Turkey on Edge
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What has happened to Turkey? Not so long ago it was held up as a model of Middle Eastern harmony, a successful mix of Islam and democracy. Mark Lowen explains how the optimism of those days has turned to disenchantment and anxiety ahead of the general election there this weekend. There's an encounter with the religious police in Saudi Arabia as Lyse Doucet in Riyadh observes how the country's trying to hang on to ancient traditions while moving forward with the wider world. Ed Butler’s been in Puerto Rico – finding out what lies behind President Obama’s warning that the island’s economic problems could lead to a humanitarian crisis. Opportunity doesn’t often knock for women in Nepal yet a female president has just been appointed there and Chris Haslam has been talking to a young woman sports star who ran away from home and is set to become the most famous Nepali since the hero of Everest, Sherpa Tensing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | And here to introduce it is Kate A.D. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello, old and new black and white, right and wrong wrong Saudi Arabia trying to find its balance |
| 0:15.1 | between tradition and progress. Why people are fearful ahead of tomorrow's critical general |
| 0:20.5 | election in Turkey. The former child soldier who ran away from home |
| 0:24.7 | joined Maoist rebels and is now set to become Nepal's next sporting superstar. |
| 0:29.9 | And tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans are leaving their island in the Caribbean. |
| 0:35.0 | So why are so many luxury homes being built there? |
| 0:39.0 | So it looks as if the British grandfather, Carlré, who was jailed in Saudi Arabia after |
| 0:44.3 | breaking that country's strict rules on alcohol, could be reunited with his family next |
| 0:49.0 | week. The news came from the Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who's been in the Saudi capital for |
| 0:54.2 | talks with the authorities there. Earlier, the Saudi ambassador to the UK had complained |
| 0:59.7 | of a lack of mutual respect between the two countries. |
| 1:03.0 | Leise duet has spent the week in Saudi, a country trying to find its way in today's world. |
| 1:09.0 | It's so easy to see Saudi Arabia in black and white. |
| 1:12.0 | After all, men wear long white flowing gowns called |
| 1:15.4 | a Thob. Women are clad in billowing black cloaks or a bayas, black headscarves or black |
| 1:21.0 | Nikab which reveal only their eyes. That's the image of the |
| 1:24.9 | desert kingdom. That's the reality. But it's not always so simple, so stark. I |
| 1:30.6 | meet Haifa whose very arrival is a statement. Her Abaya is orange. Is orange the new |
| 1:37.8 | black? Sure, she replies with a giggle like a gurgling stream. I'd like to see more orange or rose or white she |
| 1:45.0 | declares. Are you ahead of your society? I asked the woman with short-cropped hair who |
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