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Marc Champion
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 30, 2015
Memo to Moscow: Syria is Turkey's Ukraine
Ankara is determined to make it clear that no solution for Syria can be reached unless Turkish interests are fully taken into account.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 25, 2015
Putin has misjudged his erstwhile ally Erdogan
Having already underestimated him once with deadly results, the best way for Putin to figure out how Erdogan will respond to any further Russian moves is probably to imagine how he himself would react. The two men have a lot in common.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2015
The reason why Russian jets are buzzing Turkey
Vladmir Putin is willing to sacrifice Russia's warm and profitable ties with Turkey if it means keeping Syrian President Bashar Assad in power.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 29, 2015
Saakashvili for Ukraine prime minister?
Reform-minded Mikheil Saakashvili will need a miracle to effect much-needed changes in Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2015
Crimea's happy now, but for the persecution
Most of Crimea's inhabitants are happy, but for a minority the move to Russian control over the peninsula has been miserable.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2015
Cameron is right about how to take in refugees
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has taken a battering over his handling of Europe's refugee crisis, but his new approach is the right one.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 26, 2015
Want more heroes? Bring back the military draft
If the French train incident tells us anything useful about defending against terrorism, it is that ordinary people will sometimes be the only defense.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2015
A dangerous time for Russia-NATO relations
It is the early stages of a standoff between nuclear powers that are the most dangerous.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2015
Turkey's democracy is being quietly stolen
If President Recep Erdogan succeeds in using a rekindled Kurdish conflict to secure his presidential powers, it will be difficult for Turkish democracy to survive in any meaningful sense.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 19, 2015
Waterloo shows why the Brits need Europe
Just as Napoleon Bonaparte learned at Waterloo, the British may not want to risk being on their own, outside a resentful Europe that unites against it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2015
Greece's Tsipras isn't on the side of democracy
The question for Greeks today is whether they think the leftist policies of Syriza will give them a better future with default, capital controls and the drachma.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2015
Erdogan the conqueror
For Turkey's weakened democratic institutions to survive, and for it to remain delicately balanced between East and West, the Kurds and their new friends need to do well in Sunday's elections.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2015
Tayyipism strikes a chord with Turkish voters
President Recep Erdogan's new Turkey is more religious, more conservative, more rooted in the Middle East and less bound to the West.
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2015
Could Palmya be a turning point for Assad?
Syrian President Bashar Assad may have allowed Islamic State to take the World Heritage site of Palmyra, hoping an atrocity there would bring the international community to his side.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2015
Cameron has only himself to blame for tight race
British Prime Minister David Cameron's agenda for the last two years before the election has been dominated by Europe and immigration, but many voters care more about the economy.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2015
Gallipoli and Armenian genocide shouldn't mix
All political leaders manipulate history, but the decision by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to shift the 100th anniversary commemoration of the allied landings at Gallipoli forward 24 hours to April 24 — the same day as the anniversary of the Armenian genocide — was unusually crass.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 29, 2015
Call Cameron's 'gaffe' anything but guileless
There's been much debate over whether British Prime Minister David Cameron's shock announcement about his political future was just an unguarded slip — as he tried to look like a normal family man rather than a power-crazed politician on a soft-feature TV show — or a tactic.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2015
Ukraine needs to realize it can't beat Putin
The longer Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pretends to his people that Ukraine can seize Donestsk and Luhansk back from Russia by force, the more lives, sovereignty and wealth Ukraine will lose.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2015
Erdogan's reinvention of Turkey isn't funny
As Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminds Turkey of its roots through cosplay, the continued purging of judicial institutions as well as the jailing and intimidation of journalists in that country make the debates in France over free speech look quaint by comparison.
COMMENTARY
Jan 20, 2015
U.K. Muslims' 'special burden'
Do Muslim minorities in Britain and other European countries have a special burden to help track down Islamic extremists?

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Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan