Vox Sentences: Turkey's ruling party lost its majority. Now what?

Erdoganna make a deal?

HDP supporters celebrate in Diyarbakir, Turkey. (Burak Kara/Getty Images)

• Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's right-leaning Islamist AKP party lost its majority in parliament in elections on Sunday.

  [NYT / Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu]

• AKP has been in power since 2002, a year after its founding, and had won a majority in every election until this one.

  [The Guardian / Alberto Nardelli]

• Erdogan had wanted a two-thirds majority, which would have enabled him to advance a constitutional amendment turning Turkey's government into a presidential system where he'd have more power.

  [Reuters / Orhan Coskun and Ercan Gurses]

• The Kurdish-dominated leftist HDP party, which has championed ethnic diversity, gender equality, and LGBT rights, made it into parliament for the first time.

  [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

• An AKP coalition with the far-right nationalist party MHP is viewed as the most likely outcome.

  [Slate / Joshua Keating]

• But MHP's leader, Devlet Bahceli, has seemingly ruled that possibility out, raising the prospect of another set of elections if a coalition can't be formed in 45 days.

  [Reuters / Orhan Coskun and Ercan Gurses]

• The other possibilities are an AKP minority government and an opposition coalition, which seems unlikely given that the left-wing HDP, far-right MHP, and the secular, center-left CHP (the second-biggest party after AKP) would have to cooperate.

  [Reuters / Ece Toksabay and Jonny Hogg]

• HDP is expected to push for a resumption of the peace process with the Kurdish rebel group PKK, to which it has been accused of having ties, but an AKP coalition with the hard-liners in the MHP would likely be a setback for those negotiations.

  [Reuters / Humeyra Pamuk]

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Where in the world is the City of Jerusalem?

An Israeli Jerusalem Day celebration on May 17, 2015. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

• The Supreme Court struck down a law allowing American citizens born in Jerusalem to say they were born in Israel on their passports.

  [NYT / Adam Liptak]

• Since 1948, the State Department has refused to recognize Israel as the place of birth in these cases, since that would imply support for Israeli control of the city and endanger talks with the Palestinians.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• So neither the George W. Bush administration nor President Obama have obeyed the 2002 law that authorizes passports with listed birthplaces of "Jerusalem, Israel."

  [LA Times / David Savage]

• Bush actually signed the law in question, but issued a "signing statement" making clear that he had no intention of obeying the passport provision, arguing it was unconstitutional congressional interference with the president's ability to conduct foreign policy.

  [George W. Bush]

• Ari Zivotofsky sued the State Department on behalf of his son Menachem, who was born in Jerusalem in 2002, arguing that its failure to list his birthplace as Israel violated the law Congress passed.

  [NYT / Adam Liptak]

• The case had previously made its way to the Supreme Court in 2012, when the Court didn't rule on the merits but merely said that courts could rule on the question, and sent the matter back to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

  [NYT / John Cushman]

• More than three years later, the case made its way back, and the Court ruled on the merits, in the State Department's favor.

  [Supreme Court of the United States]

• The majority opinion — written by Anthony Kennedy and joined by Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — argued that "the President has the exclusive power to grant formal recognition to a foreign sovereign" and that the law was thus unconstitutional.

• Clarence Thomas concurred in part and dissented in part; John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia dissented.

• Scalia argued that putting "Israel" on a passport doesn't amount to formal recognition, and is well within Congress's powers to control the naturalization process.

RIP Kalief Browder

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

• Kalief Browder, who was jailed for three years as a teenager on Rikers Island without ever getting a trial for a crime he denied committing, died by suicide on Saturday.

  [AP]

• Browder's case was highlighted in a New Yorker article last October. He was accused of stealing a backpack with a credit card, debit card, several hundred dollars in cash, and an iPod Touch, but was released when the victim left the country.

  [New Yorker / Jennifer Gonnerman]

• But for three years before that, he was in Rikers awaiting trial, including occasional stints in solitary confinement, because his family couldn't afford $3,000 bail.

• This past April, video footage emerged of Browder being beaten by a Rikers guard, as well as other inmates.

  [New Yorker / Jennifer Gonnerman]

• NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio had called for reforms on Rikers and of the bail system after hearing of Browder's case. Upon Browder's death he commented: "There’s just no reason that someone should be held for a long period of time if they can’t pay bail and we can help."

  [New York Observer / Jillian Jorgensen]

• Browder had a history of mental illness, including multiple suicide attempts, one in Rikers, before it ultimately took his life.

  [New Yorker / Jennifer Gonnerman]

Misc.

• Jennie Linn McCormick gave herself an abortion. Why aren't pro-life activists clamoring to see her prosecuted?

  [Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]

• Witanhurst is the largest private house in London, and its owners really don't want anyone to know they own it.

  [New Yorker / Ed Caesar]

• The inside story of the great split between the Romneys and the Huntsmans, arguably America's two most prominent Mormon families.

  [Salt Lake Tribune / Matt Canham and Thomas Burr]

• Black fathers are more likely than white fathers to eat meals with, read to, and play with their kids (5 and under) every day.

  [NYT / Charles Blow]

• A new study suggests that Sesame Street boosts learning about as much as Head Start does.

  [Washington Post / Jim Tankersley]

Verbatim

• "It is late on a Tuesday night, and I am watching as a group of Indonesian millennials discuss whether I really exist."

  [NY Mag / Annie Lowrey]

• "Hot Girls Wanted, it turns out, wants hot girls for the same reason as the forced blowjob porn with which it is fascinated. Both appeal to an audience that desires to see women humiliated, chastised, and corrected."

  [Ravishly / Noah Berlatsky]

• "You may have heard that he was trampled by llamas in a freakish accident."

  [Anonymous via Fusion / Alexis Madrigal]

• "The way Playboy embodied the voice of 1965, and Ms. embodied the voice of 1972, and Spy embodied the voice of 1988, ClickHole embodies the voice of our own misbegotten era."

  [Slate / Dan Kois]

• "Another — who was so obsessed with appearing to be well-read that he once claimed to be 'in the middle of' reading noted 50-line poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' — was approached by a group of players who asked him if he’d read The Palm Frond by Thaddeus Nwajwa, the famous Nigerian author. "Of course," he responded. Thaddeus Nwajwa was not real."

  [Deadspin / Andrew Hart]

Song of the Day

• Xenia Rubinos, "Hair Receding"

  [YouTube]

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