Mark L. Wolf is a senior U.S. federal judge who went to Turkey in 2012 to help train the country's prosecutors and judges to be more independent and more impartial. He speaks with RFE/RL about the situation of rule of law in Turkey following the attempted coup in July.
Just five months ago, Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan and his ruling party looked to be in decline. But after new elections, Turks seem to have chosen his style of strong leadership.
For 12 years, Erdogan was running from one victorious election to another, thanks mainly to his performance on the economy and trade, and getting more arrogant and authoritarian with each result.
Turkish developments may well depend on whether or not Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan decides to be cohesive -- and whether he continues the confrontational policy that sparked his reference to protesters as "extremist elements."
People around the world have been making comparisons between the situations in their countries and those in the Arab lands in revolt. Will Saudi Arabia follow the path of Egypt? Is Azerbaijan like Tunisia?
If Turkey cannot find a process of compromise and consensus, much of the progress of recent years could be in danger.
Last year's crackdown on the opposition Green Movement united the various factions of Iran's ruling establishment. Now there are signs of conflict among these competing groups, and the supreme leader seems to be having trouble balancing among them while simultaneously favoring the president's faction.
Even as the latest sanctions against Iran create new hardships for the country's economy, most Iranians outside the government seem to place the blame for the situation on President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's uncompromising policies, even as officials try mightily to ignore or downplay the effects.
Call it discrimination or even chauvinism: Millions of Iran's ethnic Azeris have no right of education in their mother tongue. But, surprisingly, it appears the majority of them don't care much about this inequality.
If Iran fails to allay suspicions about its nuclear program, countries in the region will likely step up efforts to bolster their own security. A nuclear-armed Iran might not provoke a proliferation cascade -- Israel's suspected acquisition of nuclear arms in the 1950s did not -- but it could prompt an uptick in spending on conventional arms and missile defenses.
Of the hundreds of political prisoners in Iranian jails, there is one group, probably the only one, who have been tried and imprisoned not for attending demonstrations and not for writing and speaking publicly against the government, but simply for being members of a persecuted faith: the Baha'is.
From the 14th-century satirical poet Obeyd Zakani to Forugh Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most famous 20th-century female poets, hundreds of writers, poets, historians, and thinkers are banned or censored.
A recent pronouncement by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appears to have settled a long-standing row between President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's government and parliament on how to reduce and gradually eliminate government subsidies of basic goods and services.
This year's Norouz strangely united fundamentalist Iranian Shi'a and Afghan Sunnis in rejecting century-old national traditions.
As Ankara has worked to improve relations with Iran, person-to-person bilateral contacts have blossomed in recent years. The experience, Abbas Djavadi writes, has been good for both sides.
How did Mohammad Amin Valian, a 20-year-old student from Damghan, land in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) infamous Special Detention Center No. 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison?
Millions Of Iraqis went to the polls in the country's second national poll, to vote for blocs that were less sectarian than in 2005. The question is whether and how Iraq's fragile, young democracy and national unity can take hold and grow strong enough to resist internal pressure and external interference.
Success in Iraq's admittedly complicated democratic procedure would establish a model for the Middle East and for Iranians -- a model of a Shi'a-majority government that is broadly secular and moderate.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shi'ite authority, doesn't issue political or legal orders, he just gives advice. But many Shi'a in Iraq and Iran follow him -- and not because he is an official "supreme leader."
Every year on this day, thousands of Azeris staged demonstrations in the cities of Iranian Azerbaijan to call for language rights. But this year, nothing happened.
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![A man holds a placard that reads in Azeri, "Everyone must have school in [their] mother tongue," as Iranian Azeris attend a rally for International Mother Language Day. (file photo)](https://gdb.rferl.org/9BD3EA2A-C80E-4E74-8EF1-2F2EECFB993B_w100_r1.jpg)
![A man holds a placard that reads in Azeri, "Everyone must have school in [their] mother tongue," as Iranian Azeris attend a rally for International Mother Language Day. (file photo)](https://gdb.rferl.org/9BD3EA2A-C80E-4E74-8EF1-2F2EECFB993B_w66_r1.jpg)
