Alper Ali Riza

There were seagulls loitering by the tin chimney at the Vatican as it billowed white smoke heralding the election of Pope Leo XIV the first all-American pope, evocative of land ...

Malta and the EU’s definitive ruling on golden passports In a trenchant judgement on April 29, 2025 the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the ...

Films highlight the doctrinaire versus the avant-garde and the machinations behind becoming pope What was unique about Pope Francis who died last Monday was not that he was the first ...

On Wednesday five justices of the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) decided that a woman is a person born biologically female. The judgement is long and technical and the UKSC was ...

The headscarf controversy in Turkish Cypriot schools after a regulation governing school dress was changed to authorise schoolgirls to cover their heads raises human rights issues the European Court of ...

Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate for president of France in 2027, was banned from holding public office for five years last week after she was found guilty ...

Turkey is in turmoil after Istanbul mayor and candidate for president Ekrem Imamoglu was charged with offences of bribery and corruption, which sparked sustained protests against the rule of President ...

A stunning silence has greeted Israel’s deadly breach of Gaza ceasefire deal There was an operational meeting in London last week of commanders of the so-called coalition of the ...

The talks in Geneva between the Cypriot leaders and the guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the UK next week convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the hope that an ...

Nato without America is out of the question and reports that the death of Nato is imminent have been greatly exaggerated, as is loose talk that the US is destroying ...

The case of X v Cyprus attracted worldwide attention as it highlights the plight of rape complainants In a judgement last Thursday in the application of X v Cyprus, the ...

The right to self-determination is the right of peoples to a state and the right of territorial integrity is the right of a state to its territory. Both are accepted ...

Momentous events are taking place in world affairs. America is finally breaking loose of its European chains. Despite being the most powerful country in the world, it remained a frontier ...

Walking back statements the Trump makes as president is keeping the White House busy How to judge US President Donald Trump’s plan to resettle the Palestinians of Gaza and ...

Last week was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 when the true horror of the Nazi crimes against the Jewish people was exposed as the ...

When devising the executive branch of government in 1789 the founding fathers of the American constitution were anxious to avoid creating an all-powerful monarch like the English king from whom they ...

So why are the Israelis still bombing Gaza? US foreign minister Anthony Blinken was first on the Gaza ceasefire bandwagon last week. Israel and Hamas are right on the brink ...

Greenland is a Danish island colony in the North Atlantic within the Arctic Circle that owing to its location and sparse population survived the winds of change of decolonisation after ...

The surrender of sovereignty over the whole of Cyprus is an existential obstacle that no Greek Cypriot leader could surmount In his traditional Christmas homily Archbishop Georgios of Cyprus expressed ...

As the old year gives way to the new and a new American president is about to come to power with a mandate to make America great again (MAGA) it ...

Zenon Stavrinides, the well-known Greek Cypriot intellectual and Cyprob aficionado, passed away last October aged 78 and my column this week is in celebration of his life. He was the eldest ...

The irony of the overthrow of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad last Sunday is that he fled to Russia as a refugee after he turned his people into refugees and ...

Last week President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter for offences of failing to disclose he was a drug addict to obtain a gun, tax evasion and any federal offences ...

Arrest warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on November 21, 2024 against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes ...