The Londoner

By MARK R. PARRIS You'd hardly know it from the muted reaction in Washington or the nonexistent press coverage, but a key U.S. ally and one of the Middle East's most important democracies is sliding inexorably toward crisis. Turkey's constitutional court is currently considering arguments for closing down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and banning its top leadership from politics for threatening the secular nature of the Turkish state. The court's action can arguably be justified under the Turkish Constitution's proscription against political parties' violating "the principles of a democratic and secular republic." The language is vague, and the constitution is widely condemned in Turkey as an outmoded document dictated by the military a quarter century ago – but there is a patina of compatibility here with the rule of law. Nor can one overlook the behavior of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chairman of the AKP, since his Islamic

Paul Laity The Guardian Tony Judt has never fought shy of questioning long-cherished ideas. Postwar, his panoramic study of Europe after 1945, was loudly acclaimed in part because it dealt so bracingly with the lies and cover-ups on which the rebuilding of the continent depended - the number of Nazis and collaborators who retained positions of power, for instance, and the myths surrounding wartime resistance. Detail after striking detail documented how nations are never honest about their pasts, and how quickly inconvenient truths are buried. Judt, who teaches at New York University, is known as a combative writer and reviewer, and this reputation is confirmed by his new collection of pieces, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, which opens with the trouncing of a recent biographer of Koestler for being, among other things, priggishly obsessed with his subject's sex life. Over the years, Judt has been notable, in particular, for his acid dismissals of "

By Nicholas Witchell Royal correspondent, BBC News It's a well-established fact that Queen Elizabeth doesn't do politics or diplomacy. Except, of course, that she does, most especially when she is on a state visit to a foreign country. All such visits are chosen and controlled by the British Foreign Office. Their unashamed purpose is to further what British diplomats perceive to be Britain's interests abroad. And there are few more potent message-bearers in the British diplomatic arsenal than its veteran head of state, widely recognised - by virtue of her 56 years on the throne - as the Western world's senior statesperson. In coming to Turkey, the Queen is - at the behest of the Foreign Office - sending a very clear message in support of Turkey's aspiration to join the European Union and, by implication, to be Westward-facing. But the underlying message of this state visit is both more subtle and more important than that. Embracing democracy It is a diplomatic cli

At loggerheads May 15th 2008 From The Economist print edition THE tale of Britain and Europe is like an unhappy marriage. Britain was late to the altar, joining the European Economic Community only in 1973, by when the terms of the relationship had been fixed. All governments since have complained, so that Britain is now the bad boy of Europe. Yet, as in many unhappy marriages, nobody has the guts to call it a day. For 20 years Sir Stephen Wall had an insider's feel for this relationship, in the Foreign Office, in Brussels and as Tony Blair's European Union adviser in Number Ten Downing Street. His book is not a memoir, but it relates in gory detail the European experience of three prime ministers—Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair—with their rows about the European budget, mad-cow disease, the single currency and new European treaties. Two failings stand out. One is that British governments never mastered the trick played so deftly by others of dressing up their own na

As referendums return to centre stage, we should heed one of the wisest speakers on the subject: Margaret Thatcher Martin Kettle The Guardian, Saturday May 17 2008 Article history You could be forgiven for thinking that there are only two political stories of any importance in the world right now - the Labour government's implosion in Britain and the race for the Democratic nomination in the US. Yet look to the near west, and think again. For in less than a month Irish voters will decide the fate of the European Union's Lisbon treaty in a referendum. The vote could still go either way. Ireland's constitution requires this referendum. As polling day on June 12 nears, British awareness of it is bound to intensify. It will inevitably provoke another round of political pressure on Gordon Brown to concede a referendum on the treaty too. Even though he must be tempted to clutch at some populist straws amid his travails, the prime minister is unlikely to make this U-turn. The Lis

Almost all the bakers of the old Yugoslavia were Albanians, from one small corner of Kosovo. They have lived through war and upheaval but the toughest test for some came in February this year when Kosovo broke away from Serbia. The first poppies of summer are blood scarlet on the shores of the White Drim river as we drive out of Prizren, up onto the slopes of Mount Pashtrik. The lunchtime bread in the largest village, Djonaj, is white and so fresh it melts like chocolate in your mouth. Dine Rexhbecaj is 50 and home for a short break to see his family. He has eight children, six girls and two boys. They live here while he works in distant Zagreb, in Croatia, seven or eight months of the year. "I like my work," he said. "But I would hope for something better for my children. Now that Kosovo is independent, I hope they can find work here and not travel abroad." 'Bread money' The village streets bustle with women and children on their way home from school. Four

After the 1990s conflict, ten to 15 new mosques rose in the capital alone -- one of them, the largest, bears the name of Saudi King Fahd. Today, there are about 85 mosques in central Sarajevo that stand as architectural as well as historical monuments. The Islamic community received municipal approval to build mosques in Sarajevo's Ciglane quarter and near the National Theatre. The mosque near the National Theatre, if built, would stand on a park site developed four years ago. While working on the future park, crews unearthed the old Kalin Hadži Alija mosque, after which the Islamic community demanded an immediate halt to park development. Challenged on whether Sarajevo needs so many mosques when many Bosnian Muslims are not religious, representatives of the Islamic community point to history. "In the last 100 years, there were no new mosques built, but 27 were destroyed due to anti religious propaganda," since Yugoslavia's founding after World War I, said the communi