World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (August 6-8, 2011)

The Guardian published an article headlined ‘Turkey sends Syria a message that Britain cannot’. According to the author, The foreign secretary, William Hague, admitted last week there was not much more Britain could do to halt the Syrian crackdown, while his US counterpart, Hillary Clinton, has been reduced to counting the dead. But Turkey, Syria's more powerful neighbour, is less supine. It is sending its foreign minister to Damascus on Tuesday to read the riot act to Syria's gore-soaked president, Bashar al-Assad. Ahmet Davutoglu's visit comes against a backdrop of daily atrocities by a regime struggling to contain the uprising. At least 42 civilians died on Sunday in army attacks on the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, activists said. Ten deaths were also reported in Houleh in central Syria. Belated promises from the regime of free, multiparty elections appear to have done nothing to defuse the crisis, which has claimed 1,600 lives since March.

The same media agency reports that Nato confirmed the recent crash of its military helicopter in Afghanistan was accompanied by "enemy activity in the area". But it said it was still investigating the cause and conducting a recovery operation. It did not release details or casualty figures. The attack came during a surge of violence that has accompanied the beginning of a reduction in Nato and US troop numbers, and showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains. Roshanak Wardak, a former member of the Afghan parliament and director of the district hospital, said the helicopter had just taken off after completing a mission in which up to eight insurgents were killed and was attempting to leave the area when another Taliban group fired at it.

According to The Los Angeles Times, A deal between beleaguered Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponents has given control of Iran's crucial Oil Ministry to a commander of the Revolutionary Guard who is under international sanctions, according to analysts and a former industry official in Tehran. Ahmadinejad, his rivals in parliament and leaders of the Revolutionary Guard put aside months of differences this week and appointed four new Cabinet members, including the controversial Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghassemi as overseer of the country's vast oil and natural gas riches. Parliament on Wednesday approved his ascent 216 to 22, with seven abstentions, in a vote many saw as a further weakening of the president.

The Washington Post states that Europe’s violent rightists embrace Norway attacker’s ideals as xenophobic views go mainstream. According to the author, Norway’s attacks laid bare a fringe of flourishing racist anger around Europe — and exposed the risk that it could erupt into violence anywhere, anytime. In Internet chatter, some of the most extreme European voices even say Anders Behring Breivik wasn’t xenophobic enough. Spain’s Democracia Nacional, Russia’s Slavic Union and the Swedish Resistance Movement dismissed him as a Zionist. Europe’s right-wing extremists are exceptional voices, numbering in the thousands. But their voices can take on disproportionate weight and skew perceptions of immigration. Foreign-born people made up 9.4 percent of the population of the 27 European Union states last year, or 47 million of the EU’s half a billion citizens, according to statistics agency Eurostat. But millions of those “foreigners” originally came from another EU country. The proportion of the foreign-born is low compared to the United States, but has been rising steadily and is unsettling to some in Europe, where many countries were relatively homogenous until recent generations.

The Hurriyet Daily News reports that Turkey will send two cargo planes carrying 50 tons of humanitarian aid to Somalia on Monday, with more to follow, as both government offices and civil-society organizations have swiftly mobilized to help the drought-hit country. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday issued a memorandum calling on all institutions to launch aid campaigns to help Africa, and in particular Somalia. The Turkish Red Crescent subsequently said Turkey’s first two cargo planes would leave for Somalia on Monday from Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport.