Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

As we approach the second anniversary of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel, it seems an appropriate time to take the pulse of the state of justice in the world. Starting in the Middle East, what began as a very legitimate Israeli operation against the Palestinian terrorist group has spun dangerously out of control. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a prisoner of his right wing government’s bellicose policies, has evidently become addicted to violence. 

While the demise of Hamas is a worthy goal, the means for accomplishing this objective have long since exceeded any reasonable semblance of proportionality. In the process, Netanyahu has ensured future bloodshed for his countrymen as the sons and daughters of Palestinian casualties will not soon forget the ongoing carnage. Though many European countries have started to publicly condemn Tel Aviv, the Trump administration has figuratively used an ever widening “Israel has a right to defend itself” carpet under which to sweep the excesses of the Israeli onslaught. Justice is no longer part of the equation in this gruesome conflict. 

Travel six hundred miles to the northwest from the bloodbath that is Gaza and one arrives in Ankara, Turkey, another hotbed of enduring injustice. President (and wannabe Ottoman Sultan) Recep Tayıp Erdoğan, in an effort to totally defenestrate the main opposition party—Republican People’s Party (Turkish: CHP), over the past year has arrested hundreds of people, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and 16 additional elected mayors on flimsy corruption charges. İmamoğlu, CHP’s candidate for the next presidential election, who has been languishing in jail on trumped up allegations since March of this year, has consistently polled as the most popular politician in Turkey. Erdoğan, likely mulling another term as President, is using the judiciary, packed with his Justice and Development Party hacks, to extinguish any hope of governing for İmamoğlu and the CHP. 

Although it is no secret what Erdoğan is doing, he is currently relatively immune from international opprobrium for several reasons. First, he is one of the only world leaders who has constructive relations with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, affording him a potentially central role in any future direct talks between the two slavic combatants.

Secondly, at present Turkey has significant influence in Syria. Should the West tighten the screws on Erdoğan due to his political skulduggery, the wannabe Sultan could create havoc for Europe by sending some of the roughly three million Syrian refugees still in Turkey north to Europe’s door.  Furthermore, he could stir up trouble anew with the Syrian Kurds, destabilizing the nascent regime in Damascus. 

Finally, Turkey is quickly becoming a major arms supplier for many states in the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Given the low stocks of critical weaponry in the EU and NATO due to supplying Ukraine, a cut off of Turkish armaments would be detrimental to Europe’s efforts at rearming to keep the Russian bear at bay. Consequently, injustice rules in Turkey and the United States and Europe are seemingly powerless to aggressively counter the development. 

Our last stop on this brief evaluatory tour of the global state of justice is in Brazil.  On 11 September the country’s supreme court, in a 4-1 ruling, found Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, guilty of plotting a military coup. The verdict, which carries a sentence of more than 27 years in prison, was viewed favorably by many in the west who watched on live television the attack on government buildings in Brasilia by Bolsonaro supporters on 8 January 2023. The violence was in response to the former president’s unsubstantiated claims that the 2022 elections, which he lost, were stolen from him. 

While most would consider the Brazil case an instance where justice prevailed, the US administration is expressing a considerably less charitable view of the proceedings. President Trump called the judgement against Bolsonaro “very surprising” but delegated the bad cop role to his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who threatened after the trial that America would respond to the “witch hunt” against the former Brazilian president. 

Bearing in mind the close parallels between the Bolsonaro case and recent futile legal actions against then ex-President Trump for his part in the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol, it is clear that, at least in this particular ruling, justice lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Note: This article was submitted to both the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and the Brattleboro Reformer on 19 September 2025 for consideration.