World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (March 14, 2012)

The Washington Post reported that Iran’s parliament grilled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday over a long list of accusations, including that he mismanaged the nation’s economy and defied the authority of the country’s supreme leader. Ahmadinejad is the first president in the country’s history to be hauled before the Iranian parliament, a serious blow to his standing in a conflict pitting him against lawmakers and the country’s powerful clerical establishment. The questioning could set the stage for a subsequent impeachment of the president should the lawmakers find his answers dissatisfactory. Ahmadinejad sniped back defiantly at his questioners, displaying some of the populist touch that has won him a mass following despite his strained ties with clerical leaders.

The same agency reported that Iran’s constitution gives parliament the legal right to question the president, but the body had never before taken a step that undermined Ahmadinejad’s prestige and could set the stage for his subsequent impeachment should lawmakers determine his answers were unsatisfactory. Ahmadinejad sniped back defiantly at his questioners, displaying some of the populist touch that has won him a mass following despite his strained ties with clerical leaders. The summons follows a long-awaited petition by a group of parliamentarians for a review of policy decisions by Ahmadinejad, who has come under increasing attacks in recent months from the same hard-liners who brought him to power.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Syrian troops pressed an offensive Tuesday in rugged northwestern Idlib province after forcing a rebel retreat from the strategic regional capital, opposition officials said. The government assault in Idlib — which follows an advance in central Homs province, another major rebel stronghold — suggests that the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad may be making progress against insurgent fighters who remain outgunned against tanks and armor. Rebels say they have no shortage of recruits but lack weapons. Security forces accompanied by dozens of tanks entered Idlib city, the provincial capital, after the rebels withdrew late Sunday, said Mazen Arja, an opposition activist who noted that rebels did not have the firepower to confront heavy weapons. The city had endured days of shelling, killing dozens, according to opposition accounts.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet reported that Turkey’s prime minister faced mounting charges of authoritarianism yesterday in a simmering row over planned education reform, but he brushed aside the accusations and hailed the bill’s “historic” approval at the commission stage, blaming the main opposition for brawls during voting on the motion. The Republican People’s Party declared Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a “post-modern dictator” while the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) said the government had even “outstripped the Nazi rule of Germany.” Despite recent calls by President Abdullah Gül against “revanchism,” Erdoğan delivered a harsh tirade against restrictions on religious education in the early years of the Republic and the closure of the secondary stage of the imam-hatip religious schools in the late 1990s.