The Moroccan government has begun a clampdown on what it sees as threats to the kingdom’s religious and moral foundations, with Shi’ite Islam and gays particularly targeted.
A senior Turkish journalist was arrested on Friday for suspected involvement in an alleged plot to overthrow the country’s Islamist-rooted government.
The Turkish legal system is becoming a hazardous battleground for the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party and its secular opponents.
Turkey’s top court decided on Monday to put the Islamist-rooted ruling party on trial for alleged anti-secular activity, in a case that could threaten national stability and Ankara’s bid to join the European Union. The judges of the Constitutional Court agreed to accept the indictment against the Justice and Development Party filed by the country’s top prosecutor.
When rumours of a ”gay wedding” spread through the town of Ksar el Kebir, the only evidence produced was a video on YouTube of a man dancing in women’s clothes. Four people are now in prison accused of homosexual acts, Islamists are decrying a decline in morals and liberals are warning that the kingdom risks sleep-walking into extremism.
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/ 9 February 2008
Turkish lawmakers were set to lift a ban on Islamic headscarves at universities on Saturday, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the move as a threat to secularism. In separate votes, an overwhelming majority of lawmakers approved two constitutional amendments that would together lift the on-campus ban.
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/ 3 February 2008
About 125 000 flag-waving Turks, mostly women, denounced the Islamic-rooted government on Saturday over its plans to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in universities — a move the foreign minister said would expand Turkish freedoms.
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/ 16 October 2007
Turkey on Tuesday accused Washington of playing "petty" politics and threatened reprisals if the United States Congress votes on a motion branding the World War I massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks an act of genocide. "We see that common sense is gradually losing ground to petty political calculations," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came under intense pressure on Monday night to order an invasion of northern Iraq following the deadliest attacks for over a decade on the Turkish military and civilians by separatist Kurdish guerrillas.