The Economist: Europe

Europe

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•  Turkey's constitutional referendum: Can Erdogan pull it off? 09 Sep 2010, 13:43

  Turkey prepares to vote on a constitutional-reform package that pits the government against the generals

  SALIH SEZGIN, a Kurd, was in Diyarbakir prison when Turkey’s generals seized power in 1980. “After the coup I was forced to eat my own shit and repeatedly raped with a truncheon,” he recalls. Should Turks approve a set of constitutional reforms that will be put to a nationwide vote on September 12th, the officers who committed such horrors on Mr Sezgin and more than half a million other Turks who were arrested and tortured after the coup will no longer be immune from prosecution.

  Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has cast the reforms as a stab in the heart of the September 1980 coup plotters. The referendum falls on its 30th anniversary. But Mr Erdogan’s critics view the changes as a final assault on Ataturk’s secular republic. ...

  

•  ETA's ceasefire: Not-fighting talk 09 Sep 2010, 13:43

  ETA’s ceasefire is more about Basque politics than a commitment to peace

  IT WAS a strange way to declare a ceasefire. In a video sent to a British television station on September 5th, masked leaders of the violent Basque separatist group ETA not only proclaimed a truce but said they had halted attacks several months ago. Why wait so long to tell the world?

  The answer lies in a double squeeze that has left Europe’s last big home-grown terrorist group gasping for air. On the one hand ETA is losing the armed struggle it began over 40 years ago. In recent years police forces across Europe have dealt it blow after blow, reducing its deadliness (see chart). But ETA is also being squeezed by its grassroots backers at home—and that may prove more decisive. ...

  

•  Russian politics: Why Russia needs me 09 Sep 2010, 13:43

  The prime minister defends his record

  VLADIMIR PUTIN looked smooth, tanned and rested. He had a fun summer, most of it televised by state channels. He took a spin on a Harley with a bunch of bikers, had a go at flying a firefighting jet and dropping water on the wild forest-fires in central Russia, fired darts at a grey whale, and most recently drove thousands of miles across Russia’s tundra in a canary-yellow Lada accompanied by dozens of foreign-made security cars and two spare Ladas—just in case.

  Out of these antics emerged the image of a hands-on, no-nonsense and down-to-earth ruler who feels at ease with rough-speaking truck drivers. In any democratic country such public-relations stunts could have been mistaken for part of an election campaign. In Russia, where political competition is long gone, they are part of Mr Putin’s political housekeeping, helping to keep up his image as a good tsar who is the flesh and blood of his people. When the Valdai club, a group of mostly foreign experts on Russia, asked him over dinner on September 6th about his plans for the next presidential election in 2012, Mr Putin positively glowed with pleasure. ...

  

•  Irish politics: Much pain, little gain 09 Sep 2010, 13:43

  Ireland is still in the eye of the storm

  WHEN Brian Cowen succeeded Bertie Ahern as taoiseach (prime minister) in May 2008, he inherited a popular coalition government with a comfortable parliamentary majority. But he was also set to preside over the deepest recession in the country’s history. As Ireland’s property bubble burst, it triggered a crisis in the public finances. Property-related revenue plummeted and the banking system came close to collapse.

  By the time the recession ended earlier this year, GDP was 15% below its peak, unemployment had reached 13% and the cost of rescuing Ireland’s banks had soared beyond initial estimates. Dealing with the mess at the state-owned Anglo Irish Bank, which on August 31st reported an €8.2 billion ($10.8 billion) loss for the first half of 2010, the biggest corporate loss in Irish history, could cost taxpayers €25 billion. (This week the government split the bank into two: a “good” bank to manage its deposits and a “bad” one for its loans.) Despite belt-tightening measures, the Fianna Fail/Green coalition has struggled to rein in the budget deficit, which at 14.3% of GDP last year was the highest in the euro area (see article). ...

  

•  Italian politics: Splintering at the top 09 Sep 2010, 13:43

  The war of words between Italy’s former coalition partners intensifies

  MORE than a month after it began, Italy’s drawn-out political crisis has come to resemble a toy soldiers’ battle. The combatants rush to the fray with swords aloft, howling battle cries. Yet they remain eerily immobile.

  On September 5th Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and the man who started it all, delivered a keenly anticipated speech. It had been thought he might consummate his departure from the governing majority by announcing a new party, openly hostile to the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. ...