Domestic Politics Archive

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Unofficial results from Sunday’s local elections suggest that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has suffered its first major electoral setback since the party was founded in August 2001. In the nationwide elections for provincial assemblies, the moderate Islamist AKP won 38.9 percent of the total vote, ahead of the nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 23.1 percent and the ultranationalist National Action Party (MHP) with 16.1 percent. However, the AKP’s overall vote was 7.7 percentage points down on the 46.6 percent it won in the last general election in July 2007, and lower than the […]

Internecine ideological battles have bedeviled the foreign policy of every U.S. administration in recent memory. Human rights liberals fought unsuccessfully with Cold Warriors for control of the Carter administration. New-right hardliners initially won the war for Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy soul but then lost it to George Schultz’s old-guard Republican realists. The Clinton administration became an altar on which liberal interventionists exorcised the Democratic Party’s Vietnam Syndrome demons. Most bitterly and most tragically, the first term of George W. Bush’s presidency demonstrated what happens when neoconservatives and their allies win more ideological contests than they lose. Barack Obama’s young presidency […]

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — With opposition rallies across Kyrgyzstan planned for today, the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has taken calculated measures to avoid a repetition of the Tulip Revolution that swept his predecessor, Askar Akayev, from power almost four years ago to the day, on March 25, 2005. Disillusionment with the current administration is widespread among political observers and the public at large, and is arguably as strong now as opposition to Akayev was four years ago. But experts predict that the demonstrations will achieve relatively little, even as many worry they may be the last chance for the opposition […]

No one ever accused Israel of having a boring political scene. True to form, its next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pulled a rabbit out of a hat and, in one dramatic move, transformed the shape of his incoming administration. A government that was expected to empower a narrow right-wing coalition will now include the leftist Labor party. As a result, the incoming government will look much more palatable to the international community as well as to Palestinians. In addition, Netanyahu hopes, his coalition will prove much more stable and durable. Netanyahu, a former prime minister and leader of the rightist […]

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The first leftist president-elect in El Salvador since the end of the 1980-1992 civil war says he will not nationalize major industries, as leftist leaders have done in Venezuela and Bolivia, but instead will guarantee property rights and seek support of business leaders. Mauricio Funes, a former CNN en Español correspondent, beat former police chief Rodrigo Avila by 2.6 percent in the March 15 election. He immediately sent signals that he’ll seek to maintain tight relations with Washington and Brazil. Critics fear Funes’ FMLN party, which was founded by Marxist guerrillas on the heels of […]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has responded to critics of his decision to return France fully to NATO by downplaying the significance of the plan. But there is probably far more to the move than he is letting on. Sarkozy has argued that France’s full “reintegration” into the military command structure of the 26-member alliance, after an absence of more than 40 years, is little more than a formality, especially considering that France already works closely with NATO on many levels. If in practical terms full French membership in NATO will have only a slight impact on the alliance in the […]

News that former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, hailed as a reformer, would challenge sitting hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in upcoming elections proved oddly short-lived. Just five weeks after sparking jubilation among his supporters by proclaiming his candidacy, the 65-year-old cleric poured cold water on the celebrations with the announcement that he had decided to withdraw, opening a minuscule new window into the mysterious machinations of Iran’s unique brand of theocratic democracy. Iranians, and the rest of the world, are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the June voting to see if Ahmadinejad will manage to stay in power. The electoral process […]

Up to $1.7 billion a year in oil money is set to flow into impoverished Cambodia, where 35 percent of the population lives under $1 a day and where this year’s national budget is only $1.8 billion. Yet in a country ranking a dismal 166 out of 180 on Transparency International’s annual corruption rankings, allegations of nepotism and cronyism are already surfacing around the country’s nascent oil sector, set to start production in 2012. Critics, like London-based watchdog Global Witness, claim the makings of a “resource curse” are in place, wherein a political elite will siphon profits that should be […]

A movement led by black-coated lawyers achieved a defining victory for the rule of civil law in Pakistan on Monday with the restoration of illegally deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. This highly popular movement provides an opportunity to strengthen the Pakistani state, improve the judicial system’s responsiveness, and resist creeping Talibanization. Shortly after sunrise on Monday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ended a prolonged judicial crisis by announcing that Chaudhry, sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf, would once again become the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In November 2007, Musharraf removed Chaudhry, who had […]

The Iraq War will surely stand as the greatest of foreign policy mistakes — a failure, and a tragic one, as no shortage of commentators have called it. What makes it more tragic is that it needn’t have been so. Whether or not one was firmly against the war from the start, the verdict on Iraq will ultimately be characterized by an unusual mix of anger, ambivalence, and, perhaps most of all, confusion. From the beginning, Iraq wasn’t just about a war. It raised a series of questions that many of us still have trouble answering. If the war was […]

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Salvadorans go to the polls on Sunday, March 15, in a presidential election dominated by the country’s economy, already beginning to slow amid the economic crisis. The leading candidate in the race according to most polls is former TV-talk-show host Mauricio Funes. The party he now heads, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), evolved out of an umbrella group of leftist guerrilla factions active during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. His opponent, Rodrigo Avila of the ruling right-wing party ARENA, has made Funes’ economic program a central focus of the campaign, calling the election […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Not very long ago, many observers considered Aceh, Indonesia’s formerly war-torn separatist province, a success story. But a recent rise in political violence has led Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Aceh Governor Yusuf Irwandi to warn against potential spoilers of Aceh’s peace process. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who brokered the 2005 deal between the former secessionist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and Jakarta, has also emphasized that a long-term resolution is far from ensured. Tucked in the westernmost corner of the Indonesian archipelago, Aceh’s conflict ended in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami that […]

As one of her final acts as U.S. secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) on Jan. 15, a deal touted by the Bush administration as a model for promoting peaceful nuclear energy while at the same time guarding against weapons proliferation. The Obama administration is still studying the accord before deciding whether to forward it to Congress for ratification into law. But the deal has won an unusual combination of support from both representatives of the U.S. nuclear power industry and select nonproliferation experts. Congressional reservations, however, remain. Persistent and […]

Fifty years after their failed uprising against Chinese rule, Tibetans, from Lhasa to London, are seething. As a show of resolve, monks, merchants, and expats vowed not to celebrate Losar — the joyous Tibetan New Year festival — this year, choosing instead to mourn those who died in violent clashes in Tibet last March. Protests in China, meanwhile, continue to be marred by self-immolations, with a monk setting himself ablaze in protest last month. In a statement issued Feb. 25, Tibetans' spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, acknowledged their frustration, but urged patience and restraint. "It is difficult to achieve a […]

Remember the age of globalization, if you can. The world was flat. High finance was king. Swelling economic prosperity had lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Capitalism, in a variety of configurations, stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Even individual states were fading in importance, and the threat of a great-power war had all but come to an end. How quickly that utopia has been shattered. In short, the world is very much round again. Investment banking has collapsed. The global financial crisis is elbowing the poor aside. Corruption and rampant irresponsibility have resulted in […]

Last of a three-part series. Part I can be found here. Part II can be found here. An accompanying photo feature is here.SANTIAGO, Cuba — While standing trial in the early 1950s for his initial, failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government, Fidel Castro famously declared: “History will absolve me.” Ever since, he has manipulated, rewritten and exploited history to advance his political ends. Castro’s use of history as a propaganda tool was underscored this week after two prominent, relatively young Cuban politicians were abruptly demoted. In a surprising shake-up, Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque […]

In late January, Ethiopia withdrew its last soldiers from Somalia after more than two years of bloody occupation and insurgency. Their departure immediately catalyzed a dramatic chain of events. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that had been backed by Ethiopia, the U.S. and the U.N. fled to Djibouti and, in apparent desperation, signed a peace deal with an alliance of moderate Islamists. As part of the deal, the TFG welcomed hundreds of alliance representatives into a newly-expanded parliament. The African Union declared the peace deal a “paradigm shift that gives Somalis a chance for lasting peace and reconciliation.” The enlarged […]