A Judicial Coup

The signs were growing this month that Turkey's quiet revolution may have begun to eat its own children, as the government hastily amended a law to prevent courts questioning close allies of Prime Minister Erdogan in the country's national intelligence agency. Parliament voted the amendment through on 16 February, just over a week after prosecutors had issued a summons against national intelligence (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan as a suspect in a long-running terrorism investigation. Prosecutors ...

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All the President’s Men

TV weathermen have a cosy life in Egypt – a country where the climate is as predictable as a Russian UN veto. The wind, for instance, which blows upstream along the Nile for nine days out of ten, is so obliging that the ancient hieroglyph for travelling north or south simply showed a boat with its sails full or furled. If only the politics was so simple. Take the forthcoming presidential election – a poll which, if you buy in to all the pre-match hype – will usher in the first de...

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