On March 16, a Greek appeals court denied an extradition request by Turkey for eight Turkish soldiers who fled to Greece in July 2016, following the failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the third such rejection by Greek courts, which say the men could face an unfair trial in Turkey. The fate of the servicemen, whom Turkey accuses of being involved in the attempted coup, has been a source of escalating tensions between Greece and Turkey, two NATO allies. In an email interview, Simon Waldman, a visiting research fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies [...]
Ksenia Sobchak, the highest-profile candidate to challenge Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election Sunday, already knew before the voting that she had no chance of winning. “In a casino, the house always wins,” she told an American audience on a recent visit to Washington. “In Russia, Putin always wins.” Surprising no one, Putin easily won re-election to another six years in office in a ballot that few would call free and fair. Putin has heavy-handedly restricted freedom of dissent through control of the media and constrained Russia’s political opposition through intimidation and legal harassment. The election may have paid little [...]
It is the world’s most successful, most powerful and most popular security alliance. Considering the number of countries waiting to get in, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems to have even more admirers than it can handle. But it also has an unexpectedly prominent and powerful critic: the president of the United States. As he has scolded NATO members over their defense spending and cast the alliance as a protection racket, Donald Trump has seemingly undermined an organization whose purpose and unity have rarely been questioned—and never before by an American president—since it was founded in 1949 as a bulwark [...]
