Helena Smith
Helena Smith works from Athens. Helena Smith is the Guardian's correspondent in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus Helena Smith has over 7053 followers on Twitter.
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/ 17 August 2007

Turkey: Ex-Islamist runs for president

Turkey’s political identity is facing renewed crisis after the foreign minister and former Islamist, Abdullah Gul, announced he would run for president, the country’s highest secular post. Defying the secularist elite, he resubmitted his candidacy for the job after his first attempt to secure the post prompted a tidal wave of protests that followed a veiled threat of intervention by the army.

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/ 20 August 2006

Revealed: The world’s oldest computer

It looks like a heap of rubbish, feels like flaky pastry and has been linked to aliens. For decades, scientists have puzzled over the complex collection of cogs, wheels and dials. But 102 years after the discovery of the calcium-encrusted bronze mechanism on the ocean floor, hidden inscriptions show that it is the world’s oldest computer.

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/ 15 April 2005

Overcoming ‘shame’ of girls’ education

More than half of Turkey’s young female population has no schooling, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Females account for the vast majority of the seven-million people believed to be illiterate in the predominantly Muslim state. Under Turkey’s Education Minister, Huseyin Celik, this inequity is however being addressed

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/ 11 June 2004

Turkey frees four activists

The Nobel Peace Prize nominee Leyla Zana, who has championed Kurdish causes in Turkey from a prison cell for the past 10 years, was released last week with three fellow ex-MPs. At the same time, Turkey has allowed Kurdish language programmes to be broadcast for the first time.

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/ 7 May 2004

Olympic security confidence dented

It was the news Giorgos Voulgarakis did not want to hear. Eight hours before the Greek public order minister was due to begin briefing FBI and CIA officials in Washington on security arrangements for the Olympics, three bombs exploded outside a police station in an Athens suburb. The blasts blamed on anarchists have drawn attention to fears and delays dogging the games.