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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.

 
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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