ANKARA, Turkey — Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and several conspiracy-themed books depicting Turkey as under attack by American and European influences sell briskly in local bookstores. Turkey’s $10 million movie “Valley of Wolves,” the most expensive to date, vilifying Christians and Jews pulls in record crowds. A 28-year-old lawyer shoots a secularist judge to death inside Turkey’s High Court. The Islamic and far-right press is filled with stories of missionaries within Turkish borders converting “defenseless” Muslims to “infidels.” Masked by Turkey’s 80-year Kemalist embrace of secularism, these recent trends reflect a hard fact: Beneath the surface of the West’s most [...]
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Donald Abinan, 25, ekes out his existence in this West African metropolis by energetically directing cars in and out of empty parking spaces. He earns, by his estimate, slightly more than a dollar a day. Abinan’s turf is the street in front of the downtown mosque under construction, close to a small shopping center. But when President Laurent Gbagbo’s young partisans marched in often-violent, city-congesting demonstrations in support of their champion, he said he joined in. “I am not pro-Gbagbo, but I like his politics,” Abinan said. What attracted Abinan is not a program of economic [...]
There are no good options in Iraq, which means Americans — who are inclined to believe there is a solution to every problem — are ill-equipped to plot a way forward. The country lies in ruins. Bush’s policy of simply lurching from one bloodbath to the next, from one political crisis to the next, has failed. The military is considering a temporary increase in troop strength, or a longer-term plan to embed many more advisers with Iraqi forces. At this point neither of those plans is likely to succeed, but both represent a last-ditch attempt to avert an utter catastrophe [...]
