The number of police forces in England and Wales could be cut from 43 to as few as 12 under “generational” reforms being considered by the home secretary. Shabana Mahmood has delayed publishing long-awaited plans for police reform while she looks at bolder changes designed to make forces more effective and save money by pooling technology, procurement and expertise. Volodymyr Zelensky says he is ready to hold a wartime election within the next three months if foreign allies guarantee the security of the vote, after Donald Trump accused him of using the war with Russia to cling on to power. The US president has given Zelensky until Christmas to accept his US-led peace deal. Nnena Kalu has won this year’s Turner Prize for her “bold and compelling” hanging sculptures and drawings. The 59-year-old Scot, who has autism and limited verbal communication, is the first artist with a learning disability to win the award and was praised by the head judge for her “clear love of material, form, rhythm and pattern”.

How Turkey became the “indispensable” nation

One power stands at the crossroads of “nearly all major issues” that matter to Washington and the West in the world’s present conflicts, says Nicolas Bourcier in Le Monde: Turkey. At the White House in September, after a one-on-one meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Donald Trump praised the Turkish president’s efforts in Syria as a “great achievement”. At the diplomatic summit on Gaza in Sharm El Sheikh in October, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz singled out Turkey for thanks. And last month, Emmanuel Macron included Turkish troops alongside French and British units in a new joint task force that could be deployed to Ukraine. Two days later, Erdoğan received a visit from the pope.

In the 2000s, when Turkey first set out its “no problems with neighbours” doctrine, the diplomatic world joked about the tense reality: “no neighbours without problems”. Those jokes are now a “distant memory”. Yes, Erdoğan jailed his main rival in Istanbul and leads a struggling economy that is deeply dependent on Europe. But Turkey has become “indispensable” to those same Europeans on the world stage. Its strictly transactional diplomacy allows it to draw on long relationships – such as the friendship the president maintains with certain leaders of Hamas – and allows for a “pendulum foreign policy” in places like Ukraine, swinging freely between Moscow and Kyiv. Istanbul was also wise to fully understand very early the importance of a domestic defence industry focused on munitions and drones. This gives Erdoğan a strength Europeans have neglected to build for themselves: “an autonomous strategic capability underpinned by his own defence industry”. A smart move, in a world where “strategic ambiguity reigns”.