Osmanlı son döneminde Ermeni tebasına yapılanların “soykırım olduğunu inkâr etmeye” ceza öngören Fransız yasası askıya alındı. Gelişme, söz konusu yasanın Anayasa’ya uygunluğunun incelenmesi amacıyla resmen başvuruda bulunulması üzerine yaşandı ve Ankara’da memnuniyetle karşılandı. Fransız Meclisi’nin alt kanadı ile Senato’dan yasaya karşı çıkan milletvekilleri ve senatörler, inkâr yasasının yeniden incelenmesi için Anayasa Konseyi’ne resmen başvurdu. Her iki grup da, Anayasa Konseyi’nin yasanın Anayasa’ya uygunluğunu incelemesi için gereken asgari 60′ar imzadan fazlasını topladıklarını açıkladı. Milletvekili Lionel Tardy, imzacı 65 milletvekilinin çoğunun, kendisi [...]

In The United States of Europe, Reid argued that a new “Generation E” had emerged: transnationals who drink the same cocktails, shout for the same soccer teams, wear the same clothes, celebrate Europe Day on May 9, and cheer along to the Eurovision song contest. “The people of the New Europe — and particularly members of Generation E — are moving towards a common European culture,” he wrote. In opinion polls, however, voters today consistently identify much more with their nation-states than with [...]

The euro crisis isn’t really about money. It’s about the fiction that Europeans ever existed at all. When the euro officially entered circulation at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2002, fireworks lit up the night sky across Europe to celebrate the scrapping of the French franc, German deutsche mark, Greek drachma, and a clutch of other ancient currencies. Brussels hosted an extravagant sound-and-light show, while Frankfurt unveiled a five-story statue of the freshly minted euro as a pop band belted out [...]

How does the world look in an age of U.S. decline? Dangerously unstable Not so long ago, a high-ranking Chinese official, who obviously had concluded that America’s decline and China’s rise were both inevitable, noted in a burst of candor to a senior U.S. official: “But, please, let America not decline too quickly.” Although the inevitability of the Chinese leader’s expectation is still far from certain, he was right to be cautious when looking forward to America’s demise. For if America falters, [...]

Kazakhstan may not be ripe for revolution, but the West is making the same mistakes it made in the Arab world. Imagine the strongman leader of a strategic, Western-friendly, Muslim-majority nation blatantly rigging an election to exclude dissident voices from his puppet parliament. Ring any bells? A year after two Arab presidents, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, were chased from office, launching the Arab Spring, it should sound familiar. Nursultan Nazarbayev, leader of the oil-rich Central [...]