'democracy' - tagged features

Turkey has fought many internal political battles over the past few years. Now, it's at a new crossroad. Last week Turkey's top state prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, launched a court case against the ruling AK Party. The prosecutor claims the AK Party is trying to build an Islamic state within secular Turkey. If successful, the AK Party would be banned, and 71 party members including the Prime Minister and President, face the risk of being banned from politics for 5 years. 

The call by an Iraqi organization with links to Al Qaida to murder a Swedish artist and the chief editor of a provincial newspaper is still topping the headlines in Sweden. The call came in the wake of the artist's drawing of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog-like figurine decorating a traffic roundabout. Radio Sweden's Mark Cummins and Azariah Kiros compiled this story. 

The elections in Belarus and Ukraine this past spring were disappointing for the European Union. In Ukraine, a pro-Russian party, sidelined during the Orange revolution of 2004, romped back into domestic politics. In Belarus, the democratic opposition failed to unseat the ruthless autocratic regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Did the EU really use all its weight to influence the outcome of those elections? Or do the results in both Ukraine and Belarus demonstrate how limited the influence of the European Union is on its eastern neighbours. Deutsche Welle reports. 

European Radio for Belarus has been broadcasting to young Belarussians from the Polish capital Warsaw for three months now. The independent media in Belarus operate under difficult conditions as a result of the authoritarian Lukashenko regime. By combining attractive content such as popular music and independent news coverage, the Warsaw based station aims to foster a new generation of listeners. More from Radio Polonia in Warsaw. 

Round table discussion from Radio Polonia with Krzysztof Bobinski, a specialist in EU affairs, from the Poland-Union magazine and Dmitriy Babich, a journalist and political analyst of the Russia Profile monthly, in Moscow.