Looking at the news from Washington a little more than a week ago, Americanophiles in Turkey were confused: Was the U.S. moving more toward openness and tolerance or back to more fundamentalism? Were Americans following Kemal Ataturk or Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan? The Supreme Court ruled, barely, for gay marriage with limits. The Senate cleared immigration reform amid warnings the measure would die in the House. Across the country, states were close to banning abortions. The picture isn

Viewpoints July 8, 2013

The Arab Spring has come full circle.Two years ago, huge crowds in Tahrir Square called for the removal of a military-backed dictator and for democratic elections. Today, opposition crowds in the same square are cheering the military’s ouster of an elected government. So much for the popular appeal of electoral democracy!Opposition groups lay the blame for Egypt’s ongoing economic and state collapse at the feet of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. The military has now p

Viewpoints July 8, 2013

Ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden fled the job he held for three months, taking four laptop computers full of U.S. intelligence with him to Hong Kong and Russia, other countries have become “outraged” by the Snowden disclosures about American intelligence practices. What, exactly, is so alarming? Apparently, the fact that spies actually spy. Give me a break.The average person might be excused for being surprised at what spies actually do, and by Snowden’s revelations about passive

Viewpoints July 5, 2013

Egypt has undergone a military coup, carefully choreographed and wrapped as a democratic act, but a coup d’etat nonetheless. How badly this ends will depend entirely on what the army and the Muslim Brotherhood do next. It’s true that this wasn’t an ordinary military seizure of power. The generals won’t, for example, be taking any formal political position; they acted on a wave of genuine popular anger at President Mohammed Morsi; and they set out a road map for new elections. They also lined up

Viewpoints July 4, 2013

On June 25, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis held an 11-hour filibuster that successfully delayed the passage of a new abortion regulation in the state. In order to block the bill that would close most of the abortion clinics in Texas and ban abortion for women over 20 weeks pregnant, she needed to keep talking on the rostrum until midnight when the legislature session ended. She was not allowed to drink, eat or have a toilet break. She could not sit or lean on anything or anyone. She had to stay

Viewpoints July 4, 2013

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s conservative stance on political reform has led to a major split within the princeling community, whose members share a common interest in preserving the ruling status of the Chinese Communist Party.Hu Dehua, the third son of the late party chief Hu Yaobang, openly criticized Xi at a seminar held by the liberal magazine Yan Huang Chunqiu in mid-April. It was by far the most severe criticism lodged against Xi since the latter became CCP general secretary last Novemb

Viewpoints July 4, 2013

At a time when the situation in East Asia has become increasingly unstable, cooperation between Japan and South Korea is becoming even more important. Both sides should step closer to each other to put bilateral relations back on a more normal footing.Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se recently held talks in Brunei and agreed to stably develop a “future-oriented” bilateral relationship.These were the first such talks between Japanese and South Korean fo

Viewpoints July 4, 2013

In a new twist to the controversy over the 2007 inter-Korea summit transcript, the National Assembly has passed a bipartisan bill to request the perusal and disclosure of the document’s original version kept at the National Archives of Korea.Under the law on the management of presidential records, access to the document requires approval by at least two-thirds of the 300-member National Assembly. In a Tuesday vote, 257 lawmakers of the ruling and opposition parties supported the proposal.With th

Editorial July 3, 2013

The government has reaffirmed that it would implement without fail all regional development promises that President Park Geun-hye made during her election campaign last year.It is praiseworthy for the administration to try to follow up through the president’s campaign pledges. Yet the problem is that it simply lacks the required wherewithal.Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok has reported to the ruling Saenuri Party that it would cost the government 124 trillion won to deliver on all of the 105 region

Editorial July 3, 2013

So here’s a question that’s nagging at me as we watch millions of Egyptians express their loathing for Mohammed Morsi, their hapless, power-grabbing president, and for his Muslim Brotherhood movement: How exactly did the U.S. come to be seen by Egyptian secularists and liberals as the handmaiden of a cultish fundamentalist political party whose motto includes this heartening sentiment: “Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope?” I mean, how did the U.S. fail to formula

Viewpoints July 3, 2013