Russian Justice Still Headed in the Wrong Direction

11-29-2009

Harvest season is wrapping up in Russia, where the nation’s leaders are producing yet another bumper crop of irony.

Case in point: a recent online article, "Forward, Russia!" by President Dmitry A. Medvedev challenging Russians to fight corruption and create a workable modern justice system. Yet as this plea on Gazeta.ru hits home pages, Medvedev and his political mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, continue to countenance a second show trial of Yukos oil company founders Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

Yukos was once the largest and most transparent Russian energy company. It was taken over by the government in 2003, and its assets were sold off to state-owned Rosneft.

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Turkey’s Constitutional Dilema

05-01-2008

This year the Turkish Constitutional Court will hear a crucial petition aimed at banning the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), including its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and 70 more AKP politicians. This will be the fifth petition in the history of the court to prohibit political parties. It granted four in the past.

The flashpoint for this petition, filed by state prosecutor Abdel Rahman Yalcinkaya is the hijab (head covering worn by women from traditional or conservative Islamic backgrounds). The secular Turkish republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s outlawed the hijab, which was seen as a symbol of women’s oppression, from schools and other public spaces.

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