Economy

Beamed onto TV screens across the Middle East, the Balkans and beyond, modern Turkish culture – particularly in the form of soap operas – has never been so popular. Indeed, Turkish soaps have been held responsible by many for the rise of the country’s “soft power” – and for surging tourism to Turkey, as fans come to visit the haunts of their TV...

An unassuming, 20-metre hill, some 15 km north-east of Şanl›urfain South-east Turkey, seems a rather unusual place to be sending the archaeological world into a spin. Yet Göbekli Tepe, located at the northern end of what the ancients called the Fertile Crescent, is currently doing just that.

Over the course of the past decade, Turkey's economy and society have undergone drastic changes: high GDP growth, the consolidation of civilian political control and the evolution of a more nuanced perspective on the country’s role in the region. The nation's growing prominence has led the international community to increasingly value Turkish...

For many visitors, Johannesburg is seen as purely a business destination or stopover point. Most guidebooks advise a history-themed day trip to take in a combination of Gold Reef City, the Apartheid Museum and the former township of Soweto, or suggest a drive outside of the city to the Cradle of Humankind or the Krugesdorp Nature Reserve....

Since the establishment of a democratic South Africa in 1994, and the creation of nine provinces from the original four, the role of regional government has become a prominent topic in political debate in the country. In the 1990s several parties called for a greater role for provincial authorities, to counter the power of the central government in...

Horses are believed to have been part of Bahrain’s culture for as long as 4000 years, dating back to the Dilmun civilisation. The predominance in modern times of the Arabian horse in Bahrain is often linked to the Al Khalifa tribe, the nation’s ruling family, which came to the archipelago in 1783. Since that time, the ruling sheikhs have...