reports that US officials and outside cybersecurity analysts are blaming the Chinese government specifically, so as to build a database of Americans with jobs that might make them useful spies.

  [Washington Post / Ellen Nakashima]

• The target of the federal hack, the Office of Personnel Management, told Congress that "the agency knew what types of data were exposed, but not what specific data the hackers might have taken."

  [NBC News / Robert Windrem]

Misc.

• The real reason we hate cable companies, airlines, and cell phone carriers: they're middlemen.

  [Slate / Jim Saksa]

• Spying for the CIA is hard work. Especially the expense reports.

  [Atlas Obscura / Sarah Laskow]

• Portugal decriminalized use of all drugs in 2001, and now its drug-related death rate is about one fifteenth of the UK's.

  [Washington Post / Chris Ingraham]

• Hey, what's new with Alberta? Edmonton's new ban on mermaid tails in public swimming pools, that's what.

  [CBC / Chris Purdy]

• Don't go to law school.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

Verbatim

• "In one study, people who stole coffee for their group were much more likely to be put in charge."

  [The Atlantic / Jerry Useem]

• “It’s like a bird losing feathers. You see one float by, and there it goes—another word gone.”

  [Johnny Hill, Jr. to Maptia / Lynn Johnson]

• "If the Star Wars films are a six-stanza poem, and each film represents one stanza, then the rhyme scheme is ABC A’B’C’. That is, Menace (A) corresponds with A New Hope (A’), Clones (B) corresponds with Empire (B’), and Sith (C) corresponds with Jedi (C’)."

  [Mike Klimo]

• "I remember thinking how odd it was—​how we were all sitting there trying to be the best kid in class, the worst-​rape fantasizer, in this all-​girl impersonation of a misogynistic hate-​crime brainstorming session. We were giggling. Our giggling was—​of course—​also about our fear."

  [VQR / Leslie Jamison]

Song of the Day

• Rocketship, "Carrie Cooksey"

  [YouTube]

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