Table of contents for June 12, 2023 in TIME Magazine

The Recep Tayyip Erdogan era lives on after the longtime Turkish leader won the May 28 presidential runoff against opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu. That Erdogan survived the biggest test to his leadership in 20 years is remarkable given the state of Turkey’s economy and lingering public anger over the government’s response to earthquakes in February that left at least 50,000 people dead. But he has retained his grip on a nation that can serve either as a bridge or an impediment. CLOSE TO HOME For Turkey’s 85 million people, Erdogan’s win means “a continuation of today,” says Galip Dalay, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank. Since first winning as a pious heartland populist in 2003, Erdogan has consolidated power through constitutional changes, eroded the country’s…

A Ukrainian soldier fires a mortar at Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on May 29. The nine-month battle for the city, which Russia claimed to have taken, presaged a long-awaited summer offensive by Ukraine. “We are preparing the battlefield for the new phase of the war,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s President, told NBC. “It’s going on now. It is a large number of measures in different sectors of the front line.” ▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox Photograph by Efrem Lukatsky—AP…

“All things just keep getting better,” proclaims the theme song of reality show Queer Eye, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in July. For years, that sentiment rang true for LGBTQ rights. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed in 2011. Federal marriage equality arrived in 2015. Trans figures like Laverne Cox and Elliot Page burst onto the national stage. But the 2020s have been painful for queer and trans Americans. Hearing a brass band belt out this optimistic refrain in the new, New Orleans–set seventh season, you might ask: All things just keep … doing what now? Such is the bittersweet experience of watching LGBTQ reality TV in 2023. It’s heartening to see evidence of people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities thriving. Yet there’s something surreal about Queer…

It’s a Tuesday morning in Tallahassee, and a wood-paneled hearing room at the Florida legislature is packed. The state senate’s fiscal-policy committee is considering a bill to prohibit most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and dozens of citizens have lined up to testify: anguished young students in colorful hair and ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE T-shirts; little old ladies wearing cardigans and crosses. For hours they speak in emotional terms as the senators listen. Yet an air of inevitability hangs over the proceedings. Governor Ron DeSantis supports this bill, and therefore it is destined to pass. In Tallahassee these days, what the governor wants, the governor gets. It is DeSantis who welcomed this fight, DeSantis who calls the shots, and DeSantis who will reap the credit—or blame—for his latest…

Jason Isbell says the desire to be honest and fair is his compass. “One day I decided: ‘This is what I’m going to claim as the purpose for why I’m here,’” he says. “I think it’s to leave the place a little bit better than I found it, and to experience all the things that I can experience.” This year, Isbell is certainly experiencing plenty. He is releasing two albums, has a role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and is the subject of an HBO documentary. Isbell, 44, broke onto the music scene with the rock band Drive-By Truckers in 2001 and went solo in 2007. But his 2013 album, Southeastern, changed his career not too long after he changed his life by becoming sober. Since…

At TIME we believe trusted information should be available to everyone, everywhere, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. For 100 years that has been our mission—to serve as the world’s storyteller, shining a light on the people and the ideas that shape it. TIME is starting a new chapter in this history: we are offering audiences around the world free access to TIME.com, including TIME’s archives dating back to 1923, beginning June 1. Our goal is simple: work in the service of truth and progress as humanity’s trusted guide. Expanding free access to TIME.com for readers worldwide—including our current audience of 105 million, the largest in our history—ensures that we are doing our part to eliminate barriers and improve the world. When it…

Revolutions do not happen only in the streets. Yet the outside world knows the uprising in Iran almost entirely through footage uploaded from camera phones—the thousands upon thousands chanting for the fall of the regime in cities and towns across the country, and the regime answering with batons and shotguns. There has been no window into the kitchens and courtyards where the country’s fate will be decided. “I did not think a country could change so much in three months,” says journalist Kay Armin Serjoie, reflecting on returning to Tehran last September after a summer in Germany. Serjoie, who has covered his native country for more than two decades, was not allowed to work as a reporter while he remained in Iran. But he remembered what he saw. And,…

The lunchtime rush is just bubbling at Kedai Kopi hawker center in Singapore’s Clementi neighborhood when Anthony Tan strolls in. The co-founder and CEO of the ride-hailing firm Grab orders himself a Horlicks malt drink, sits at a Formica table, and takes a sweep of the bustling vendors. One catches his eye: a stall selling nasi lemak, the signature Malay dish of fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaf. Back in 2012, Tan used to offer it to taxi drivers gassing up in his hometown of Kuala Lumpur, pitching his upstart service while they ate. “But because we couldn’t afford to do a deal with the petrol station, they chased us out,” Tan, 40, recalls. He decamped to a nearby sidewalk by fetid monsoon drains. “It was…

U.K. Florence Pugh Saving the movie star from extinction BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN When Florence Pugh was a child, she hated to cry in public. If she had an argument with her parents, she would run to the bathroom, lock the door, and sit under the sink. Only then would she weep. “When I started acting I remember thinking, ‘Ooh, this isn’t good news,’ because we all know how amazing it feels when you see the character you’ve been following finally crumbles,” she says. “And I just couldn’t do it.” Now she cries so often in movies that it’s become something of a meme—her guttural wails in Midsommar, her blubbering in Little Women, and her screams in Don’t Worry Darling have all gone viral. Because a childhood illness affected her…

The aging process is kind to no one, and that includes Johnny Depp. On May 16, Depp was in Cannes to walk the red carpet for the festival’s opening-night film, Maïwenn’s misunderstood-mistress extravaganza Jeanne du Barry, in which Depp plays King Louis XV, whose devotion to his favorite extramarital squeeze brought scandal upon Versailles. When it was announced that a Depp film would be opening the festival, murmurs of “Sacre bleu!” were heard far beyond the kingdom, though perhaps not so much in France: the festival itself has opened its arms wide to Depp, who hasn’t exactly been untouched by controversy in the past few years, given his involvement in two high-profile defamation suits connected with allegations that he physically abused his former wife Amber Heard. (The jury ruled…

You might have thought that by mid-2023, with the pandemic officially over, people would be getting back to the office. But the share of workers in the office full time dropped to 42% in the second quarter of 2023, down from 49% in the first quarter, according to the Flex Report, which collects insights from more than 4,000 companies employing more than 100 million people globally. Meanwhile, the share of offices with hybrid work arrangements hit 30% in the quarter, up from 20% the previous quarter. “It certainly looks like hybrid is gaining share,” says Robert Sadow, the CEO and co-founder of Scoop Technologies, which puts out the Flex Report. Work is moving toward what Sadow calls “structured hybrid,” in which there are a set number of days that people…

Forget the “Don’t talk to strangers” maxim you learned as a kid: brief, pleasant exchanges with people you don’t know well (or at all) can enhance your happiness, mood, energy, and overall well-being. That’s because small talk often promotes learning, expands your worldview, and contributes to a sense of belonging. You can maximize these benefits by chatting up a wide range of people, research suggests. Conversing with your colleagues, barista, Uber driver, and the person surveying the ice cream aisle with you builds what’s called relational diversity, which is a unique predictor of well-being. Despite the benefits, many of us hate small talk. We often assume that the people around us aren’t interested or won’t like us—but research indicates that we tend to underestimate how much our conversation partners…

Growing up in rural Oregon, I often dreamed of a world where I could be all of myself. A world where I didn’t feel the nagging societal pressure to be “Black enough” for some spaces and “white enough” for others. A world that saw my queerness not as a deal breaker, but as a superpower. Pulse nightclub embodied that for me. After packing two suitcases and running away to the refuge of Orlando, I found what I had been looking for. The spinning disco balls dared all of us to dance like no one was watching. The beats radiating from the floorboards unearthed our authenticity, nudging us into rhythmic protest against a world that had always told us to uncross our legs, stiffen our wrists, and deepen our voices.…

A broad coalition of AI experts recently released a brief public statement warning of “the risk of extinction from AI.” There are many different ways in which AIs might become serious dangers to humanity, and the exact nature of the risks is still debated, but imagine a CEO who acquires an AI assistant. They begin by giving it simple, low-level assignments, like drafting emails and suggesting purchases. As the AI improves over time, it progressively becomes much better at these things than their employees. So the AI gets “promoted.” Rather than drafting emails, it now has full control of the inbox. Rather than suggesting purchases, it’s eventually allowed to access bank accounts and buy things automatically. At first, the CEO carefully monitors the work, but as months go by without…

The Zone of Interest Chilling and artful, Jonathan Glazer’s first film in 10 years follows a Nazi officer and his family as they build their dream life in the shadow of Auschwitz. Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese has adapted David Grann’s book, about the plot to kill off rich Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma, into a work of great poetic mournfulness. The Pot au Feu In Anh Hung Tran’s lush romance, set in 1880s France, a gourmet and the cook who works for him (Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche) bond for life over the joy of cooking. Fallen Leaves Lost souls meet in Helsinki in this glorious deadpan romance from Finnish master Aki Kaurismaki.…