In The News

Existential Threat to Erdoğan: Spiegel

Maximilian Popp July 3, 2019
The mayor-elect of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, countered authoritarian tactics and demonstrated their weakness. Turkey’s largest city elected Imamoglu, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, rejecting the defeat of the Justice and Development Party candidate and claiming election fraud, ordered a repeat of the election. Imamoglu won again by a greater margin. Erdoğan, a former mayor of...

Modi and India’s Muslims? Al Jazeera

Sudipto Mondal June 9, 2019
In the aftermath of his party’s convincing election victory, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to push the issue of decreasing inclusion and representation by the substantial Muslim minority to the spotlight. History shows that the rise of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has led to increasing violence against Muslims in recent years. Muslim leaders do not trust Modi’s...

The Mueller Statement

May 30, 2019
After release of the Mueller report in April, Donald Trump and his supporters insisted that the 400+ pages cleared him of collusion. Both branches of Congress continue investigations, while the White House resists subpoenas and interviews, maintaining the “case is closed.” So representatives are conflicted about whether to launch impeachment proceedings. Special Counsel Robert Mueller presented...

No Revolution in the EU: Deutsche Welle

Bernd Riegert May 28, 2019
The European Union is a mix of diverse nations, languages and political systems that integrated for trade, economic, social and security policies and remains fragmented, as shown by the 2019 European Parliament elections. More than 50 percent of the electorate voted and two thirds chose pro-European parties. Some of the far-right populist parties did well in individual nations like France, Italy...

Foreign Policy Challenges for Modi: Economic Times

Raj Kumar Sharma May 24, 2019
Economic and other domestic policies typically sway India’s voters, but India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi won his second term by focusing on foreign policy and security issues, explains Raj Kumar Sharma for the Economic Times. Modi must be wary as the United States could expand its trade war with China to other nations like India and the rivalry could spur China’s dominance in Asia. For now,...

Theresa May Resigns: Politics.co.uk

Ian Dunt May 24, 2019
Theresa May will resign as Britain’s prime minister June 7 after failing to achieve Brexit. She tried multiple approaches including a second referendum – but could not win over a majority in parliament. British voters, given many false assurances, chose to leave the European Union by a close margin in June 2016. Brexit proponents maintained that Brexit was easy, relyng on populism’s tools of...

The Strache Recordings: Spiegel Online

Maik Baumgärtner, Vera Deleja-Hotko, Martin Knobbe, Walter Mayr, Alexandra Rojkov and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt May 23, 2019
Democracy depends on the rule of law and transparency. Politicians with extreme ideologies, who reject critical inquiries of journalism and education in the name of tradition, are ready to disrupt democratic norms to achieve money and power. A meeting secretly recorded in 2017 suggests Heinz-Christian Strache and three other Austrians plotted to ensure government contracts for a woman claiming to...