While Erdogan rises to the presidency, his ally and foreign minister Davutoglu is set to be the new Turkish prime minister. His intellectual gifts are matched only by his political failures.
Tag: politics
After 15 years of living and working in the United States, a Die Welt correspondent says good-bye, not only to his adopted country but also to the pre-9/11 grandeur the U.S. once enjoyed.
The U.S. has a poor record on Iraq, but it’s optimistic that cooperation with the country’s new prime minister can help him win the war against terrorists and restore regional stability.
ISTANBUL — What does voter turnout in Sunday’s Turkish presidential election tell us about the popularity and ambitions of President-Elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan? So far, we know the number of Turks who went to the polls for the country’s first direct presidential election in history was about 13% lower than the number who turned out […]
BRASILIA — What will be the political and economic reverberations of Tuesday’s historic humiliation of Brazil’s soccer team? The government of President Dilma Rousseff is already on alert, fearing that the national bad mood left by the 7-1 defeat at the hands of Germany may deepen the already rather bleak Brazilian economic forecast, and have […]
LONDON — A conservative British politician? Stereotypes would call for him to be educated in an expensive private school, to wear tailor-made suits from Savile Row and to be able to recite Shakespeare sonnets without an accent. We would expect him to have been a lawyer, a banker or a chartered accountant — and to […]
Egypt’s ostensible secular president, al-Sisi, seems to be guilty of the same sin for which he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood: using religion in politics. What will it mean for the people?
MOSCOW — According to a recent poll, the number of Russian citizens who would be prepared to vote for President Vladimir Putin if he were up for reelection now has been increasing every month since Russia annexed Crimea. In April, his approval rating was 62%, in May it increased to 73%. At the beginning of […]
As Colombia prepares to elect a president, voters must choose between a candidate willing to make painful concessions with FARC guerrillas and a hawk keen on the status quo.
PARIS — There is no doubt among the people at the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Europe’s soccer governing body, that allegations of corruption against UEFA President Michel Platini is a case of paranoia gone wrong. Some there believe that the controversy suggesting Platini was bribed to support Qatar’s 2022 bid may be the […]
Two full decades after its previous version was voted in, the country’s newly amended environmental protection was cited for its toughness. But the challenge is in the execution.
Turkey’s current prime minister has big plans, both for himself and the very way his country is governed.
CAIRO — A student in a pre-kindergarten classroom at one of Cairo’s suburban schools is anticipating her impending birthday. When asked how old she will be, the girl begins to count up to four on her fingers, but then looks at her hand in dismay and quickly puts it down. Only “bad people” make that […]
SÂO PAULO — The Chinese government is already making its first plans to celebrate the centenary of two momentous events in the country’s history. Seven years from now, in 2021, the nation will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Then in 2049, the country will celebrate the creation […]
Could landlocked Switzerland finally get some coastline? There is a movement afoot pushing Swiss annexation of the Italian island of Sardinia.
ISTANBUL — The current state of Turkey offers little cause for comfort. • The claims of corruption and theft multiply with each passing day. • Those same claims are about to be swept under the rug. • The judiciary is effectively finished. • Limitation of basic freedoms is on the rise. • Authoritarianism is alive […]
CARACAS — The rigid black-and-white vision of a Venezuela divided between government supporters and opponents obstructs any understanding of the multiple identities that have emerged since the start of mass anti-government protests in February. For those looking in from the outside, the media have presented a veritable caricature of events. The situation reminds me of […]
The path of the EU and the U.S. on Ukraine is defining not only the West’s long-term interests but also the key geopolitical players involved. A Russian look at two key diplomatic players.
A failure of the American peace initiative in the Middle East could cause a severe political crisis that will undermine both the economy and the stability of the Palestinian Authority.
(And why that’s a good thing)
As the Castro reign lives its final phase, the future of Cuba is uncertain. This is not necessarily good news for Mexico.
Argentina’s former Minister of Education Susana Decibe asks if “Peronism” — that brand of Latin American politics named after the 20th century Argentine President Perón, and popularly associated with a unique mix of social justice and state paternalism — is to blame for the country’s current dysfunctional democracy. BUENOS AIRES — Argentina emerged from a […]
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governed Mexico, at times with an iron fist, for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000. It returned with Enrique Peña Nieto’s victory in this year’s presidential elections. But have politics changed in Mexico? Will the PRI resort to its old ways, asks Luis Rubio,* or will it […]
LAUSANNE — The idea that young people nowadays are more conservative than previous generations is a common cliché. Girls are said to be dreaming of becoming housewives while boys supposedly behave like old-style alpha-males, reproductive and career-obsessed. As Switzerland is about to vote on an initiative that aims to use tax breaks to benefit a […]
-OpEd- ROME — We must remember that Wednesday’s vote to oust Silvio Berlusconi from the Senate does not mean his political demise. Still, his exclusion from Parliament, the sentence for tax fraud and the other alleged cases — involving underaged prostitution, extortion, the bribing of parliamentarians, and corruption of witnesses — put the former prime […]
SANA’A — Antar Al-Aldharij pins his opponent down on the mat without using a dagger or a rifle. Yemen“s national judo champion, who trains every afternoon in a gym just outside of the capital, Sana’a, just needs the strength of his arms and bare hands. Al-Aldharij and his teamates share the small room of just […]
A Brazilian viewpoint in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations on widespread NSA surveillance.
Haven’t finalized your Halloween costume yet? Don’t worry! Worldcrunch has been browsing the news archives of recent months looking for good ideas, bad puns and other ways to abuse the powers of photoshop. Scary, right…??
BUENOS AIRES — There was a time when we resolved everything, absolutely everything, around a café table. Or at least, that was the feeling. A coffee bar provided the perfect backdrop and the necessary mutual understanding with friends that allowed you to talk about anything at all: the world, the country, sports, sex, television, you […]
From Greece to France to Austria, political parties espousing anti-immigrant, anti-euro policies are making gains across Europe.
BUENOS AIRES – The announcement came this weekend that Argentine President Cristina Kirchner will be recuperating for at least the next month from a brain condition brought on by a head injury in August. While the news is shaking up the nation, it is also putting a veil across a potential political crisis for Argentina. […]
ROME — Berlusconi’s world has never been at such odds with Berlusconi himself. Nobody could rightly agree with the decision to pull out of the coalition that was providing stability for the Italian government as the country attempts to pull out of a deep recession. You could count on one hand the number of loyalists […]
TEL AVIV — It has been a while since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pulled out some impromptu economic graph or catchy slogan. You can say he matured. Netanyahu of the third term is not the same man he was during his first or second, where he’d been drunk on victory from decimating the left […]
BEIJING — Economists rack their brains studying the nature of business. In the simplest terms, the essence of business is to make money. But in today’s China, as elsewhere, particular political, economic and social factors make a difference — and a wide range of uniquely Chinese money-making mechanisms have been developed. What Wang Lin, the […]
To counter Islam, conservative groups are twisting the ideas of the Enlightenment writer famous for his advocacy of freedom of religion.
The eldest daughter of the disgraced prime minister controls the family businesses with an iron fist. The question is whether she’ll decide to bring the same passion to politics.
BEIJING – In China, politics is something that worries and tangles up the minds of businessmen, perhaps more than others. Two recent events shed new light on what we can call the political anxiety of Chinese entrepreneurs. The first incident came after the remarks of Liu Chuanzhi, the chairman of tech giant Lenovo, during a […]
Recycling is slow going in Poland, and you can see the results all of the streets and sidewalks. What does it all say about the Polish character?
Categories
Berlusconi, The End Is Near
-Analysis- ROME – Silvio Berlusconi’s sentence to seven years in prison and a life ban from public office signals the end of his political adventures. More generally, it also marks the end of Italy’s so-called “Second Republic”: the political era that began in 1992 of which the ex-prime minister has been the ubiquitous figure, just […]
-Op-Ed- ALGIERS – The confusing communication strategy orchestrated by supporters of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika around his recent hospitalization in Paris — and the mystery surrounding the actual state of his health — have led the Algerian press and the opposition parties to denounce the lack of transparency and secrets that are so characteristic of […]