Barack Obama: Stumbling Towards Isolationism
THE TELEGRAPH: One of the ironies of Barack Obama’s presidency is that he is increasingly distant from the world he promised to embrace, writes Toby Harnden in Washington

Photo: The Telegraph
Europeans cheered Barack Obama every step of the way to the White House.

They swooned when the candidate took his stump skills to Berlin, where he spoke of "the burdens of global citizenship" and promised to "remake the world".

He had lived in Indonesia as a boy, travelled to Pakistan and Africa in his youth and came from a family that looked, as he liked to quip, "like the United Nations". Then, in his first year in office, he made 10 trips abroad to 21 countries, making him the most travelled of all United States presidents in their first 12 months.

So it came as a rude shock to Europeans last week when Obama decided not to bother with the European Union knees up Madrid in May - particularly miffing Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain, who, like the American president, campaigned on his opposition to the Iraq war.

American officials intimated that they were unimpressed by European bickering over who would sit next to the Obamas at the summit dinner and even over who would be the first leader to shake the hand of the person that Oprah Winfrey anointed as "the One" in Iowa back in 2008.

Perhaps Obama himself was a touch irritated by Nicolas Sarkozy's new habit of mocking him. "Obama has been in power for a year, and he has already lost three special elections," the French president said last week. "Me, I have won two legislative elections and the EU election. What can one say I've lost?" >>> Toby Harnden's American Way | Saturday, February 06, 2010

Turkish Nationalist Plotters 'Planned to Kill Prime Minister'
TIMES ONLINE: Members of a nationalist plot to overthrow the Turkish Government planned to attack the Nato headquarters in Turkey and assassinate 12 prominent figures, including the Prime Minister, a court heard today.

Fifty-two additional suspects, including a former senior policeman, were charged with involvement in the alleged campaign of chaos and violence that was to culminate in a military coup. A court accepted the third, 1,454-page indictment in the Ergenekon trial, charging the ultranationalist, ultra-secularist group.

Two four-star generals and senior figures from the security forces, business, politics, academia and the media are among the defendants as Turkey confronts for the first time what has long been known as the Deep State. The network is considered to be the true, military-backed power behind the throne in this mainly Muslim democracy.

Ergenekon, named after a mythical valley where ancient Turks once lived, is considered the latest incarnation of an organisation that has allegedly existed for decades under different guises. It was given a new impetus and its new title after the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, whose party was first elected in 2002. His background as a political Islamist has helped the group to sway public opinion, but it is his reformist, pro-European Union actions and policies that are most offensive to this isolationist and anti-Western group’s hard core. >>> Suna Erdem in Istanbul | Thursday, August 06, 2009