In a sign of rapidly deepening ties, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will welcome his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to the presidential palace in Ankara Thursday for talks on Syria and a growing range of other issues that are prompting the two to set aside their differences.

A packed agenda is testament to an improved and growing relationship between the two countries. “Talks will focus on the Turkish decision to buy a Russian made S400 anti-missile system, but it’s not limited to that; the future of Syria will be discussed,” said Sinan Ulgen, an analyst at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. “The consequences of the Kurdish regional government independence referendum will be discussed. There are also large projects, one being Russia’s building of Akkuyu nuclear power plants in Turkey,” Ulgen said.   

Turkey last month announced the purchase of the S400 system, raising concerns among the country’s NATO partners. Adding to those concerns is the speed of the courtship. Bilateral relations were in a deep freeze following Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber that was operating from a Syrian airbase in 2015.

Signals to NATO and Washington

Rapprochement efforts with Moscow coincided with Ankara’s growing disenchantment with some of its Western allies, especially Washington. “Erdogan will want to use Thursday’s meeting (with Putin) to demonstrate, to its partners in the West, that Turkey has the option of becoming more convergent with Russia if the relationship with the West continues to be under duress,” Ulgen said.

Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG in its fight against Islamic State militants remains a major point of tension with Ankara. The Turkish government considers the Kurdish militia terrorists who are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist group that has been waging a decades-long war in southeastern Turkey.

The Syrian civil war will be the focus of Thursday’s talks between Putin and Erdogan. While Ankara and Moscow are backing rival sides in the conflict, the two sides are increasingly cooperating. Erdogan and Putin are expected to discuss the enforcement of last month’s three-way deal with Iran to introduce a de-escalation zone in the Syrian Idlib region, the last major center of opposition.

A pragmatic approach

What matters for Turkey is avoiding what Ulgen said could be a nightmare scenario in the region.

“The nightmare scenario is (if) Russia-backed regime forces would attack Idlib. Turkish forces would be faced with a quandary: some of the forces that Turkey backed in the past have now found refuge in Idlib; either Turkey would have to move into Idlib to protect them or open its border to save some of these people,” Ulgen said. “At the same time, Ankara knows full well that most of these people are affiliated with groups of extreme Islam, radical Islam, so Ankara doesn’t want to open its border to these people,”  he said.

Many observers see Moscow as having the upper hand in its relations with Ankara, something that will be put to use as Russia seeks to protect significant commercial interests in the region. They say Putin will want to use his leverage to defuse growing tensions following the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum vote in favor of independence this week. Erdogan has condemned the poll and warned that Turkey may close an oil pipeline that carries Iraqi Kurdish oil to world markets via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

“Russia has become the No. 1 partner of Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat, pointing to lucrative deals between Iraqi Kurds and the Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft. “Rosneft boss, Mr. Igor Sechin, is one of the closest allies to Putin and the (Iraqi Kurds).”

Analysts said Thursday’s meeting, and the images of two leaders getting along, suit the current agendas of both men. “This is a pragmatic and transactional relationship which we see,” Ulgen said, “but with a political underpinning, where both leaders Putin and Erdogan are almost instrumentalizing this relationship, to demonstrate and to make a point to the West.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russia would destroy all its chemical weapons on this day, hailing the move as a “historic event.”

“Today the last chemical ammunition from Russia’s chemical weapon stockpile will be destroyed,” Putin said in a televised address. “This is a huge step toward making the modern world more balanced and safe.”

Noting that Moscow managed to destroy the ammunition three years ahead of schedule, Putin went on to criticize Washington for not following suit.

The U.S. “unfortunately is not carrying out its obligations when it comes to the timeframe of destroying chemical weapons — they pushed back the liquidation timeframe already three times,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying.

Putin said the United States cites a lack of financial resources for pushing back its timeframe.
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A court on Wednesday found a Crimean dissident opposed to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea guilty of separatism and sentenced him to two years in a prison colony, a punishment supporters said amounted to a death penalty for such an ill man.

Ilmi Umerov was deputy head of the Crimean Tatars’ semi-official Mejlis legislature before it was suspended by Moscow after it took control of the peninsula in 2014, a move condemned by the West and Ukraine.

State prosecutors had accused the 60-year-old of making statements that undermined Russia’s territorial integrity by calling in an interview for an end to Russian control of Crimea.

Umerov, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and attacks of high blood pressure, said he did oppose Russia’s annexation but that the interview which prosecutors objected to had been badly translated and his words distorted.

His lawyer, Mark Feygin, said on social media that he would appeal Wednesday’s verdict which was delivered by a court in Simferopol, the Crimean capital.

Feygin said he hoped Western countries would put pressure on Russia to try to quash the verdict. “His dispatch to a prison colony would mean his death,” he said of his client.

The Tatars, a mainly Muslim community that makes up about 15 percent of Crimea’s population, have largely opposed Russian rule in the peninsula and say the 2014 annexation was illegal, a view supported by the West.

Moscow says the overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia in a proper and fair referendum.

Feygin, Umerov’s lawyer, posted a video on social media in which his client said he still thought Crimea should be returned to Ukraine.

Ahtem Chiygoz, another Crimean Tatar leader, was found guilty of stirring up anti-Russian protests earlier this month and jailed for eight years, a move Ukraine’s president called an act of Russian repression.

A U.N. human rights report said on Monday that Russia had committed grave human rights violations in Crimea, including its imposition of citizenship and by deporting prisoners. Moscow said it deemed those allegations “groundless”.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has come out unequivocally in favor of Spanish unity, just days before voters in the Catalan region are slated to vote on independence from Madrid.

At a joint news conference Tuesday with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a sweltering White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would bet most Catalonians want unity.

“I’m just for a united Spain,” Trump said. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to.”

Trump’s comments appear to go against official U.S. government policy. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this month the United States would not take a position on the Catalan vote.

The Catalan government is pushing ahead with preparations for Sunday’s vote, even after the government declared the balloting illegal and Spain’s Constitutional Court suspended the referendum law.

The Spanish leader, speaking after Trump, cautioned Catalan separatists not to push ahead with their independence plans.

“The decision to unilaterally declare independence is not a decision I would make,” Rajoy told reporters. “It’s a decision which will have to be made or not by the Catalan government. I think it would be very wrong.”

The prime minister said holding a referendum next Sunday would be impossible.

“There isn’t an electoral committee, there isn’t a team at the Catalan government organizing the referendum, there aren’t ballots, there aren’t people at the voting stations — so it’s just crazy,” he said.

Rajoy said under those circumstances, the result would not be valid, and would only be a distraction.

“The only thing it’s doing is generating division, tensions, and it’s not contributing in any way to the citizens’ situation,” he said.

Trump said he could not predict whether the referendum would be held, even as he follows developments in the independence-minded province.

“I’ve been watching that unfold. But it’s actually been unfolding for centuries and I think that nobody knows if they’re going to have a vote,” he said.

“I think the president [Rajoy is considered president of the Spanish government] would say they’re not going to have a vote, but I think that the people would be very much opposed to that,” Trump told reporters. “I can say only speaking for myself, I would like to see Spain continue to be united.”

Catalonia divided

Opinion polls suggest that Catalonia’s population of more than 7 million is divided on the independence question. Catalan officials have said they would declare independence within days if voters approve the referendum.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Rajoy, whose country was victimized by an Islamic State-sponsored attack in August that killed 16 people in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, said he and Trump had spent a considerable amount of their meeting talking about terrorism.

“We’ve been hit by jihadi terrorist attacks on our soil,” he told reporters, noting that the two countries cooperate closely on anti-terrorism strategies. “We still need to do a lot in the area of intelligence, we need to improve coordination mechanisms in the area of cybersecurity or preventing recruitment and financing of terrorists.”

Rajoy also expressed support for Trump’s tough response to North Korea’s provocative nuclear missile tests, despite fears in some quarters that it could lead to war.

“No one wishes war anywhere in the world,” Rajoy said. “But it’s true that the recent events in North Korea, with implications in the neighboring countries, very important countries, it means that we all have to be forceful.

“Those of us who defend the values of democracy, freedom and human rights have to let North Korea know that it isn’t going anywhere in that direction,” the Spanish leader said.
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As China battles the twin challenges of rapid city growth and extreme weather, it is adopting a new tactic: turning its cities into giant sponges.

Thirty pilot cities in the country are trying to trap and hold more water to deal with such problems as flooding, drought, extreme heat and pollution.

The effort, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping, relies on a range of innovations, such as green roofs on buildings and more urban wetlands. It is already being hailed as a bold step to solve some of the environmental problems plaguing the world’s most populous country.

“It’s a timely reminder that dealing with urban climate challenges requires a holistic approach,” said Sunandan Tiwari, a sustainable urban development expert at ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), a global network of 1,500 cities, towns and regions.

People and water

Like many other large urban areas, Chinese cities are grappling with both rapid urbanization — more than half of the country’s population lives in urban areas — and extreme weather, such as severe floods, water shortages and heat waves.

Both problems can leave more people at risk,but the sponge city effort, launched in 2015, aims to reduce the threats.

The pilot cities have been charged with finding ways to absorb, store, filter and purify rainwater, retain it within their boundaries, and release it for reuse when needed instead of channeling it away through sewers and tunnels.

The cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, receive funds and practical help to redesign their urban areas in a water-sensitive way, with the aim of turning 80 percent of China’s urban areas into sponges by 2030.

Flood control and water conservation, among other issues, are at the heart of the ambitious push.

But sponge cities have another benefit that looks set to become a major plus as urban areas in China and around the world get hotter: They can reduce the impact of heat waves, which are more pronounced in built-up areas, where concrete and asphalt trap heat.

Trees and other plants absorb water and then release it through evaporation. That creates a cooling effect, in the same way that sweat evaporating from skin cools people.

“Cooling is largely seen as a co-benefit of sponge cities. But with record temperatures in China and many parts of the world, it is becoming a key element in planning for climate-resilient cities,” said Boping Chen, China director at the Hamburg-based World Future Council, a think tank.

Getting hotter

Shanghai, China’s most populous city with 24 million people, baked under a record high temperature of 40.9 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) last July, even as southern China was hit by torrential rain and floods.

Efforts to build sponge cities aim to deal with both problems, and improve life for city residents.

“It’s not just about limiting the damage of flooding, it’s also about coping with rising temperatures, improving urban biodiversity, better public health and quality of life,” Tiwari, of ICLEI, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Measures taken in sponge cities include covering buildings with green roofs and facades and creating urban wetlands and trenches to filter runoff water that can be used to replenish aquifers, irrigate gardens and urban farms, flush toilets and clean homes.

The government has allocated each pilot city between 400 million yuan and 600 million yuan ($60 million to $90 million) each year for three consecutive years, and cities are encouraged to raise matching funds through public-private partnerships and other financial ventures, according to a 2017 study in the journal Water.

Lingang, in Shanghai’s Pudong district, has invested 800 million yuan in a 79-square-kilometer (30-square-mile) area it hopes will become China’s largest sponge city — one that experts say could be a model for other cities lacking modern water infrastructure.

Lingang aims to cover rooftops with plants, create wetlands for rainwater storage, and create permeable pavements that store runoff water, allowing it to evaporate to moderate temperatures.

Shanghai also announced last year the construction of 400,000 square meters of rooftop gardens, alongside other measures to green the city.

“Many of the sponge cities have done really well, but it is a long-term task that needs to be done in a systematic way,” said the World Future Council’s Chen.

Forest cities

While China faces formidable financial and logistical challenges to creating sponge cities, Italian architect Stefano Boeri has plans to make “forest cities” in the country.

Boeri, who made headlines when he covered two residential tower blocks in Milan with 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs and 15,000 other plants, has won planning approval to build a forest city in Liuzhou in southern China.

Conceived as a green metropolis, the city will house 30,000 people, and all its buildings will be covered entirely with plants and trees, said Boeri, who declined to give a cost estimate for the project.

In total, Liuzhou’s forest city aims to host 40,000 trees and almost 1 million plants from more than 100 species, planted over buildings to improve air quality, decrease temperatures and contribute to biodiversity, Boeri said.

The city is expected to absorb almost 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent emissions of 2,000 passenger cars driven for a year — and 57 tons of pollutants per year. The greenery will also produce 900 tons of oxygen every year, Boeri said.

He is working with botanists and engineers to create a high-nutrient soil mixture able to retain water while still keeping weight to a minimum.

“Bringing forests into the city is one of the most radical and efficient ways to deal with climate change,” Boeri told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We sometimes joke and say we’re building houses for trees,” he said.

To increase energy self-sufficiency, solar panels on the roofs will collect renewable energy to power the buildings, while geothermal energy — heat and cooling drawn from constant temperatures underground — will power air conditioning, adding to the project’s green appeal.

Boeri also aims to build vertical forests, similar to the one in Milan, in Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in China and in other parts of the world.

Nature at work

While China’s sponge city program is the most ambitious of its kind, urban planners have embraced nature-based solutions to heat and water worries in other parts of the world, too.

The sponge city initiative takes inspiration from the North American concept of low-impact development, sustainable urban drainage systems in Europe and water-sensitive urban design in Australia and New Zealand, all of which mimic nature’s water cycle.

The southern German city of Stuttgart, prone to high summer temperatures and air pollution, also has been a pioneer of using nature to adapt to climate change.

Officials there published a climate adaptation plan in 2012, but planners have been thinking about the valley city’s microclimate as far back as 1938, according to Hans-Wolf Zirkwitz, head of Stuttgart’s Office for Environmental Protection.

“Even before we knew about climate change, our planning has been optimized with regards to the climate and improving air quality, because of our local climate conditions,” Zirkwitz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments.

City officials, for instance, have created green ventilation corridors to enable fresh air to sweep down from the city’s surrounding hills and building regulations that aim to keep these corridors free from new construction.

Thanks to a combination of mandatory building requirements and subsidies, the city of about 600,000 people also is a European green roof pioneer, with more than 60 percent of its area covered by greenery to absorb pollutants and reduce heat.
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Spain’s government said on Tuesday police would take control of voting booths in Catalonia to help thwart the region’s planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.

The dispute has plunged Spain into one of its biggest political crises since the restoration of democracy in the 1970s after decades of military dictatorship.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the referendum is against the law and the constitutional court has ordered it be halted while its legality is determined. Catalonia’s separatist government, however, remains committed to holding it on Sunday.

Rajoy, speaking on Tuesday alongside U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, said it would be “ridiculous” if the affluent northeastern region declared independence from Spain.

Trump said he opposed the referendum and wanted a united Spain. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to,” he told reporters.

Senior Spanish government officials said on Tuesday authorities had done enough to prevent a meaningful referendum as Catalonia lacked an election commission, ballot boxes, ballot papers, a transparent census and election material.

Logistics have been dismantled

“Today we can affirm that there will be no effective referendum in Catalonia. All the referendum’s logistics have been dismantled,” the Spanish government’s representative in Catalonia, Enric Millo, told reporters in Barcelona.

Catalonia’s prosecutor has ordered the regional police — known as the Mossos d’Esquadra — to take control of any voting booths by Saturday, a spokesman for the Madrid government’s Catalan delegation said.

In an order to police issued on Monday, the prosecutor’s office said they would take the names of anyone participating in the vote and confiscate relevant documents.

Anyone in possession of the keys or entrance codes to a polling booth could be considered a collaborator to crimes of disobedience, malfeasance and misappropriation of funds, the order said.

Unrelenting opposition

The Madrid government has in recent weeks taken political and legal measures to prevent the referendum by exerting more control over the use of public funds in Catalonia and arresting regional officials. Hundreds of police reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and other cities.

Madrid has also threatened fines against bureaucrats working on the ballot, including the region’s election commission, which was dissolved last week.

These actions have provoked mass demonstrations and drawn accusations from Catalan leaders that the Madrid government was resorting to the repression of the Franco dictatorship.

Catalan government to hold election

A “yes” vote is likely, given that most of the 40 percent of Catalans who polls show support independence are expected to cast ballots while most of those against it are not.

But the unrelenting opposition from Madrid means such a result would go all but unrecognized, potentially setting up a new phase of the dispute.

The Catalan regional government, which plans to declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” victory, maintained on Tuesday the vote will go ahead and it sent out notifications to Catalans to man polling booths across the region.

Many had not yet received information about where or when they would be working after the state-run postal service was ordered to stop all mail related to the vote, a parliamentary spokeswoman for one separatist party said.
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Russia’s proposal for United Nations peacekeepers to be sent to Ukraine shows that the Kremlin is interested in negotiating a resolution to the three-year-old conflict, said the United States special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker.

“I take the point of view that Russia would not have proposed anything if they weren’t prepared to get into a negotiation about it,” said Volker in an interview Monday with VOA’s Ukrainian Service chief Myroslava Gongadze.

“They haven’t done anything for three years on this. They haven’t proposed a peacekeeping force before. As recently as a couple weeks ago, they were saying that they would never want the U.N. there. So, the fact that they opened this conversation, to me, is an indication that they are willing to discuss it.”

The Ukraine crisis began in March 2014 when Russian special forces took over Ukrainian military bases in Crimea. Subsequent Russian military support for Russia-leaning separatists in eastern Ukraine fueled an ongoing conflict with the Ukrainian military that has so far left more than 10,000 people dead.

Russia’s proposal earlier this month at the U.N. called for peacekeepers along the line of conflict in eastern Ukraine, but not along the Russia-Ukraine border where weapons and fighters can easily cross.

Volker called it a “very narrow concept” that would have the effect of dividing the country even further.

“That’s not acceptable to anybody and does not restore the territory,” he said. “On the other hand, if we can establish a peacekeeping force and build that concept into one that is covering the entire contested area, that is containing heavy weapons and that is controlling the Ukraine-Russian border from the Ukrainian side, then there is a lot of promise in that.”

“That’s where both governments are right now seeing whether it is possible to expand this concept into one that would be truly meaningful and helpful,” he added.

Russia’s growing costs

Russia’s costs for maintaining the conflict in Ukraine have only gone up while benefits the Kremlin may have expected have not panned out, said Volker. Russia has lost influence in Ukraine while Western support for Kyiv has increased along with sanctions against Moscow.

“So, for all of these reasons, the costs are increasing. Even the financial costs of just maintaining the Donbas, and they’re not getting anything out of it. So, that at least opens the door to thinking maybe Russia would like to try something else,” Volker said.

“Ultimately, I think it really boils down to Russia’s decision-making,” he added. “Do they want to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, get their forces out, and re-establish Ukraine’s territorial integrity or, do they not want to do that? If they want to dig in and create another Abkhazia [breakaway region of Georgia supported by Russia], they can do it. But, that’s a very costly proposition for Russia.”

A 2015 peace deal Russia signed with Ukraine, Germany, and France in Minsk has failed to come to fruition as Kyiv and Moscow blame each other for not moving on the plan.

“The problem with the Minsk agreement is that it was becoming a circular argument that was going nowhere,” said Volker. “The Russians are saying ‘no, Ukraine has to do the political steps.’ Ukraine says, ‘it can’t do the political steps because it can’t even access the territory.’ And, then how can we go to the Rada [Ukrainian parliament] and get a vote when nothing has happened on a ceasefire in three years. So, it’s stuck that way and I think, in some respects, some of the actors found that to be conveniently stuck.”

Volker said the U.S. role was to try to unstick the Minsk deal.

“If we can get to a more strategic level of decision-making with Russia and, frankly, with our European partners and with Ukraine, then if we can create political will, Minsk is a perfectly fine vehicle for implementation,” he said.

In August, the U.S. envoy met with Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov in Minsk.  Surkov is considered the architect of Russia’s strategy on Ukraine and its military backing for separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Status quo:  Bad for all

“When we met in August, one of the things we agreed is that the status quo is not good for anybody,” said Volker. “It’s not good for Russia, it’s not good for Ukraine, it’s not good for the people of the Donbas. So we should be exploring to see if there is something else that would be better.”

More than 10,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists broke out in early 2014.

Volker said the U.S. is still considering supplying lethal, defensive weapons to Ukraine’s military forces.

“I don’t have anything new to say on timing of this sort of thing [possibly selling lethal, defensive weapons to Ukraine],” he said. “But, I can say that it’s taken very seriously in the administration and there are people working very hard at it.”

Volker said the U.S. would seek progress in eastern Ukraine separate from the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in March 2014.

“If we are able to make progress in one area  the Donbas  let’s do it. Let’s make progress, let’s see if we can get that territory back,” he said. “At the same that doesn’t change at all our refusal to accept the annexation of Crimea and grant any legitimacy to Russia’s actions.”

Budapest memorandum

The U.S. envoy acknowledged more should have been done to back up the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which was signed when he was a mid-level diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest and should have prevented Russia taking Crimea.

“The only country violating the Budapest Memorandum is Russia. So, France didn’t invade Ukraine. U.K. didn’t invade Ukraine. Only Russia invaded Ukraine,” Volker said.

Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty under the deal signed by Russia, the U.K., and U.S. But, when Russian forces began taking over Ukraine’s Crimea military bases, none of those who signed the memorandum attempted to stop them.

“We should have done more immediately,” said Volker. “It’s important for Ukraine itself. It’s important for the principle that it establishes about non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. And, so, unfortunately, when Russia invaded, we didn’t do enough on that.”

The U.S. envoy said all that can been done now is go forward to help restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “If we do that, we’ll be taking a step towards the fulfillment of Budapest,” he said.

Peacekeeping Forces

Volker, who President Donald Trump made special envoy in July, shot down suggestions that Russians could be among any peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine.

“I think the U.N. standards themselves are that neighboring countries should not be involved in peacekeeping in neighboring states,” he said. “And, certainly in this case since Russia has been a party to the conflict it would clearly not make sense.”

Despite much evidence to the contrary, the Kremlin maintains it is not involved in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbas.

VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report.
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Turkey’s state-run news agency says a court in Istanbul has ordered a columnist for Turkey’s main opposition newspaper released from prison pending the conclusion of his trial.

Anadolu Agency reported that the court released Cumhuriyet columnist Kadri Gursel from pre-trial detention on Monday.

Anadolu says the court ruled that four other newspaper employees, including editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, would remain in custody.

The trial was adjourned until Oct. 31.

Prosecutors have charged 19 Cumhuriyet employees with “sponsoring terror organizations” that include Kurdish militants and the network of the U.S.-based cleric the government blames for a coup attempt last year.   

Kemal Aydogdu, who did not work for Cumhuriyet and is suspected of using a Twitter handle critical of the government, also was ordered to stay in detention.

 
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The Alternative for Germany party has pledged to use its platform in parliament to “reclaim the country and its people.” The AfD won nearly 14 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, giving them 94 seats.

Many believed the turmoil of the 20th century had immunized Germany from a return of far-right politics, but Sunday’s result proved them wrong.

For the group’s opponents who gathered to protest the result in Berlin, the Alternative for Germany’s anti-migrant agenda has parallels with the Nazis’ rise to power.

“It is the first time since after the war that a racist and neo-Nazi party is in parliament,” said one protester. “So that is really worrying to us. And this reminds everyone of 1933.”

Jewish groups were among those expressing fear over the results.

The AfD’s co-leader, Alexander Gauland, has previously said Germans should be proud of their military’s achievements in World War II. However, at a news conference Monday, he denied the party is racist.

Gauland said there is nothing in the party or in its program that could or should disturb Jewish people in Germany. He said his pledge to “reclaim the country” is meant symbolically, adding he does “not want to lose Germany to an invasion of foreign people from foreign cultures.”

Analyst Professor Tanja Borzel of Berlin’s Free University says Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to let close to a million migrants into Germany at the height of the migrant and refugee crisis in 2015 led many to punish her at the polls.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats won the highest number of votes Sunday, but gained their lowest share in 70 years.

“Most people who voted for the Alternative for Germany did not vote for the party because they share the platform. It was a protest vote, clearly,” Borzel said.

The far-right’s success overshadowed Merkel’s win, which gives her a fourth term in power.

She told supporters Monday that her aspiration is to win the AfD voters back through good politics and problem solving.

Her first problem is forming a government. The second-placed Social Democrats have ruled out working together, so Merkel’s best option is likely a coalition with the Liberals and the Greens that could take months, Borzel says.

“It will be very hard to find a compromise on issues such as migration and refugees, but also climate change,” Borzel said. “So, we are looking at probably some lengthy negotiations.”

The AfD, meanwhile, has pledged to use its new platform in parliament to, in its words, “hunt down” Merkel and reclaim the country.
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In the photograph, the distraught blonde-haired woman is surrounded by lascivious Middle Eastern-looking men. The caption refers to “New Year’s Eve,” a reference to the mass sexual assaults reported mainly in Cologne on December 31, 2015, involving men of Arab or North African appearance.

Posted on social media sites earlier this month, the photograph included the symbol of the far-right populist party, Alternative for Germany, which on Sunday eclipsed Angela Merkel’s re-election as German chancellor by winning nearly 100 seats in the Bundestag, becoming Germany’s third largest parliamentary party.  

The photograph — it has emerged — was a falsification: the woman pictured was a British glamor model, her image lifted from a glossy magazine, and the men, Egyptians protesting in Cairo in 2011.

In the three-month election campaign that ended Sunday mainstream politicians, some from minority backgrounds, lamented the rabble-rousing tactics of the AfD and its grassroots agitators and fellow-travelers and their menacing social media propaganda playing on fears of Islam and Muslim criminality and on foreigners in general.

From fringe to center of power

Winning seats in the Bundestag marks a startling new phase in the party’s progress from the fringe of German politics to closer to the center of power in Berlin. For far-right counterparts elsewhere in Europe the AfD’s electoral breakthrough serves as a consolation prize for election setbacks this year of like-minded populists elsewhere — Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.

For mainstream German politicians, and Germany minorities, the rise of the AfD, which has called for the sealing of borders and a slimmed down appeals process for asylum-seekers making deportations easier, is a door opening on a German past they thought long buried.

“This is the most aggressive election campaign that Germany has seen since 1945,” lamented Senegal-born Karamba Diaby, who was first elected to the Bundestag in 2013 to become the country’s first black African lawmaker. Last month, he filed a legal complaint against members of the openly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, whose supporters have been backing the AfD, for calling him an “ape” on a Facebook page.

For Diaby and other lawmakers from Germany’s major parties, the arrival of the AfD raises perplexing questions about how they should treat the first open nationalists to sit in the German legislature since the 1933 razing of the Reichstag by Adolf Hitler.

But treating AfD lawmakers any differently from other elected representatives could play into the hands of the far-right populists, allowing them to portray themselves as political victims and to claim that a political oligarchy is intent on ignoring the 12.6 percent of the population that voted for them.

Commentator Kay-Alexander Scholz argues that ostracizing the AfD in parliament would likely backfire. He maintains all the established parties “should be asking themselves what they did wrong over the last several years to set the stage” for the AfD.

Luring back AfD voters

Merkel went out of her way on Sunday night following the election results to reach out to AfD voters – especially those who defected from her Christian Democrats. “We want to win back AfD voters by solving problems, by taking account of their concerns and fears,” she said.

One of her advisers, Michael Fuchs, told VOA that “it isn’t good enough just to view the party as Nazi.” He argued that “some members are just conservatives” and he held out the prospect that under the pressure of day-to-day legislative work the AfD could split between its more moderate wing and the radicals.

But AfD moderates are hardly normal conservatives, either. Earlier this month the newspaper Welt am Sonntag published a 2013 memo written by one of the AfD’s stars, Alice Weidel, a leading moderate and lesbian, condemning the Merkel government as “pigs [who] are nothing other than marionettes of the victorious powers of World War II, whose task it is to keep down the German people.”  

This month it emerged that another of the party’s co-leaders, Alexander Gauland, another moderate, believes Germans “have the right to be proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than a million refugees, breathed new life into the party, which lurched rightwards. Since 2015 the party has secured seats in all but three of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments.

The party appears in no mood to shift its confrontational tactics, a rejection of Germany’s post-war collaborative political ethos. Gauland signaled that in his post-poll comments to cheering supporters in Berlin: “We will change this country. We will chase them down, Angela Merkel and whoever else, and we will take our country back,” he said.
…

French trade unionists blocked access on Monday to several fuel depots in protest against an overhaul of employment laws, seeking to test the government’s will to reform the economy.

In southern France, protesters’ unions set up a road-block in front of Total’s La Mede refinery, while in western France fuel depots were blocked near Bordeaux and the coastal city of La Rochelle. Union members also held go-slow operations on highways near Paris and in northern France.

“We’re determined. We’re going to stay as long as possible while hoping that other blockades take place elsewhere, maybe that’ll make Mr. Macron move,” Force Ouvriere union official Pascal Favre told Reuters.

Eager to avoid fuel shortages, centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s government deployed police at some sites before dawn to ensure by force that protesters could not block access.

“It’s not in blockading the country’s economy and by preventing people from working, that one best defends one’s cause,” junior economy minister Benjamin Griveaux told RTL radio.

The labor reform is due to become law in the coming days after Macron formally signed five labor form decrees on Friday, in the first major economic reforms since he took power in May.

The new rules, discussed at length in advance with unions, will cap payouts on dismissals that are judged unfair, while also giving companies greater freedom to hire and fire employees and to agree working conditions.

While unions have failed to derail the reform, the considerable political capital Macron had after his landslide election victory in May is quickly evaporating.

Macron suffered his first electoral setback on Sunday when his Republic on the Move (LREM) party won fewer seats than expected in elections for the French Senate.
…

Swiss voters rejected raising women’s retirement age to 65 in a referendum on Sunday on shoring up the wealthy nation’s pension system as a wave of Baby Boomers stops working.

Authorities pushing the first serious reform of the pension system in two decades had warned that old-age benefits were increasingly at risk as life expectancy rises and interest rates remain exceptionally low, cutting investment yields.

But it fell by a margin of 53-47 percent, sending the government back to the drawing board on the thorny social issue.

The package turned down under the Swiss system of direct democracy included making retirement between the ages of 62 and 70 more flexible and raising the standard value-added tax (VAT) rate from 2021 to help finance the stretched pension system.

It sought to secure the level of pensions through 2030 by cutting costs and raising additional revenue.

Minimum pay-out rates would have gradually fallen and workers’ contributions would rise, while public pensions for all new recipients would go up by 70 Swiss francs ($72.25) a month.

The retirement age for women would have gradually risen by a year to 65, the same as for men.

“That is no life,” complained one 49-year-old kiosk cashier, who identified herself only as Angie. “You go straight from work to the graveyard.”

Some critics had complained that the higher retirement age for women and higher VAT rates were unfair, while others opposed expanding public benefits and said the reforms only postponed for a decade rather than solved the system’s financial woes.

Opinion polls had shown the reforms just squeaking by, but support had been waning.

The standard VAT rate would have gone up by 0.3 point from 2021 to 8.3 percent — helping generate 2.1 billion francs a year for pensions by 2030 — but the rejection means the standard VAT rate will now fall to 7.7 percent next year as a levy earmarked for disability insurance ends.

A 2014 OECD survey found Switzerland, where a worker earns over $91,000 on average, spends a relatively low 6.6 percent of economic output on public pensions. Life expectancy at birth was 82.5 years. More than 18 percent of the population was older than 65.

($1 = 0.9690 Swiss francs)
…

The Vatican on Sunday denounced its ousted auditor general for revealing that he resigned under threat of arrest for what he says were trumped-up charges.

In a statement, the Vatican admitted that Libero Milone resigned in June after Vatican investigators determined his office had “illegally hired an outside company to conduct investigations into the private lives of Holy See personnel.”

Milone told reporters Saturday that he was told on June 19 that Pope Francis had lost confidence in him. He said he was subsequently subject to an “aggressive” interrogation by Vatican police who seized material from his office and told him to resign or face arrest.

“They wanted me to confess to something. I don’t know what, because I acted within the confines of the statute,” he told Sky TG24 and other media.

The Vatican said Milone had exceeded his mandate, freely tendered his resignation and was treated with full respect by investigators. It said it was “surprised and saddened” that Milone had violated the terms of his departure, which had called for secrecy about the reasons behind it.

Milone’s resignation had raised eyebrows because he was only two years into a five-year term, and had been seen as a key part of Francis’ efforts to reform the Vatican’s finances. Along with Cardinal George Pell, he was tasked with overseeing the Holy See’s budgets and making sense of the finances of the Vatican’s various departments.

Pell recently returned to his native Australia to face trial on historic sex abuse allegations, which he denies. His secretariat for the economy, which includes Milone’s office, is being run by underlings for now.
…

The grassroots groups driving Catalonia’s separatist movement defied Spanish authorities on Sunday by distributing one million ballots for an Oct. 1 independence vote that the central government in Madrid has called illegal and vowed to halt.

Jordi Cuixart, president of the separatist group Omnium Cultural, announced the ballots were being distributed during a rally in Barcelona.

“Here are the packs of ballots that we ask you to hand out across Catalonia,” Cuixart said.

Spanish police have confiscated millions of ballots in recent days as part of a crackdown to stop the Oct. 1 vote, which has been suspended by Spain’s Constitutional Court. Around a dozen regional Catalan officials were arrested Wednesday, provoking a wave of protests across the prosperous northeastern region.

Catalonia’s separatists have pledged to hold the vote regardless of the central government’s wishes and rallied Sunday in public squares in Barcelona and other towns in the region. Many carried pro-independence flags and signs calling for the independence vote and urging the “Yes” side to victory.

The crowds were asked by secessionist politicians and grassroots groups to also print and distribute posters supporting the vote.

“I ask you to go out and vote! Vote for the future of Catalonia!” Carme Forcadell, the speaker of Catalonia’s regional parliament, told a Barcelona crowd.

Polls show the 7.5 million residents of Catalonia are roughly split on breaking with the rest of Spain.

 
…

Germany’s national election Sunday is widely expected to give Chancellor Angela Merkel a historic fourth mandate and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seats in parliament for the first time in 60 years.
…

Germans go to the polls Sunday in an election that will most likely result in a fourth term for Chancellor Angela Merkel, but could also see the first time a far-right party has become part of the Bundestag since the end of World War II.

Support for Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrat party was at 34 percent, while her challenger, Martin Schulz, and his center-left Social Democrats were projected to receive 21 percent of the vote.

But the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, appeared to have more support than the 5 percent of the vote required to get a seat in Germany’s multiparty Bundestag. In fact, the latest polls showed AfD could get as much as 13 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in parliament.

Campaign stops

Schulz addressed the trend at a campaign rally in the western city of Aachen on Saturday, urging his supporters to turn out at the polls to prevent the AfD from gaining more power.

“Young people, think about Brexit,” he said, referencing Britain’s recent vote to withdraw from the European Union. “Think about [U.S. President Donald] Trump. Go vote.”

Merkel was heckled Friday evening at her final stump speech in Munich but used the cacophony to punctuate her message. Emphasizing stability and prosperity in her speech, Merkel said, “The future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers.”

Germany is not the only European nation experiencing a rise in support for nationalist parties. France, Austria and Poland have seen similar trends.

But Germany is still recovering from the rule of the far-right Nazi Party last century, whose hold on power in the 1930s and early 1940s led an ethnic cleansing campaign against millions of Jews, Poles and others deemed unwanted.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a member of the Social Democrats, has warned that “for the first time since the Second World War, real Nazis will sit in the German parliament.”

Schulz has called the party “a shame for our nation.”

Limited by history

AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland, who helped found the party in 2013, told The Washington Post on Saturday that his party’s support had been limited by Germany’s history.

“What is National Socialist in Germany is [considered] out of order and you can’t discuss it correctly. It is very difficult for so-called right-wing parties to gain votes in Germany,” Gauland said.

A former member of Merkel’s party, Gauland said he left because the party changed.

“Angela Merkel changed the CDU from a party that had convictions to a party that’s an empty balloon,” he told the Post. “A lot of decisions of Angela Merkel — transitioning to renewable energy, refugees, changing of the military from conscription to volunteer — ran opposite to what we called in former times ‘the soul of the CDU.’ ”

Berlin-based journalist Thomas Habicht said AfD’s rise in influence was rooted in Germany’s participation in pan-European issues.

“AfD gained support as some voters got the impression [that] the euro crisis caused by Greece, Italy and France cost us too much money,” Habicht told VOA in an email. “Germany contributes 27 percent to the EU budget and some Germans don’t want to finance economical mismanagement in southern Europe.”

Cost of refugee crisis

In addition, the refugee crisis, to which Merkel has pledged German support, is seen by AfD supporters as a burden.

“Since September 2015, we had an influx of 1.25 million asylum-seekers,” Habicht said, noting that caring for them had cost the government $25 billion.

Adding to the complication, he said, is crime. “Last year we had a terror attack at a Berlin Christmas market. It was committed by an asylum-seeker from Tunisia and 12 persons died,” he said.

Yet, Habicht noted, all parties in the Bundestag at the time supported Merkel on the refugee situation. “They were seen as a big chance for us, while the problems of integration were not fully discussed,” he said.

While the presence of a far-right party in parliament may be startling in Germany, where the rule of the Nazis last century orchestrated millions of civilian deaths, Habicht said the AfD influence would be far more subtle.

“I do believe the AfD will be quite isolated in our next Bundestag,” he said. “But indirectly, they will influence government policies.”
…

Turkey’s main opposition united with the government Saturday to overwhelmingly pass a motion giving its military a mandate to carry out operations in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

The parliament met in an emergency session two days ahead of an independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds. Addressing parliament, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli warned that the Kurdish referendum would bring very dangerous consequences, perhaps even clashes even in global terms.

“Pulling out just a brick from a structure based on very sensitive and fragile balances will sow the seeds for new hatred, enmity and clashes,” Canikli said.

He added that all options and methods were on the table regarding the independence vote and that Turkey would not hesitate to use them.

Ankara strongly opposes the referendum, fearing it could fuel secessionist demands within its own large restive Kurdish minority.

On Saturday, the head of the Iraqi armed forces met with his Turkish counterpart in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, for talks on the forthcoming referendum. Baghdad shares Ankara’s opposition to the vote.

Turkish armed forces carrying out drills on the Iraqi Kurdish border received new reinforcements. The army has been holding military exercises there for the past six days.

Turkish forces were also being beefed up on the Syrian border, with Ankara again warning it would not allow Syrian Kurds to create their own independent state.
…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged her supporters to keep up the momentum in the final hours before Sunday’s national election, urging a last push to try to sway undecided voters.

Merkel is seeking a fourth term in office and her conservative bloc of the Christian Democratic Party and Bavarian-only Christian Social union has a healthy lead in the polls. Surveys in the last week show it leading with between 34 to 37 percent support, followed by the Social Democrats with 21 to 22 percent.

Still, the support has been gradually eroding over the past week. Merkel told supporters in Berlin on Saturday that they needed to keep up their efforts to sway undecided voters, saying “many make their decision in the final hours.”

After handing out coffee and chatting with the campaign workers in Berlin, Merkel headed north to her own riding, walking through the streets of the city of Stralsund shaking hands, posing for photos and signing autographs.

She also campaigned in the northern city of Greifswald and planned a stop as well on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic.

Her main challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, was in western Germany at a rally in the city of Aachen.

At a rally Friday night in Berlin, Schulz urged Germans not to vote for the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party, known by its German initials AfD, which appears assured of gaining seats in the national parliament for the first time. The nationalist party has 10 to 13 percent support in the polls.

Calling the AfD a “party of agitators” and “the enemies,” Schulz said his Social Democrats were the best option to fight them.

“We will defend democracy in Germany,” he said.

In addition to the AfD, the Greens, the Free Democratic Party and the Left Party were all poised to enter parliament with poll numbers between 8 and 11 percent.

With the numbers so close, several different coalition government combinations could be possible. Merkel on Friday night told supporters in Munich not to be complacent with her bloc’s lead.

“We don’t have a single vote to give away,” she said. “We can’t use any experiments – we need stability and security.”
…

While Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs dominated headlines, countering terrorism and extremism took center stage at the U.N. General Assembly this week. Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top officials from 24 countries highlighted progress made in the fight to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
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The United States sees value in the New START arms control treaty with Russia, despite Washington’s concerns about Moscow’s track record on arms control and other issues, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

The remarks by the Trump administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, suggest the treaty will remain in force and the door remains open to pursuing an extension of the accord, which is set to expire in 2021.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.

Moscow seen as unreliable

Reuters has reported that President Donald Trump, in his first call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the New START treaty, saying it favored Moscow.

But one of the Trump administration officials said on Friday the United States was not looking to discard New START.

Senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have questioned Russia’s reliability on arms control, citing longstanding U.S. allegations that Russia has violated the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Russia denies treaty violations and accuses the United States of them.

Working to improve relations

The accusations come amid a nosedive in U.S.-Russian relations.

U.S. intelligence agencies accuse Russia of meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Moscow denies, and recent tit-for-tat exchanges between Washington and Moscow include moves to slash each others’ diplomatic presence.

The tensions have reached Syria, where the United States and Russia are backing different forces that are scrambling to claim what is left of Islamic State-held territory.

Russia warned the United States on Thursday it would target U.S.-backed militias in Syria if Russian troops again came under fire.

Still, a second senior Trump administration official said Friday the United States was seeking ways to improve communication with Moscow and build some degree of trust, which the official described as nonexistent.

Trump took office saying he wanted to improve ties strained since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which led Washington to impose sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko met Trump on Thursday and said afterward that they had a shared vision of a “new level” of defense cooperation.

But the second senior Trump administration official said there had been no decision on whether to provide defensive arms to Ukraine, something Kiev has long wanted.
…

Germans go to the polls Sunday in national elections that will decide whether Angela Merkel remains chancellor for a fourth consecutive term. As Henry Ridgwell reports, many wrote off Merkel’s chances as Germany struggled to cope with the 2015 migrant crisis, but she has weathered the storm, and polls point to a comfortable victory.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to propose a two-year transition for the period after Britain’s formal departure from the European Union on March 29, 2019, the so-called Brexit.

May’s office released excerpts from a speech she will deliver Friday in Florence, Italy, emphasizing that both sides share “a profound sense of responsibility’’ to ensure that Brexit goes “smoothly and sensibly.”

On the eve of her speech, May met with Cabinet ministers for more than two hours to finalize Britain’s position.

Ministers have had tense discussions over crucial issues such as the amount Britain must pay to settle its financial commitments to the bloc and the status of EU citizens in Britain, among others.

The tensions exploded into public view last week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson outlined his own vision for life outside the European Union. He argued for a sharp break with the bloc, a stance that dismays moderates who fear this will wreck Britain’s relations with the world’s biggest trade bloc.

May’s speech comes before the fourth round of negotiations with the EU partners, which cannot move forward until the pending issues are resolved, although Britain wants to begin discussing future links, including trade and security cooperation.

While British media are reporting that May would offer to pay $24 billion during the transition period, the excerpts do not include a figure.
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A Syrian opposition activist and her journalist daughter have been found slain in their apartment in Istanbul, the Istanbul police department said Friday.

The bodies of 60-year-old Orouba Barakat and her 22-year-old daughter Halla were found overnight in their apartment in Istanbul’s Uskudar neighborhood in the Asian side of the city.

Turkish media reports said Orouba Barakat was investigating alleged torture in prisons run by the Syrian government. It said she had lived in Britain, then the United Arab Emirates before coming to Istanbul.

“The hand of tyranny and injustice assassinated my sister Doctor Orouba and her daughter Halla in their apartment in Istanbul,” Orouba’s sister Shaza wrote on Facebook, adding that they were stabbed to death.

“Orouba wrote headlines in the first page and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter’s name, Hala, now made first page headlines,” Shaza added.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has become home to almost 3 million Syrian refugees, many of them opponents of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
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The Catalan regional leader on Thursday said he would press on with an Oct. 1 referendum on a split from Spain, flouting a court ban, as tens of thousands gathered for a second day on the streets of Barcelona demanding the right to vote.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said he had contingency plans in place to ensure the vote would go ahead, directly defying Madrid and pushing the country closer to political crisis.

Spain’s Constitutional Court banned the vote earlier this month after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it violated Spain’s 1978 constitution, which states the country is indivisible. Most opposition parties are also against the vote.

“All the power of the Spanish state is set up to prevent Catalans voting,” Puigdemont said in a televised address.

“We will do it because we have contingency plans in place to ensure it happens, but above all because it has the support of the immense majority of the population, who are sick of the arrogance and abuse of the People’s Party government.”

‘Step back for democracy’

On Thursday, tens of thousands gathered outside the seat of Catalonia’s top court in Barcelona, singing and banging drums, to protest the arrests of senior officials in police raids on regional government offices on Wednesday.

“This is a step back for democracy,” said one of them, 62-year-old pensioner Enric Farro. “This is the kind of thing that happened years ago — it shouldn’t be happening now.”

State police arrested Catalonia’s junior economy minister, Josep Maria Jove, on Wednesday in an unprecedented raid of regional government offices.

Spontaneous protest

Acting on court orders, police have also raided printers, newspaper offices and private delivery companies in a search for campaign literature, instruction manuals for manning voting stations and ballot boxes.

Polls show about 40 percent of Catalans support independence for the wealthy northeastern region and a majority want a referendum on the issue. Puigdemont has said there is no minimum turnout for the vote and he will declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” result.

A central government’s spokesman said protests in Catalonia were organized by a small group and did not represent the general feeling of the people.

“In those demonstrations, you see the people who go, but you don’t see the people who don’t go, who are way more and are at home because they don’t like what’s happening,” Inigo Mendez de Vigo said.

Mendez de Vigo also said an offer for dialogue from Madrid remained on the table. Repeated attempts to open negotiations between the two camps over issues such as taxes and infrastructure investment have failed over the past five years.

Rajoy said on Wednesday the government’s actions in Catalonia were the result of legal rulings and were to ensure the rule of law. The prime minister called on Catalan leaders to cancel the vote.

Hundreds of National Police and Guardia Civil reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and are being billeted in two ferries rented by the Spanish government and moored in the harbor. But the central government must tread a fine line in enforcing the law in the region without seeming heavy-handed.

Hardline tactics a concern

The stand-off between Catalonia and the central government resonates beyond Spain. The country’s EU partners publicly support Rajoy but worry that his hardline tactics might backfire.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who heads the pro-independence devolved government, said she hoped the Catalan and Spanish governments could hold talks to resolve the situation.

In a referendum in 2014, Scots voted to remain within the United Kingdom.

 
…

Federal prosecutors in Switzerland on Thursday announced indictments of the leader of a prominent Swiss Islamic group and two other top members over alleged al-Qaida propaganda videos posted on YouTube. Contacted by phone in Bangladesh, one of the suspects rejected the case as “politically motivated.”

Attorney General Michael Lauber’s office alleges the three members of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland violated Swiss laws banning al-Qaida, Islamic State and associated radical groups. His office and federal police have opened about 60 cases linked to alleged “jihadi-motivated terrorism,” mostly involving propaganda.

The indictments target ICCS President Nicolas Blancho, the group’s cultural production chief Naim Cherni, who is a German citizen, and spokesman Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi, said Illi in a phone interview. Blancho and Illi are both Swiss citizens, he said. They all remain free.

“Our reaction is the same it has always been: It is a politically motivated act by the state prosecutor,” Illi said from Bangladesh, where he was taking part in ICCS efforts to help the Muslim Rohingya minority who have been fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar by the hundreds of thousands since Aug. 25.

“They know their case is weak,” Illi said of the prosecutors. Referring to ICCS, he added: “They are trying to defame the famous Islamic organization.”

The case was built around an interview that Cherni conducted in Syria in 2015 with Abdullah al-Muhaysini that has been posted on YouTube. The Saudi militant has been linked to an umbrella organization known as Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, which is led by an al-Qaida affiliate. Illi called him a “rebel leader” and said links to al-Qaida weren’t confirmed.

Illi said authorities had tried and failed to have YouTube remove the interview video.

The attorney general’s said it asked the Swiss division of Google Inc. — YouTube’s parent company — to delete the interview two years ago and said it was “annoying” that it remained online.

“It is not in our power to delete it. It would be desirable if this were to change, particularly in the case of criminal proceedings such as this,” Lauber’s office wrote in an email. “This is a political question.”

The indictment comes nearly two years after Lauber’s office announced an investigation of what was then an unspecified German citizen accused of “having presented his journey to embattled regions of Syria in a video for propaganda purposes, without having explicitly distanced himself from al-Qaida activities in Syria.”

In a statement Thursday, the attorney general’s office said the videos were supportive of al-Qaida and had been “actively promoted via social media and at a public event” by all three suspects.

 
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Israel’s support of next Monday’s independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds is threatening to strain recently restored diplomatic relations with Turkey. Ankara has been condemning the planned vote, warning of severe consequences for the region.

Israel has a long tradition of seeing the region’s Kurds as a buffer from both Arab and Iranian threats; but with Turkey having its own restive Kurdish minority, Israel’s support of the vote has drawn strong condemnation in Turkey. 

Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat who served widely in the region, says the response by Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been restrained.

“In the government media, there are many articles saying, look, Israel is behind Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence. But what has to be followed is the practical reaction from Ankara, not what the government media reports. I also did not see anything coming from Erdogan’s mouth putting Israel on the target for this issue,” Selcen said.

Israel and Turkey only recently restored diplomatic ties after rapprochement efforts following the 2010 killing by Israeli commandos of 10 Turks trying to break Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza. But Turkish suspicions over Israel’s relations with the region’s Kurds were further heightened this month when former senior Israeli general Yair Golan declared the Kurdish rebel group the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish state for decades, is not a terrorist organization. Washington and the European Union have designated the PKK as a terrorist group.

The comment triggered a strong reaction in Ankara; but former Turkish diplomat Selcen says a swift response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrates that both sides are committed to working together, despite differences.

“Mr. Netanyahu made a very attentive statement underlying for Israel the PKK is a terrorist organization, but an independent Kurdish state is in the interests of the region; Israel needs this alliance as Turkey needs it for different reasons, but they both need it. And that’s how they managed to repair the relations. And with Israel there are some tensions, but the two sides manage to go on now with the newfound, let’s say friendship and relations, they are not going to sever the diplomatic ties, like before over the issue of Kurdistan,” Selcen said.

Analysts warn if Israel backs its support of the Kurds with action, it will likely further strain relations with Ankara, whatever their wider mutual interests.
…

French labor unions staged fresh protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s contested labor law reforms Thursday — a day before he adopts them by executive order.

The nationwide action backed by the powerful, hard-left CGT trade union, saw protesters take to the streets in the second round of public opposition to the long-touted reforms that will give more power to employers to hire and fire workers. Macron says that’s needed to power the stagnant French economy and boost jobs.

In cities across the country, demonstrators waved anti-capitalist placards and angry personal messages against Macron, whose popularity has recently taken a hit.

In Paris, demonstrators brandishing posters reading “The state ruins the people” marched past the posh La Rotonde restaurant where Macron was branded arrogant for prematurely celebrating his victory in the first round of the elections before he had won the presidency.

The latest protests come a week after hundreds of thousands of protesters — half a million, according to the unions — took to the streets in the first major challenge to Macron’s fledgling presidency.

Macron is waving away the opposition and his government is pressing ahead with the labor reforms, backed by a robust majority in parliament.

 
…

The lack of a unified approach by world governments to paying kidnap ransoms is putting the lives of citizens of all nationalities at greater risk and providing terror groups with a big source of finance, warns a new report from British analyst group the Royal United Services Institute.

The authors call for a global, rigorously applied and scrupulously monitored commitment to prevent any concessions to terrorist organizations.

A series of high profile kidnappings by Islamic State in Syria highlighted the lack of a unified global response. Among them was American filmmaker James Foley, held for nearly two years alongside other hostages, until he was murdered in August 2014.

“There are cases where a number of individuals are taken hostage, so in the James Foley case, tragically, and other cases in West Africa, where you have mixed nationalities.  And those that pay ransoms are freed earlier, multimillion-dollar ransoms that allow the terrorist groups to perpetuate their work.  And those that do not pay ransoms are kept for extended periods of time until it becomes politically expedient to murder them,” explains report author Tom Keatinge of RUSI.

He adds that terrorists often will abuse hostages whose governments refuse to negotiate, in order to raise the pressure on countries that do.

France is among the countries accused of paying ransoms.  In December 2014, then President Francois Hollande waited on the tarmac of a military airport outside Paris to welcome home hostage Serge Lazarevic, who had been kidnapped in Mali by al-Qaida militants.  He is one of several French hostages to have been released.

Choosing ‘right to life’

While Hollande consistently denied his government paid ransoms, the evidence suggests otherwise, says Keatinge.

“There are a number of countries, Italy is another one, where hostages have come home.  And the country has chosen the immediate right to life of their citizen over adhering to an internationally-agreed ban not to finance terrorist organizations.”

Ransoms are a major source of criminal financing in Colombia.  Guerrilla fighters belonging to the rebel National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, have kidnapped dozens of people.  In a rare interview this month, the group’s commander “Yernson” spoke about the key role that kidnapping plays.

“It’s a difficult economic situation; that’s why we have hostages.  We could say, ‘No, we won’t kidnap anyone else,’ but how would we finance our struggle? How would we finance our work?  We live off of the ‘ransom tax’ and kidnappings,” he told a Reuters journalist.

Specialist private sector companies, usually backed by insurance policies, are brought in to negotiate in such cases.  They often secure a release for a fraction of the ransom demand, says Keatinge.

“In places like Mexico, South America, where kidnapping is almost an industry for money raising for criminal groups, that’s where these private sector companies have proven to be very effective.  In the [Niger] delta in Nigeria, releasing people who have been taken hostage from oil companies, that’s another place they have been very effective.”

Currently, the ban on terrorist financing precludes the use of private sector resolutions in terrorist hostage situations.  Keatinge argues reversing this policy would lower kidnappers’ ransom expectations and potentially throttle a major source of terrorist financing.
…

World leaders meeting at the United Nations on Wednesday launched a half-billion dollar effort to end violence against women and girls, a crime suffered by one in three in their lifetimes.

The effort will fund anti-violence programs that promote prevention, bolster government policies and provide women and girls with improved access to services, organizers said.

It will take particular aim at human trafficking, femicide and family violence, they said.

A third of all women experience violence at some point in their lives, and that figure is twice as high in some countries, according to the United Nations.

“Gender-based violence is the most dehumanizing form of gender oppression. It exists in every society, in every country rich and poor, in every religion and in every culture,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, head of U.N. Women, said as the United Nations held its annual General Assembly.

“If there was anything that was ever universal, it is gender inequality and the violence that it breeds against women,” she said.

In other forms of violence, more than 700 million women worldwide were married before they were 18, and at least 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries, according to U.N. figures.

The initiative of 500 million Euros (US$595 million) was launched by the U.N. and the European Union, which is its main contributor, organizers said.

“The initiative has great power,” said Ashley Judd, a Hollywood actress and goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) who participated in Wednesday’s announcement.

“There are already so many effective, research-based, data-driven programs,” Judd told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of the announcement. “Financing for existing programs is a beautiful thing.

“It also makes an incredibly powerful statement to show that the world is increasingly cohesive around stopping gender-based violence,” she said.
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Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi returned to frontline Italian politics over the weekend, staking his claim to lead a resurgent center-right into national elections that are expected early next year.

At exactly the same moment, Berlusconi’s outspoken ally, Matteo Salvini, was addressing his Northern League party and laying down his own marker to become the next prime minister.

“Salvini Premier” read a sign stuck to the lectern.

In reality, neither man looks likely to head the next government if they pull off an election victory, and possible alternative candidates are already emerging.

“There is an apparent power struggle going on between Berlusconi and Salvini, but it will not get out of hand. They know a violent clash would be suicidal with voters,” said Piero Ignazi, politics professor at Bologna University.

“The truth is both men will remain head of their respective parties, but they won’t be the next prime minister,” he said.

This would open the way for a consensus candidate who would have to bridge the huge divergences between the three main rightist parties – from the fierce anti-EU agenda put forward by both the Northern League and Brothers of Italy to the pro-European vision embraced by Berlusconi on Sunday.

Latest opinion polls show this trio of long-standing allies are pulling ahead in the polls and predicted to win a combined 35 percent of the vote, with the anti-migrant Northern League just ahead of Berlusconi’ Forza Italia on some 15 percent.

By contrast, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) are seen on around 28 percent apiece. The 5-Star has ruled out any coalition alliances and the center-left pool of votes is shrinking as various leftist parties engage in ferocious infighting.

Court appeal

Under the current electoral system no party or bloc looks like winning enough seats to govern alone. However, political analysts say the wind is filling the center-right’s sails after years of adverse conditions, giving it pre-election momentum.

Berlusconi ignominiously resigned from power in 2011 during a sovereign debt crisis. Mired in sex scandals and legal woes, he was subsequently expelled from the Senate and banned from running for office due to a 2013 tax fraud conviction.

Open heart surgery last year left most analysts writing his political obituary. But not for the first time, the media tycoon, now 81, bounced back and has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the ban on seeking election.

A hearing is scheduled for November, but a verdict is unlikely to come for several months, meaning he almost certainly will not be able to stand in the next national ballot, which is due by May 2018 and widely expected to be held in March.

“Despite his age, Berlusconi would love to be prime minister again. It would be his last hurrah. But realistically speaking, it is not about to happen,” said a Forza Italia official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Significantly, Berlusconi made his political comeback speech at an event organized by Forza Italia stalwart Antonio Tajani, the president of the European Parliament. Party sources said Tajani was in pole position to be Berlusconi’s surrogate.

Compromise

While Berlusconi’s name abroad evokes memories of “bunga bunga” sex parties and wisecracks, Tajani is a much less colorful character, whose pro-European instincts would make him a reassuring figure for international markets.

Those very same instincts would pose a problem for Berlusconi’s hardline allies, who have regularly denounced the European Union and have called for Italy to quit the euro.

“The leader of the center-right needs to be chosen through a clear process, perhaps a primary,” Giorgia Meloni, the head of Brothers of Italy, told Sky Italia television on Sunday.

“I imagine that whatever grassroots method you decide, Tajani will not win out,” she said.

Brothers of Italy is a small, nationalist party, which is anti-migrant and anti-euro. It tries to differentiate itself from the League by saying it focuses on the whole country, not just the wealthy north.

Buoyed by the League’s strong poll numbers, Salvini says the leader of the party which wins the most votes next year should automatically be the prime ministerial candidate.

But Berlusconi, a four-times premier, has ruled out handing over the baton of power to Salvini, who has embraced Europe’s far-right and endorsed France’s National Front.

“We created the center-right in Italy and we have always been its leader, laying out and fulfilling its program,” Berlusconi said on Sunday. The two men have not spoken for months, saying they are in no hurry to discuss strategy.

Political analysts have speculated that the pro-business Forza Italia might find it easier to create a government of national unity with former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s PD party rather than the populist Northern League.

Forza Italia loyalists reject this notion.

“We ruled with the Northern League for years in national government and we are ruling with them now in the regions and it is going well,” said Forza Italia lawmaker Deborah Bergamini.

One such regional coalition is in Liguria, headed by Forza Italia’s Giovanni Toti. He attended both the Forza Italia and Northern League rallies at the weekend and is due to take part in a Brothers of Italy meeting this weekend.

“Toti has been carefully building bridges between the three parties and would be a natural choice to head any national coalition,” Bologna University’s Ignazi said.
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