Syrian President Bashar Assad lashed out at his Turkish critics on Saturday, remarking that “some in Turkey are still clinging to the dream of reinstating the Ottoman Empire.”

The Turkish leaders, he added, “Know that this dream is impossible, so they are trying to exploit parties with a religious agenda to expand their influence on the Arab world.”

Speaking to the Arabic-language website Arab Press, Assad called on his supporters not to vandalize any Turkish symbols: “I ask you – don’t burn Turkish flags. The Turkish people are a proud nation.” 

Earlier this week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the diplomatic crisis between Damascus and Ankara was of Assad’s own making.

Turkey, he said, is “considering its options” vis-à-vis Syria, including imposing a no-fly zone and border buffer-zones.

Assad further lashed out at other Arab nations: “Those among our brothers who are showing us animosity will seek our forgiveness when the crisis is over,” he said, referring to the Arab League’s decision to suspend Syria following its failure to implement the League’s plan to end the unrest sweeping through the county.

“Syria will not abide conspiracies,” Assad hinted. “Once we emerge victorious from the current campaign, do not expect us to just sit idle by.”

Assad has ignored an Arab League deadline to accept international observers to oversee an initiative. The pan-Arab organization’s foreign ministers are set to meet later on Saturday to discuss imposing additional sanctions on the rogue leader’s regime.

Exxon Mobil’s venture into Iraqi Kurdistan challenges Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s resolve against growing regional separatism and tests the investment strategy of the oil majors in Iraq.

Exxon is the first major oil company to test the waters by signing for six blocs with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in north Iraq, which is locked in a feud with the Arab-dominated central government over territory and oil rights.

Kurdistan has enjoyed more stability and security than the rest of Iraq, and its potential resources have already drawn smaller oil players like Norway’s DNO and Gulf Keystone . But its festering political quarrel with Baghdad has kept majors away until now.

Exxon’s foray into Kurdistan has forced a political stand-off between one of the world’s largest oil companies and an Iraqi government determined to exercise sovereignty as US troops withdraw eight years after the fall of former leader Saddam Hussein.

Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani, architect of many of Iraq’s deals with foreign companies and a hardliner against Kurdistan oil autonomy, said on Tuesday the government was considering sanctioning Exxon.

Baghdad had already warned that any deal foreign companies sign with Kurdistan would be deemed illegal, saying Exxon’s move could jeopardize its huge contract for the 8.7 billion barrel West Qurna Phase One oilfield in southern Iraq.

But for Maliki, dealing with Exxon is a tricky balance: Taking a hard line could push more deals north and risk souring future investments in major southern fields as the OPEC country tries to rebuild its industry after years of conflict.

Ceding too much to Kurdistan may upset the balance with other regions chafing for more autonomy from Maliki’s central government authority and test the frail power-sharing coalition in Baghdad made up of Sunni Muslim, Shi’ite and Kurdish blocks.

“We believe that the government will avoid canceling the West Qurna agreement but will seek to penalize Exxon Mobil in some way,” Eurasia Group’s Crispin Hawes said.

“In the longer term, the Exxon Mobil move has put further pressure on the Maliki administration to deal with the question of regional authority and federalism.”

At the heart of the Exxon dispute is the question of who controls vast oil reserves in the north of Iraq including territories disputed between Kurdistan and Baghdad – a potential flash-point for tensions as US troops pull out.

Iraq sits on the world’s third-largest oil reserves and with violence from its conflict now easing, it plans to auction 12 new oil and gas blocks in March that could add another 10 billion barrels to reserves.

Baghdad has already barred Hess Corp. from participating in a new bidding round for assets because of its dealings with Kurdistan.

But taking on a behemoth like Exxon – well versed in legal tactics such as international arbitration to protect its interests – would prove far more complex for Maliki and Shahristani.

Exxon is not only involved in West Qurna One, but is also leading a multi-billion-dollar water injection plan that is key to bolstering southern oilfield output – a project that it may believe will help shield it from major punishment.

The US company could have judged that the political fallout was manageable enough to gain a foothold in Kurdistan.

“Exxon seems to have made the calculation that it is too important for Iraq’s oil ministry to push them out of their southern projects,” Teymur Huseynov, head of Global Energy Consulting at Exclusive Analysis, an intelligence company.

Baghdad and Kurdistan still at odds

For Kurdistan, the Exxon deal brings the region more international recognition as a player on the oil market and may seek to give it leverage with the central government over a long-awaited oil law to resolve the dispute.

While the feud means companies in Kurdistan cannot get full export revenue for now, the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) offers attractive production-sharing deals – allowing companies to make profit from oil sales – compared with the service contracts in the south.

Exxon itself has not commented on the deal. But already others are waiting on the sidelines, including Royal Dutch Shell , which one source said had planned to sign in Kurdistan at the same time as Exxon but pulled out a day or two before.

Chevron and Italian explorer Eni had also been in contact with Kurdistan, one Iraqi official said.

“They know the geology is attractive in Kurdistan although geopolitical risk is high, but they know too how to balance that type of risk,” said oil analyst Oswald Clint at Bernstein.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ross Nouri Shawis, a Kurd, said that the central and regional governments had been in touch about the Exxon deal before. But any accord between Baghdad and Kurdistan appears to have soured at the last minute as Exxon signed.

Reflecting that fallout, the US State Department said on Tuesday it had warned Exxon about the political and legal risks of signing contracts “without nationwide” approval.

Mixed messages from Baghdad reflect the power struggle within the government. Shahristani, a Shi’ite with strong ties to the south, is unlikely to want to retreat on Exxon. Shawis and others have offered a more conciliatory tone.

The outcome will not only affect Exxon and how other oil investors see Iraq, but also political relations between the two governments as they try to resolve their bitter dispute and sign the national oil law meant to define crude rights.

Agreement over the oil legislation – seen as essential for investors to guarantee their assets – has been stymied by competing claims to disputed territories along the internal border between Kurdistan and Iraq.

Some observers see in the Exxon move an attempt to force Baghdad and the KRG in Arbil to hammer out their differences rather than let worsening tensions damage investments. But a solution may be complicated if any of the six Exxon blocks falls inside disputed territorial areas.

Key legislation like Iraq’s oil law – initially agreed by the political parties in 2007 but still not passed – has been caught up for years in Iraq as factions squabble for power.

Maliki may now find it politically difficult to accept Exxon’s move into a semi-autonomous region as the government faces calls for autonomy from places like Salahuddin, where disgruntled Sunnis want more independence.

Autonomy would give provinces more power over their finances, administration and laws. Local governments would have an upper hand in supervising public facilities in their territories, which could loosen Baghdad’s grip on oil facilities.

“It’s now become impossible to dissociate Exxon with Iraqi politics,” Jaafar Altaie, managing director of Manar Energy consulting. “If the deal goes sour, critics could say Exxon helped foment divisions in Iraq. If it goes well, they will say Exxon helped bridge the differences between Arbil and Baghdad.”

James Charles Stuart was one of the colorful kings worthy of the BBC’s wonderful historical series. He was crowned king when he was 13 months old. His mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, who was executed by Elizabeth I, the queen of England. James succeeded Elizabeth too, and became the first king of Scotland, England and Ireland together. He was a great wastrel, got entangled in unnecessary wars, and considered Parliament a nuisance. He occasionally ordered his political rivals to be hanged. He had at least half a dozen male lovers, but also a wife and six children.

All of this might not have been enough for him to be remembered, but he won eternal glory by commissioning the biggest best seller in history: The King James Bible, one volume containing the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and several of the Apocrypha – 788,258 words in all.

Four hundred years later, it is still considered the most authoritative English version of the holy book. Festivities are under way to mark the anniversary; Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to participate. Christian fundamentalist organizations in America, too, are investing a sizable effort in publicizing the occasion. Over the past 400 years, an estimated 1 billion copies of the book have been sold.

To date, the Bible has been translated into an estimated 2,500 of mankind’s 6,000 languages. Before the King James Version, and predating the printing press, there had been partial English translations. Don’t try to figure out what led King James to commission a new translation. It is a complicated story, one involving theological debates and political power struggles. It seems that, among other things, the king sought to tone down the Prophets’ criticism of monarchs. Whatever the case, in 1604 he appointed 50 scholars who then spent seven years on the project. They based their work on earlier translations into English, and between them also knew Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. Among other things, they used Hebrew books printed 80 years earlier in Venice, by Daniel Bomberg.

The first copies of the KJV were printed in a large format, and were relatively expensive. They were meant primarily for churches. The demand for the book quickly led to legal disputes among various printers. There are still 150 extant copies of that first edition, which does not bear King James’ name but is described as an authorized version of the Holy Scriptures. The king’s name was added apparently only at the beginning of the 19th century.

Over the years, other English translations have appeared, not only in response to the book’s commercial success but also in order to adapt the English text to various communities’ religious outlook. Some versions were created by English-speaking Jews, for example, who started producing their own translations in the 18th century. The first Jewish translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into English is attributed to Abraham Benisch, who was the editor of The Jewish Chronicle; it was published in 1851. In recent years, new translations have come out in the United States. Most have not drawn much attention in Israel, in part because they are popular mainly among Reform and Conservative congregations.

One version available is a Jewish Publication Society translation called Tanakh. Its second edition uses punctuation that does not appear in the Hebrew original, including quotation marks, brackets, question marks and numerals. The book’s publishers pride themselves on its having been recognized as the official translation for the World Bible Quiz. In contrast to the King James Version, the books are ordered in keeping with the original, but the translation differs greatly not only from the “authorized” King James Version but also from the Hebrew original, as can be seen in the very first sentence. Instead of “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” is “When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void – with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water – God said, ‘let there be light’; and there was light.”

King James’ scholars did it better; the Hebrew original did it best of all.

* Egypt protests: Mass rally in Cairo ahead of election Tens of thousands of protesters have packed into central Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand that Egypt’s military rulers step aside.

* Sinai forces on high alert over Jihad threat Alert level in al-Arish raised to unprecedented level after reports suggest Jihad members planning attack on local security headquarters

* Iran’s Khamenei presents war scenarios In an unusual step, Iran’s spiritual leader publishes commentary on official website outlining three scenarios for strike against Islamic Republic.

* LAF will fight against Israel in next conflict IDF commander estimates Lebanese army will join Hezbollah in next conflict in backdrop of mysterious blast in South Lebanon earlier this week

* Syria unrest: Arab League observer ultimatum passes An Arab League deadline for Syria to allow an observer mission or face sanctions has passed with no response from Damascus to the ultimatum.

* Patrick Cockburn: This was always a civil war, and the victors are not merciful The purge of Gaddafi supporters is made more dangerous by infighting between the militias

* The Makings of History: King James and his bible James Charles Stuart, King of England, won eternal glory by commissioning the biggest best seller in history: The King James Bible.

* EU calls for civilian government in Egypt, as thousands rally in Tahrir Square Tens of thousands gather in Cairo for largest day of protests against ruling military council.

* Abbas, Mashaal hail new Palestinian “Partnership” After meeting in Cairo, Palestinian president, Hamas leader say “there are no more differences between us now.”

* EU steps back, as tensions build ahead of Congo elections On seizing power from Zaire’s long-standing dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, Laurent-Desire Kabila changed the country’s name to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Red carpets, honor guards and gun salutes are for garden-variety visiting politicians and monarchs: for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Cairo put on the kind of reception usually reserved for rock stars. Turkey’s Prime Minister was greeted at the airport by thousands of cheering fans, many holding aloft posters of their hero. Fusillades of flashbulbs turned night into day. Journalists eager for a quote thrust microphones into Erdogan’s face, but he was drowned out by the chanting throngs. “Erdogan! Erdogan! A real Muslim and not a coward,” went one incantation. Another: “Turkey and Egypt are a single fist.”

Totalitarian regimes routinely orchestrate massive, faux-spontaneous welcomes for visiting dignitaries, but the beleaguered interim administration in Cairo didn’t need to rent a crowd for Erdogan: the Turkish leader is genuinely popular across the Arab world. He was ranked the most admired world leader in a 2010 poll of Arabs by the University of Maryland in conjunction with Zogby International. His stock has soared higher still since the Arab Spring. In countries where young people have risen against old tyrannies, many cite Erdogan as the kind of leader they would like to have instead.

A good politician knows how to milk his moment: the Cairo visit was the first leg of Erdogan’s triumphant mid-September sweep through the newly liberated North African states. There were tumultuous welcomes, too, in Tunis and Tripoli. Then it was time for Erdogan to take a bow on the biggest stage. The trip culminated at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, where President Obama, ignoring Erdogan’s recent criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East and his flaming diplomatic row with Israel, lauded him for showing “great leadership” in the region.

It’s not every day that a U.S. President and the Arab street are of one mind. But like the throngs chanting Erdogan’s name (not all of them aware it is pronounced Erd-waan; the g is silent) in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Obama is hoping that the new governments emerging from the ashes of old dictatorships will look a lot like the one the Prime Minister has built over the past eight years. Erdogan has greatly enhanced Turkey’s international reputation, has reined in its once omnipotent military, has pursued economic policies that have trebled per capita income and unleashed new entrepreneurship, and has for the most part maintained a pro-West stance.

He has, it is true, also displayed an occasional autocratic streak, running roughshod over political rivals, tossing enemies into jail and intimidating the media. Many political analysts, in Turkey and the West, suspect his desire to rewrite the constitution is designed to amass more executive power. But to his admirers, these failings pale against his successes. Democratic, economically ascendant and internationally admired: as political templates go, Turkey’s is pretty irresistible to people shaking off decades of authoritarian, impoverishing rule — and for Westerners worried about what those people might do next.

But perhaps its greatest virtue, in the eyes of many Middle Eastern beholders, is that the Turkish model was forged by an Islamist: Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party — better known by its Turkish acronym, AKP — have traditionally drawn support from the country’s religious and conservative classes and are regarded with suspicion by secular absolutists. For Arab Islamists, Turkey’s success is proof that they can modernize their countries without breaking away from their religious moorings. Erdogan’s Western admirers see it the other way around: proof that political Islam needn’t be an enemy of modernity. And if any evidence were needed that Erdogan’s way leads to political success, the AKP won its third general election in June, by a landslide.

But can Erdogan’s way lead Egypt, Tunisia and Libya to the political stability and economic strength Turkey now enjoys? Erdogan claims to be ambivalent whether Arab states seek to emulate his success. “If they want our help, we’ll provide any assistance they need,” he told TIME in an interview during his visit to New York. “We do not have a mentality of exporting our system.” But he doesn’t deny reaching out to the potential leaders of the Arab Spring states: “I intentionally wanted to talk to the presidential candidates, the new political parties there, and I had the opportunity to get together with lots of people in order to grasp the situation.”

His message to them: be good Muslims, but make sure your constitution is, like Turkey’s, secular. “Do not fear secularism, because it does not mean being an enemy of religion,” he said in an interview on Egyptian TV. “I hope the new regime in Egypt will be secular.” This came as a shock to some in the Muslim Brotherhood, who retorted that they didn’t need lessons from the Turk. Feathers were soon smoothed, but the episode was a reminder that Turkish Islamism, rooted in a secular democratic tradition, is not so easily transplanted to societies where neither secularism nor democracy is well understood. The template, says Michael Werz, a Turkey expert at the Center for American Progress, “can be inspirational for Arab Islamist parties, but it can’t be a model.”

All the same, many politicians in the Arab Spring countries are plainly modeling themselves after the Turkish leader. “Erdogan wears a business suit, but he prays in the mosque. That is something we can identify with,” Essam Erian, a top leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, told me in Cairo in the summer. (There’s an obvious echo in the name of the Brotherhood’s new political arm: Freedom and Justice Party.) Abdelhamid Jlassi, a leader of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party was just as starry-eyed when I met him in Tunis a few days later. “Erdogan speaks our language,” he told me. “When he speaks, we listen.”

Ennahda has since won a large plurality in Tunisia’s first free elections, on Oct. 23, to form an assembly that will write a new constitution. The Muslim Brotherhood is expected to do just as well in elections scheduled beginning in late November. Libya is not expected to hold elections until the middle of next year, but there, too, Islamist groups are expected to be significant players. Where — and to whom — they look for inspiration could change the way the world views them.

The Ideal Islamist
for some western observers, the rise of political Islam conjures up visions of extremist, reactionary states, like Afghanistan under the Taliban or Iran. That limited view informed the anxiety that greeted the AKP’s 2002 election victory. Even Turkish secularists feared Erdogan would seek to undo the separation of mosque and state that is the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey. They pointed to comments Erdogan made in the 1990s, as mayor of Istanbul, like this one: “Democracy is a tram that gets you to your destination, and then you get off.” Turkey’s decision not to participate in the 2003 Iraq war led to fears that Erdogan would take his country out of NATO and turn away from the West.

But AKP’s critics were wrong: Turkey didn’t become another Iran. Apart from a quiet repeal of a long-standing ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities last year, Erdogan’s policies have hardly been an assault on Ataturk’s secular legacy. (Domestic critics complain, however, of an Islamist agenda in the steep hiking of taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.) And far from drifting away from the West, Erdogan pushed harder than his secular predecessors for the ultimate Western endorsement: admission into the European Union, whose repeated cold-shouldering of Ankara says more about European hangups than Turkey’s qualifications. Erdogan tells TIME he is “still determined” to pursue E.U. membership but can’t help smiling at the irony that his country, once described as “the sick man of Europe,” is now economically ascendant, while many members of the club that won’t admit him are all but bankrupt.

From Zero Problems …
For all its Islamist leanings, the AKP government also reached out to Jewish Israel and the secular Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad; previous governments in Ankara had at best cool relations with Damascus. There were overtures, too, to neighbors in the Balkans and around the Black Sea, and even to Armenia, with which Turkey has long-standing historical hostilities. These were all consistent with a doctrine Erdogan and his Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, dubbed Zero Problems: Turkey would mend fences with all neighbors and make friends anew in the wider world.

It worked: Erdogan seemed to form a close bond with Assad, even inviting the Syrian dictator to vacation in Turkey. And Turkey quickly became Israel’s best friend in the Islamic world — that bar was, admittedly, low.

Zero Problems also served Turkey’s economic ambitions. Turkish entrepreneurs, nudged along by the government — but without the overwhelming financial backing of the state enjoyed by, say, Chinese companies — were able to rapidly grow business in the immediate neighborhood and farther afield, notably in Africa. Turkish construction companies in particular fanned out across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, competing with (and often beating) Chinese rivals.

There was prosperity at home too: since the AKP first came to power, Turkey’s GDP has trebled, the budget deficit has fallen by two-thirds. From 2002 to ’10, GDP grew by a compounded annual rate of 4.8%, more than Russia, Brazil and South Korea. In 2010, Turkey’s GDP grew 8.9%; the E.U.’s grew 1.9%. Already the world’s 17th largest economy, behind South Korea, Spain and Canada, Turkey is expected to slow this year, and some analysts warn that its economy is in danger of overheating. But compared with much of Europe, it is a picture of health.

Emboldened by economic and foreign policy successes, Erdogan grew more ambitious abroad. With U.S. support, he sought to turn Turkey into a moderator of other regional rifts, bringing Syria and Israel as close as they have ever come to peace talks. That dream was dashed in December 2008, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the start of Operation Cast Lead, a three-week assault on Gaza that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. Israel said it was provoked by rockets fired from Gaza; Syria withdrew from Erdogan-brokered negotiations.

Associates of the Turkish leader say he was personally affronted. Olmert, he felt, had left him holding the bag. His anger boiled over at a panel discussion in Davos, when he stormed off after telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, “You know very well how to kill.”

Relations with Israel limped along for a while before breaking down completely in May 2010, when Israeli commandos halted a Turkish-led aid flotilla bound for Gaza. In international waters, the commandos rappelled down into the Mavi Marmara, a ship belonging to a Turkish charity. In the fighting that broke out, eight Turks and one Turkish American were killed. Israel says its soldiers were attacked on board.

Turkey has since all but broken off relations with Israel. Erdogan says nothing short of a formal apology and the lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza will repair a once promising friendship. “The Israeli government is not being honest at all,” he tells TIME. Israel has responded with angry rhetoric of its own: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested one way to get back at Erdogan would be to support the Kurdish terrorist group known as the PKK, which has recently stepped up attacks against Turkish military and civilian targets. (Turkey accepted Israel’s aid after a devastating Oct. 23 earthquake in Van province killed over 600, but Davutoglu said that would not soften Turkey’s position.)

… To Plenty of Problems
The Arab Spring finally made the Zero Problems doctrine untenable. Although Erdogan was ahead of many Western leaders in calling for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to step down in the face of a popular uprising, he was hesitant to send the same message to Syria’s Assad and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi: Turkey had sizable business interests and expat populations in both countries. Erdogan initially resisted pressure to join the NATO campaign against Gaddafi and maintained that his relationship with Assad would allow him to coax the Syrian leader into implementing political reforms. “Erdogan thought of himself as Assad’s tutor,” says F. Stephen Larrabee, an expert on Turkey at the Rand Corp. “He overestimated his ability to persuade Assad.” (Read “How Syria and Libya Got to Be Turkey’s Headaches.”)

Erdogan belatedly changed his mind and then acted decisively: Turkey backed Libya’s transitional council against Gaddafi, and once Assad had reneged on his promise of reforms (another slight Erdogan took personally), it began calling for regime change in Damascus. Whereas once he had invited the Assad family to holiday in Turkey, Erdogan grew openly contemptuous of the Syrian strongman. “It is impossible to preserve my friendship with people who are allegedly leaders when they are attacking their own people,” he says. Turkey now provides shelter not only to refugees from Assad’s crackdown but also to opposition groups that are actively plotting his downfall.

The break with Israel and Syria may have dashed Erdogan’s hopes of being a regional peacemaker. It also greatly complicates matters for the U.S., which had hoped Turkey could gradually draw Syria away from the Iranian sphere of influence. Nor does it help that the U.S.’s two closest allies in the region, Turkey and Israel, are now at loggerheads. Pro-Israel Congressmen have threatened to block military supplies to Turkey, giving the White House yet another brush fire to put out.

The consequences for Turkey are uncertain. Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric plays well with the AKP voter base and Arab audiences. But by turning on Assad, says Rand’s Larrabee, Erdogan also risks antagonizing Syria’s sponsor, Iran. Relations with Tehran have already cooled since Turkey agreed in September to install new NATO radar systems designed to detect missiles launched from Iran. Erdogan long pushed back against the radars for fear of antagonizing the Iranians. Now Turkish officials are seeking cover behind the fig leaf that data from the systems will not be shared with Israel; NATO says that’s just not true. So much for Zero Problems.

The New Ottoman Empire
Inevitably, Erdogan’s new foreign policy doctrine, aimed at increasing Turkey’s political and economic influence in the Middle East and North Africa, has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman,” after the dynasty that ruled much of the Muslim world from Istanbul for 600 years until shortly after World War I. Erdogan doesn’t shirk from the comparison. “Of course, the empire had some beautiful parts and some not-so-beautiful parts,” he says. “It’s a very natural right for us to use what was beautiful about the Ottoman Empire today.” Turkish officials envision an arrangement similar to the British Commonwealth, with a constellation of Balkan, East European and Arab states all looking to Istanbul for benign guidance.

But invoking a long-gone — and not especially lamented — empire is no basis for foreign policy. The competition for influence in the new Middle East emerging from the Arab Spring is bound to be fierce. Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the region’s traditional powers; there are American and European fingers in the pie too. Relative newcomers China and India have a growing economic interest in the region. Turkey’s head start in the Arab Spring countries — it is already one of the largest investors in Egypt and Libya — will be difficult to maintain.

If there’s growing competition for Turkey abroad, for Erdogan there are also growing problems at home. That autocratic tendency has become more pronounced since June’s huge election win. Political rivals complain that he has never quite shaken off the bullying streak he developed in the mean streets of Istanbul’s Kasimpasa neighborhood. Despite his lofty position, he rarely misses a chance to rub his opponents’ noses in the dirt, often using crude rhetoric unbecoming of a leader who aspires to statesmanship. He is notoriously thin-skinned about criticism and paranoid about coups. (This last is perhaps understandable: the Turkish military overthrew four elected governments in the 40 years before the AKP’s 2002 victory.) For all its desire for Turkey to be seen as a modern state equal in freedoms to any in Europe, his government has jailed 68 journalists, accusing them of complicity in coup plots. On a recent trip to Istanbul, two top journalists agreed to talk with me about Erdogan only if I promised not to name them.

Erdogan’s treatment of Turkey’s Kurdish minority had fluctuated between promises of political compromise and old-fashioned military repression. Violence has flared in recent months after a series of tit-for-tat attacks between the PKK and Turkish forces. Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy chairman of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, scoffs at Erdogan’s international popularity: “Before Turkey can be held up as a role model for the Middle East, it needs to sort out its own domestic conflicts.”

Conflicts in the neighborhood will have an impact on Turkey’s economy: trade with Syria, a major partner, is imperiled by Erdogan’s open falling out with Assad. The longer the dictatorship lingers in Damascus, the greater the cost. Antagonistic relations with Israel have not yet had a great economic effect, mainly because trade between the two countries is relatively small.

In the political arena, Erdogan’s next challenge is to rewrite the Turkish constitution. Fears that he will dilute Turkey’s secularism have been replaced by a growing concern that he will push for executive power to be concentrated in the office of the President, and then seek that office himself. The Turkish presidency is currently a mostly ornamental position, held by Erdogan’s longtime ally Abdullah Gul. Istanbul salons are rife with talk of the two men switching roles after the constitution is rewritten, drawing inevitable comparisons to the Medvedev-Putin swap in Moscow. It’s a testament to how far the Islamist icon has come that his critics no longer worry that he may turn Turkey into another Iran. They now fear he will turn it into another Russia.

Until last weekend, many Germans were almost complacent about right-wing extremism in their country. Painful history had helped them learn to marginalize groups espousing such ideologies. And besides, they trusted that the authorities were keeping a careful eye on those kinds of radicals. But the country has been shocked recently by the almost daily revelations about a supposed neo-Nazi cell, which set off bombs, robbed 14 banks, brutally murdered at least 10 people and — most stunning of all — operated without being detected by authorities for 13 years. “These were systematic, cold-blooded serial murders,” says Hajo Funke, an authority on right-wing extremism at Berlin’s Free University. “We’ve never seen this before.”

Germany’s Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, is calling for reform in fighting racist crimes and says the killings represent a new form of extremism. The nine victims murdered between 2000 and 2006 had immigrant backgrounds, and were shot in the head, execution-style, at their places of work.

The alleged neo-Nazi ring came to light almost by happenstance — given away by the supposed perpetrators themselves. On Nov. 4, police found two bodies in a burned-out camping van in the eastern city of Eisenach. The men, Uwe Boehnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, had just robbed a bank, and apparently set their vehicle ablaze before committing suicide. Hours later, a house in Zwickau, where the two men lived, went up in flames. According to the authorities, the woman who set the fire, Beate Zschaepe, was an alleged accomplice of the two bank robbers. Zschaepe has turned herself in to the police and is reported to be ready to speak to investigators, after initially remaining silent. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe issued an arrest warrant for her on Nov. 13, under which she is being held for suspicion of “founding and being a member of a terrorist organisation.”

Investigators said they then found evidence in the ruins in Zwickau linking the two men and woman to a series of unsolved murders of immigrants. It included handguns like the one used in the killings, plus a DVD from a previously unknown group calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU). In the never circulated video, the group claimed responsibility for the nine killings, plus two bombings in which more than 20 people where injured. In the burned-out van, investigators found the handgun that belonged to a female police officer who was killed in 2007, the 10th victim. The video also shows images of some of the victims that, according to the police, only the perpetrators of the crimes could have taken. The narration even pokes fun at the murdered. A voice at the start of the grisly 15-minute video identifies the NSU as a “network of comrades with the fundamental principle of ‘deeds instead of words.’ ” It then uses the Pink Panther character to take viewers on a “tour of Germany,” stopping at each city where murders occurred, showing a mix of photos of the victims from the press, crime-scene clips from TV and, apparently, photographs by the gang of the bloodied victims.

The discovery of the NSU has turned into a major embarrassment for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. The agency had been investigating Boehnhardt, Mundlos and Zschaepe in the eastern city of Jena in the late 1990s but lost track of them in 1998, when the trio went underground and began a murderous but slow-motion rampage up and down the country. All the while, police were puzzling over the unsolved immigrant murders, not seriously pursuing racism as a motive.(See pictures of East Germany.)

Questions emerging from an emergency Parliamentary Oversight Committee meeting on Tuesday in Berlin centered on whether the trio had acted alone. “There is evidence of more helpers,” said chairman Thomas Oppermann to reporters after the meeting. Over the weekend, a fourth man was arrested in Hanover for allegedly aiding the trio.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is also facing criticism from politicians that it is mismanaging its system of paid neo-Nazi informants at the least, and at worse, it is unwilling or unable to act on knowledge of the NSU. “There is a widespread belief that the intelligence agencies know what is going on in the right, extremist scene, but that is not always true,” says Jan Schedler, a social scientist at Ruhr University in Bochum. “We have been warning against this for years,” says Bianca Klose, director of Mobile Counseling Against Right-wing Extremism in Berlin. “In the middle of society there is an area where right-wing, extremist views are very well represented,” says Klose. “We really have to stop thinking of this as extreme.”

Klose says her organization, one of many that get state support to combat racism but are chronically underfunded, counts 137 deaths in Germany related to racism or right-wing violence since unification in 1990. That jibes with other counts by newspapers prior to this month’s discovery of the NSU cell in Zwickau but is dramatically higher than the government’s official figure of 48 deaths.

Critics like Klose point to the wide gap as proof that authorities are blind to violence on the right and say right-wing extremism is more deadly than Islamist or left-wing extremism in Germany. Says Klose: “Right-wing extremists have been murdering people for years. Getting rid of people who do not fit into their worldview is part of their ideology.” The Free University’s Funke says right-wing extremism is most widespread in sparsely populated eastern regions, making it largely invisible to the country as a whole. “This is our Alabama,” says Funke. “It’s down there.”

On a weekday morning in Cairo’s working-class district of Shubra, Mohamed Abdallah, a fruit vendor, is paying little heed to the hand-painted political banners that have recently taken over the space overhead. “All those who are running [in the elections] are thieves,” he says dismissively of the upcoming parliamentary race. “This country is never going to be clean.” That’s why, Abdallah says, he doesn’t plan to vote. “The only person I’ll ever elect is Gamal Abdel Nasser,” he adds, referring to the charismatic President who died 41 years ago. But a woman passing Abdallah’s fruit cart hears this. “No!” she cries, stopping in her tracks. “You have to vote! Vote for the sake of our country!”

A police officer jumps in too. “Egypt is the mother of the world. You have to vote,” he says, crossing his arms. “You’re a police officer — it’s none of your business. Stay out of it,” interrupts another passerby in a suit. An argument quickly erupts over who’s right and who’s wrong, and soon, a flock of strangers have gathered around the fruit cart.

If one thing has surely changed since the February overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, it’s that Egyptians have ushered in a new atmosphere of political expression and debate. Prospective voters, analysts and politicians predict that an unprecedented number of Egyptians will turn out to vote on Nov. 28 when the country makes its first attempt at democracy since Mubarak’s ouster.

And yet, many also say they feel unprepared. “I feel like most people don’t know what they’re doing,” one middle-aged Egyptian man confessed at a campaign event hosted by liberal candidate Amr Hamzawy on Monday night. “I’m an educated man from the educated class, and this is the first time I’m going out to hear about politics,” he continued. “I want to vote for someone, and I don’t know who to vote for.”

Analysts say the uncertainty is due in part to the fact that Egypt’s newly modified electoral system is unnecessarily complicated. Candidates will compete for the 498 seats via both closed party lists and individual candidacies depending on the district, in a setup that few seem to grasp. Voting will occur in stages, but the schedules and districts have been so poorly publicized that many prospective voters say they still don’t know when and where they get to vote. Marina Ottaway, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the country’s military rulers who designed the system are setting themselves up for disaster. “Essentially there are going to be six election days, plus additional days for runoffs in various constituencies,” she says.

Egyptians have grown increasingly cynical about the military’s intentions in recent months, amid harsh crackdowns on voices of dissent, including one of the uprising’s most prominent bloggers. And many now question whether the military will eventually cede power to a civilian authority, as promised. The complicated election layout and an attempt by the ruling council to pass conditions on the parliament’s power ahead of elections have only exacerbated tensions. “No matter what they do, there are going to be great suspicions,” Ottaway says. If authorities choose to release the results of the first round, it will impact the next, she says. “If they don’t release the election results, all the parties that don’t do well are going to scream that the elections were manipulated.”

The atmosphere of confusion and mistrust has contributed to some level of voter apathy. And it doesn’t help that no one has ever done this before, others point out. “Most Egyptians, it’s the first time for them to vote,” says Mohamed Hassan, a mechanical engineer and member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. “Many people have no idea about the elections, and in the past there were just two sides: the National Democratic Party [NDP] and the opposition. Now we have many groups.”

The parties are so numerous and the campaign period so short that most people have trouble naming more than a handful of political organizations. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, formerly Mubarak’s strongest opposition, is one of the only groups with any politicking experience, and weaker parties savvy enough to know their odds have thrown in their lot with the Brotherhood-led Democratic Alliance. That includes Mubarak’s former presidential challenger and a favorite of the Bush Administration, Ayman Nour, who played second fiddle to the Islamists at a recent Democratic Alliance rally in north Cairo where a gender-segregated audience listened to mostly Brotherhood campaign speeches.

For those who don’t support the Islamists, the options have been even hazier. Most of the parties contesting the parliamentary vote are new, unskilled and lack credibility. Those who have experience are accustomed to Mubarak-era-styled candidacies, in which family and connections matter more than platform and everything is expected to be rigged at the end of the day. The fruit vendor Abdallah is hardly the only one who feels suspicious.

“No party can solve our problems. We have very big problems,” says Heba Hassan, a nutritionist, who, despite her indifference to the parties, spoke to TIME while meeting with other academics over a plan to pressure the Ministry of Higher Education to crack down on corruption.

Even the candidate Hamzawy dodged voters’ queries for details of his campaign program on a recent night. “The program is online and in the newspapers,” said the former political analyst before being interrupted by a disgruntled voter who said, “No one reads the program!” Underlying all the apprehensiveness and confusion, some say, is also simply fear: fear of the unknown, fear of an Islamist win, fear of a revolution unfinished. “They’re in shock — most Egyptians,” says Mohamed, a nightclub owner in the capital. “They don’t know what’s wrong and what’s right. Hosni Mubarak has fallen down. The pyramid fell down. So they don’t trust anyone.”

There is a national obsession with the threat of the felool — literally, “remnants” of the regime. They’re out there and they’re ubiquitous, the rhetoric goes, and they’re plotting to get back to power through any means necessary. A ruling by the country’s High Administrative Court on Monday dismissed a provincial court’s ban on the candidacies of former NDP members, sparking outrage. One group of activists has set up a website, emsekflol.com (Catch Remnants), which lists former ruling-party members, candidates or not, by district and governorate, encouraging voters to take the battle into their own hands. “The Democratic Alliance is the only alliance that doesn’t have remnants,” Mohamed Bayoumi, a liberal candidate on the Democratic Alliance list, told a crowd of prospective voters last Friday night.

Indeed, after decades of authoritarian rule, it may be only natural that Egyptians have their doubts about who to choose in what will likely be the most important election in Egypt’s history thus far. “Thirty years is not a short time,” says the nightclub owner who, like many Egyptians, still fears the regime’s ever watchful state security enough not to give his last name. “I was a kid [when Mubarak took power] and now I’m a father,” he says. “They put this thing inside of us: fear of the future, fear of strangers. Just fear. What happened over 30 years, you cannot change it in 15 minutes.”