It’s been described in turn as the ‘Hollywood of horses’ and ‘horse heaven’, and it’s guilty as charged according to the Irish stable of workers at Qatar’s leading equestrian centre.

Donal O’Keeffe visits the major Turkish city that straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait and is fascinated by its magical blend of museums, markets, history and restaurants.

There is hardly a more politically-charged fulcrum of international affairs in the world than the Straits of Hormuz in the Middle East.

Once upon a time, everyone assumed that there was a single phenomenon called globalisation, whereby cross-border flows of financial capital drove innovation, industrialisation, development, and trade, writes Harold James.

WHEN Peter the Great decided, in the early 1700s, that Russia needed access to the Baltic Sea, he built a port city on the river Neva, on the Gulf of Finland. 

An enormous 15th-century tomb in south-east Turkey has been moved to make way for a hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river.

If, as is suggested, €10,000 is being paid per refugee to get to Europe, a boat overloaded with 600 people, could provide criminal gangs with €6,000,000.

Had the Ottoman empire survived World War I and come to dominate western powers we would be living in a very different, far less tolerant world, suggests Andrew Melsom.

Centuries of rule by outsiders have left a disconnect between citizens and the state — and in the struggle between modernism and myth, the latter triumphed, writes Adam LeBor

They were created by imperial powers, but war and terrorism is posing risks to the shape and future of many nations, writes Shlomo Avineri

WE have been here before.

This week Esther N McCarthy scrabbles for bright ideas, including a clever home-grown gift, a striking pouffe and some very NYNY wallpaper — plus some practical stuff too.

The deposit tax debacle in Cyprus is rich in historical resonance, as well as showing that, frankly, as Leigh Phillips has suggested on EUobserver.com, Europe is run by the Three Stooges.

Greece has always looked at its classical age as a usable past but there is no solace in the classics to inspire the country out of its financial and economic woes. What Greece needs is a cultural revolution, writes Fouad Ajami

IN his letter (April 12), Mark Cronin reasserts the British view that the Turks bear responsibility for being invaded at Gallipoli because “the pro-German faction within the Turkish government was the controlling party in the lead-up to the war”.

IN his response to my article on Gallipoli (March 23), Mark Cronin (Letters, March 25) reveals that the propaganda constructed to justify England’s invasion of Mesopotamia and Turkey during 1914/15 has done its job well in Ireland to this day.

Oil prices soared to a new high today as spiralling tensions on the border between Turkey and northern Iraq added to concerns over winter supplies.

LUNAR eclipses have signalled the collapse of the Roman armies, the Ottoman Empire and the reign of Mary Harney.

CHANTING Islamist slogans and brandishing banners against Western intervention in the Middle East, thousands of people have rallied in Turkey to denounce the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.

An historic bridge reduced to rubble during the Bosnian war was being reopened today, nearly 11 years after it was destroyed by Croat forces.