World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (December 17-19, 2011)

UK media giant The Guardian reacted to the death of Russian Dagestani journalist Khadzhimurad Kamalov. According to the author of the article, the journalist was killed for daring to expose the corruption and organized crime ‘that is at least tolerated by Moscow's elite’. The article reads that Kamalov reported the truth about official corruption, about organised crime, about the lawlessness that grips Russia's North Caucasus, and he surely knew the risks he was taking. The masked gunman who ambushed him outside his office last week and shot him a sickening 14 times or more was always a half-expected caller – just like the gunman who killed another Dagestan journalist, Yakhya Magomedov, in May. The author of the material goes as far as claiming that Russia is one of the world's most perilous places to practice journalism or any kind of truth-telling.

According to the New York Times, Iranian state television broadcast video images on Sunday of a man who it said was a captured American spy sent to infiltrate Iran’s intelligence services. The video report, also posted online, identifies the man as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an Iranian-American from Arizona, apparently in his late 20s. In the video, the man says he joined the United States Army after graduating from high school in 2001, served in Iraq and received training in languages and espionage. The Iranian Intelligence Ministry told reporters in Tehran that its agents spotted the man at Bagram Air Base, a major site for American-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported. The ministry said its agents kept track of him as he entered the country in August and arrested him when he tried to carry out his mission.

The Hurriyet Daily News reported today that the main opposition head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, has waded into the debate on presidential terms, saying presidents should be elected by Parliament and be limited to five years. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) also insisted that Gül was entitled to a five-year, once-renewable term. “The prime minister may chose any course of action relying on his parliamentary majority but we preserve our view that the ‘5+5’ formula is the legally valid one,” MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said, expressing his support for a system in which a president would be able to stand for two five-year terms.

According to the same news agency, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu chaired talks yesterday in Konya on reforms sought by the European Union despite the standstill in accession talks, with EU pressure over jailed journalists high on the agenda. Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin, Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin and EU Minister Egemen Bağış participated in the meeting of the Reform Monitoring Group (RMG) in the Central Anatolian province, Davutoğlu’s hometown.