Erdogan

Turkey has long been a bridge between the West and the Middle East. Its record on free speech may be lamentable and it treats its Kurdish minority shoddily, but against that stands a genuine will to improve its human rights record and an ambition to become a modern, free and prosperous state. This has long been the basis of Britain’s support for Turkey joining the European Union. But this week we have seen a reminder of how far the priorities of Turkey’s political establishment are from those of Europe. Its parliament recently consented to the use of an airbase at Incirlik by US forces launching airstrikes against the Islamic State, a move that could dramatically increase the number and effectiveness of such missions.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, resisted calls for Parliament to be recalled to debate the crisis in Iraq. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that the government was not considering military intervention ‘at the present time’. Mark Simmonds resigned as a Foreign Office minister, but Downing Street hastened to say that his resignation, unlike Lady Warsi’s a week earlier, had nothing to do with government policy on Gaza, since he was complaining he could not afford to rent a flat in London for his family with the £27,000 allowance. A man sought by police investigating the theft of a fish tank from a furniture shop in Leeds hid in a bush and was attacked by a swarm of wasps. Unemployment fell 132,000 to 2.

Home Demand for housing posed ‘the biggest risk to financial stability’ according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. House prices rose by 8 per cent in the year to the end of March, according to the Office for National Statistics, and in London the increase was 17 per cent. The annual rate of inflation rose to 1.8 per cent in April from 1.6 per cent in March, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index; it remained at 2.5 per cent as measured by the Retail Prices Index. The underlying annual profits of Marks & Spencer fell by 3.9 per cent to £623 million, putting them behind the £695 million reported by Next. The mummified body of an eight-stone baby mammoth, 42,000 years old, went on show at the Natural History Museum.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved and who bought a family house’ and that this would be addressed in the Conservative manifesto. Two opinion polls after the Budget, by Survation for the Mail on Sunday and by YouGov for the Sunday Times, had put Labour one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives. Nineteen Labour movement figures wrote to the Guardian warning the party not to hope to win the election on the basis of Tory unpopularity. The rate of inflation fell from 1.9 to 1.7 per cent, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, or from 2.8 to 2.7 per cent as measured by the Retail Prices Index. The government said it would sell another 7.

  Istanbul By now, everyone has heard of the brutal suppression of protests all over Turkey, which began with a peaceful sit-in in Istanbul to protect a hapless apology for a park from demolition. Right by the city’s unofficial centre, Taksim Square, Gezi Park had been slated to become yet another one of the ruling AKP’s signature Ottoman-cum-Disneyland construction projects. It was hardly much of a park, by London standards, but it was one of the last remaining places in the area with a few trees and a bit of room to stroll around. The protesters found the idea of losing that tiny refuge from Istanbul’s urban chaos unbearable.