Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Thailand’s political instability, trade concerns in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and controversy over a satirical cartoon in Turkey.
Deferential Tone
Thailand’s Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday pending an ethics investigation into a leaked phone call made last month between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen. The nine-judge court voted unanimously to review a petition, filed by 36 senators, that accuses her of violating the constitution’s ethical code and seeks her dismissal; the court also ruled in a 7-2 vote to immediately suspend Paetongtarn from office until a ruling is given.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Thailand’s political instability, trade concerns in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and controversy over a satirical cartoon in Turkey.
Deferential Tone
Thailand’s Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday pending an ethics investigation into a leaked phone call made last month between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen. The nine-judge court voted unanimously to review a petition, filed by 36 senators, that accuses her of violating the constitution’s ethical code and seeks her dismissal; the court also ruled in a 7-2 vote to immediately suspend Paetongtarn from office until a ruling is given.
Paetongtarn has 15 days to submit evidence to support her case. In the interim, Deputy Prime Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit will take charge.
The phone call at the center of the controversy occurred amid an ongoing conflict between Thailand and Cambodia. The clash began on May 28, when an armed confrontation along their shared border killed one Cambodian soldier; both sides have accused the other of instigating the firefight. In response, Cambodia has boycotted Thai movies and films; fruits and vegetables; electricity and fuel; and some internet services. Thailand, meanwhile, has increased restrictions on border crossings and issued measures targeting online scam operations in the neighboring nation.
After weeks of tit-for-tat retaliatory measures, Paetongtarn held a 17-minute phone call with Hun Sen to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict. Hun Sen later posted a recording of the full conversation to his Facebook page after a shorter version was published online, arguing that such action was necessary “to avoid any misunderstanding or misrepresentation in official matters.”
In the recording, Paetongtarn can be heard calling Hun Sen “uncle” and referring to a Thai regional commander as “an opponent.” Hun Sen is a longtime friend of Paetongtarn’s father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is facing his own criminal charges for criticizing the Thai royal family.
Paetongtarn maintains that her deferential tone toward Hun Sen was a negotiating tactic. “I only thought about what to do to avoid troubles, what to do to avoid armed confrontation, for the soldiers not to suffer any loss,” she said on Tuesday. But critics argue that her behavior made Thailand appear weak in the face of potential conflict.
Already, Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai Party has faced growing discontent as Bangkok struggles to revive a sluggish economy and as the conservative establishment, which includes the military, warns that the current political dynasty is becoming too powerful. Paetongtarn is the third member of her family to serve as prime minister—and the third to face potential removal before the position’s term ends.
Following Paetongtarn’s phone call with Hun Sen, though, that skepticism has only worsened. The Bhumjaithai Party, a key conservative ally in her ruling coalition, pulled out of the alliance following the leak of the conversation—leaving the Pheu Thai Party with a slim majority. Paetongtarn’s approval rating fell from 30.9 percent in March to 9.2 percent last week. And on Tuesday, King Maha Vajiralongkorn endorsed a cabinet reshuffle to try to appease weekend protests calling for Paetongtarn’s removal; such demonstrations were the largest anti-government protests in the country since the Pheu Thai Party took power in 2023.
Still, Paetongtarn’s role in government remains unclear. In the cabinet reshuffle, she was appointed culture minister. Thailand’s parliament will convene on Thursday to swear her into that role, and she will be able to attend cabinet meetings in that capacity even as the ethics investigation unfolds.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Dissent within the Quad. Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States convened in Washington on Tuesday for a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to discuss Chinese threats to the Indo-Pacific. They hope to refocus global attention on East Asia and make strides to diversify their supply chains away from Beijing, which has tried to dominate the critical minerals sector. But the traditionally close alliance struggled to make progress on Tuesday as internal rifts over trade and defense spending marred their conversations.
Hefty U.S. tariffs were among the primary obstacles to talks, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war has not spared any of the other Quad nations. Japan canceled a top-level meeting with U.S. officials last week after Elbridge Colby—the Pentagon’s third-most senior civilian official—reportedly demanded that Tokyo boost its defense spending from 3 percent to 3.5 percent. And India maintains that Trump did not use trade threats to avert an India-Pakistan conflict despite the U.S. president claiming the opposite.
Still, Quad members remain optimistic that their issues will fall to the wayside in the face of greater challenges. “Relationships will never be free of issues,” Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said on Monday. “What matters is the ability to deal with it and to keep that trend going in the positive direction.”
Controversial cartoon. Turkish authorities arrested three more employees of the satirical magazine LeMan on Tuesday for publishing a cartoon that government officials allege depicts the Prophet Muhammad, thereby “publicly insulting religious values.” This brings the total number of people detained to four, with warrants out for two other editors believed to be abroad.
In the image, two figures labeled “Muhammed” and “Musa” (meaning Moses), clad in wings and halos, shake hands in the sky while a scene of war unfolds below them. LeMan has apologized for any offense caused by the cartoon but maintains that the image portrayed an imaginary Muslim man named “Muhammed,” not the prophet, and that it was intended to highlight the suffering of Muslims. The magazine also called on local authorities to protect the publication’s right to freedom of expression as police and protesters clashed outside of the magazine’s building on Monday.
However, Ankara appears likely to side against LeMan. “The disrespect shown to our beloved prophet by some shameless individuals, devoid of this nation’s values and ignorant of manners and propriety, is utterly unacceptable,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. “It is an open provocation disguised as humor, a despicable act of instigation.”
Surveilling Jewish targets. Iran is believed to be collecting information on Jewish sites in Berlin to prepare for potential attacks, German authorities warned on Tuesday. Last week, local officials detained a Danish national identified as Ali S. over charges that Tehran’s Quds Force—an elite branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—ordered him early this year to gather intelligence on Berlin’s Jewish community and prominent Jewish individuals.
It is unclear whether Ali’s intelligence-gathering would have led to an attack. An initial investigation into his activities found that he took photographs of at least three buildings, including the headquarters of the German-Israeli Society and the home of Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Similar intelligence operations have also targeted sites in Germany as well as other European nations, such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands.
The German-Israeli Society has called on the European Union to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and Germany’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Iranian Ambassador Majid Nili Ahmadabadi following Ali’s arrest.
“If this suspicion were confirmed, it would be an outrageous incident that would once again demonstrate that Iran is a threat to Jews all over the world,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said. The Iranian Embassy in Berlin rejected the allegations as “unfounded and dangerous.”
Odds and Ends
What would you do with $50 million? Around 47,000 people in Norway faced that question on Friday after being informed that they had won the EuroJackpot—only to have their hopes dashed. According to Norsk Tipping, which runs the continent-wide lottery, a “manual error” led to tens of thousands of people being falsely told that they had struck it big. “We are terribly sorry that we have disappointed so many people, and completely understand that people are angry with us,” Norsk Tipping told the New York Times. Chief executive Tonje Sagstuen has since resigned over the incident.
