Opinion

Turkey’s Election: A battle for the soul of the nation

As Turkey’s general election campaign enters its home stretch, a team of rivals is determined to take on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On May 14, voters will in effect be choosing between the incumbent president and a quadrumvirate of opposition leaders dedicated to defeating Erdogan.In Turk...

Opinion

Uganda’s election loser now has the world’s attention

Bobi Wine was being overly optimistic when he declared that the world was watching Uganda’s Jan. 14 general election. Even had it not been distracted by the U.S. election aftermath, the world still would have found it hard to watch the vote in Uganda, since it took place amid an internet black...

Opinion

Ethiopian prime minister trades his Nobel Peace Prize for civil war

We may be long past holding laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize to its lofty standards — the cruel cynicism of Henry Kissinger and open bigotry of Aung San Suu Kyi are just two instances of honorees behaving dishonorably — but Abiy Ahmed’s belly flop from the pedestal is nonetheless...

Opinion

The world has lost patience with Zimbabwe’s ‘Crocodile’

A year ago this week, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa strained credulity when he declared in a Bloomberg TV interview, “We have rejoined the family of nations.” The international community was already losing patience with his inability to deliver economic reforms, and Zimbabweans...

Opinion

Ethiopia’s Nobel winner cannot rest on his laurels

It’s not a good look on a Nobel Peace laureate. As protests raged in Ethiopia’s most populous region over the killing of a pop star, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered an internet blackout, preventing the rest of his country — and the wider world — from getting a complete pict...

Opinion

Iran doesn’t need a nuclear programme

With Iran announcing that it has breached uranium-enrichment limits agreed in the 2015 nuclear deal, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane, to remind ourselves of how we got here.The first thing to keep in mind - and it is often forgotten - is that Iran has only ever had one reason to start...

Opinion

The lingering Iran question at G20

US president Donald Trump has arrived at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka where many of his peers shall discuss bilateral crises with him: China’s Xi Jinping about their trade spat, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the purchase of Russian missile-defence systems, Japan’s Shinzo A...

Opinion

Trump doesn’t need to attack Iran: He’s winning already

What we’re seeing unfold in the Persian Gulf is a confrontation between a U.S. president who doesn’t know when he’s winning, and a Supreme Leader who doesn’t know when he’s losing. If Donald Trump changes his mind again and orders an attack on Iranian targets, he will h...